This week’s reading is about post-production. Although I am not responsible for the editing part of this film, it is still important for me to give some suggestions to Samantha’s editing. One of the statements in this week’s reading stood out to me. “In an expository documentary, a voice-over or interview-based soundtrack typically dominates, with supplemental imagery (B-roll and archival material) placed into the visual track to illustrate what is said” (Fox, 2018, p.221). This is a clear instruction of how an expository documentary should be edited. Our film is also an expository documentary, so I think the B-roll in our film will be very important, because it has to successfully illustrate what was said in the interview. In order to have enough footage for this, me as the cinematographer will have to make the B-roll my main focus, because the main part of the film (the journey of finding the answer) will be filled with B-roll footages.

Since we are doing multiple interviews, we cannot shoot them all in one day, but all of the interviews will be based on the same topic, which is authenticity. So crosscutting can be used in this case to create a sense of simultaneity or analogy between scenes (Fox, 2018). In this way the interviews will become a process of generating the final answer because the points made by my interviewees will be thrown out one by one. This technique can make the flow of the film smoother therefore give the audience a better watching experience.

This week’s reading has helped me gain more knowledge about documentary editing techniques, something I was not so familiar before. It really helped me become more useful during the discussions of the editing styles and I am now able to give out more suggestions.

Reference: Fox, B. (2018). Documentary media : History, theory, practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.