In terms of editing our documentary, the main concern is making the visuals appealing and engaging. Our topic happens to be very serious, dense, and scientific. To ease out these elements, we figured we would use editing techniques that would illicit emotion or at the very least – capture someone’s attention. To achieve this, we used aesthetically pleasing shots and sounds. Since the documentary is divided into three parts, we were concerned with the coherence of it all, but I discovered from the reading that ‘coherence does not mean absolute uniformity, however; pace, rhythm, and intensity must be varied and crafted according to content, action, and your chosen structure’ (Fox 2017, p.217).

I found it interesting that Hollywood did not use experimental editing until the 1960s through the influence of ‘European art cinemas and burgeoning postcolonial Third Cinema movements emerging from Latin America and extending around the globe’ (Fox 2017, p.220). According to Fox, Hollywood had a specific standard for editing such as starting a scene with a wide establishing shot (2017, p.218). I noticed that we used the aforementioned style in the first part of our documentary series. In the second documentary, we used the classic ‘cut on motion’ to create a sense of continuity and fluidity. We planned to use the avant-garde choice of jump cuts to ‘maintain the rawness of the scene’s environment and content’ (Fox 2017, p.220). Furthermore, we employed teasers before the titles of the documentaries to increase uniformity. Fox explains that the use of teasers is very dominant in documentaries, and they are often used to ‘craft viewer curiosity and suspense’ (2017, p.225).

Aside from the mentioned above, we recruited the classic expository documentary format, which involved the dominance of interviews supplemented with imagery (B-roll) to illustrate what is said. For the sake of the emotional appeal, we used soft music that was heightened at certain moments and toned down during the shots that involve talking.

References:

Fox, B 2017, Documentary Media : History, Theory, Practice, Routledge, Milton.