Making a documentary - Part III

Over the last few months, we've planned and shot the footage for a documentary, collecting interviews and footage. Now it's time to start shaping that footage into a finished film.

The paper edit

(Enlarge)

Your biggest problem as the editor of any factual film is the sheer quantity of material you have to deal with. The fact that your project isn't scripted means that you have to shoot everything you think might possibly fit into it, so your first job is to sort through the hours of footage to find the scenes, shots and moments that will make up your programme.

This initial step is often worth doing before you even open up Pinnacle Studio. Watch through your shot footage with a piece of paper and a pen, and note down the shots you definitely want to use, as well as those which aren't even worth capturing to disk.

Have the camera's tape counter running on the screen if you can, and take a note of the times on the tape where useful shots occur. With this information you can start to think about how the sections of your programme will be ordered when you start editing.

You'll also be able to decide which sections you can reject right away, and save time and disk space by not capturing them onto your PC.

The rough cut

(Enlarge)

The rough cut is your first edit and it's here that you discover the story of your film. You should already have a fair idea about the structure of the programme, and how the various scenes and interviews will fit together to form the story. You're not trying to produce a finished film here, you're just getting only your most useful footage into an order which tells the story you're trying to tell.

Don't worry about making it look good - just concentrate on the story, and where there are parts that you'll need to use narration, place a few of the clips you'll place over it. It's sometimes a good idea to do quick text screens giving an idea of the voiceover you'll need to record.

Once you've finished, you should be able to watch the programme through and get a real sense of the story that's being told.

Cutting interviews

(Enlarge)

An interview will often be up to an hour of video without a cut, so finding just the few seconds you're looking for is going to be tricky. Your best method is to dump the whole interview onto the end of the timeline, then use the razor tool to cut out and delete the sections you don't need as you find them.

As you work, you'll end up with fewer and fewer clips until your interview becomes a manageable selection of useful shots.

Refining the edit

With the main sections in place, you can begin to tidy up your edit. You can start placing cut-aways over the interviews, trimming the shots so that they start and stop exactly where they need to, and removing any shots or even scenes that don't contribute to your finished programme.

This phase can be the longest, most frustrating part of the process, but the more picky you can be about getting every shot perfect, the better your finished film will be.

Next month we'll look at adding music and narration to finish off your film.

*Offer ends 28th February 2009.