Editing in a group has been an interesting process. We are a group of six, with six opinions and stylistic choices. We each have our own view of how a story should be told but we countered this by creating different sequences.

we watched the sequences and chose the strongest of them all and some of us opted to add onto each others sequences rather than create our own. This work flow worked for us and we had many rough cuts by the end of the day. We showed our ‘finest’ rough cut to Rohan. As he did with all the other groups, he sat in our ‘editors’ spot and butchered away our footage. While it was brutal, it was also equally relevant to do so. We felt the need to include a lot of footage in our video to make sure it was six minutes long, our priorities were not set. We should have focused on creating a good documentary, rather than a longer one. We got stuck on the six minutes length and included bits of footage that we did not even like.

We had to cut out a lot of what Terri said, as we found that she had simply not answered most of the questions we asked. I truly believe that in the case of our documentary, the researcher effect applied. This is a term in psychology used to describe a research study in which the researchers opinions cloud the actual experiment. In our case, we were so caught up in the aesthetics of the lolly shop and female willy wonka that we did not focus on Terri as an individual. Some people may not be shy in person but can easily change when sat infront of a camera.

I feel as though this studio has taught me a lot, both on a technical scale aswell as the importance of stories and its characters… sad to be finishing the flexi semester.