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...Documentary Editing...by Sam Billinge

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Is from: Southold, US
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Wed 20-Sep-17 05:23 PM | edited Sat 23-Sep-17 06:50 AM by Obregon
The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing Techniques for TV and Film by Sam Billinge

Editing a documentary is different than editing a fiction narrative, if only because the scenes from the latter follow a prepared script, while the former requires shaping the shots that may be available into a story. This gives the documentary editor far more control over what is shown and how the story is told than the editor of a fiction narrative. Billinge recognizes this and even fiction narrative editors may benefit from reading his work.

Billinge reminds us that a documentary should tell a story, although he recognizes the place of montages and episodic films. He discusses the editing of not just the visuals, but also of the sound, including music, and is concerned with the structuring of the piece. He even spends a brief while discussing how to work with the director, and even “the suits” during the edit to create the best possible video or movie. The information that he provides is useful both to the team player or the lone wolf.

While the author is concerned with structuring the film, he also offers suggestions for editing at the micro level, like paying attention to eye trace, that is, the location of the subject on the screen to either allow the viewer to continue to look at the same portion of the screen through the cut or shift the viewer’s gaze elsewhere on the screen. This can help the viewer to better read the piece. Sometimes his suggestions seem almost contradictory, which makes sense given that editing is an art which requires weighing available techniques.

The advice is generic rather than being aimed at specific software like Avid or Premiere Pro, and covers ideas often ignored in software books.
I particularly noticed the amount of space dedicated to editing interviews and voice-overs which I had rarely encountered before in a book about editing.

I did have one complaint. The publisher should have been more generous with typography. The narrow margins on the page didn’t allow the material to breath, even though the generous leading between lines could have been reduced to create wider margins.

This is one of the most informative books on editing motion media that I’ve read.

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