For our documentary, we decided we wanted it to be about international
students living in Greenwich because we wanted to carry on the theme that our
producer, Viktoria Govedarova, had made for an opening sequence as we thought
this would be an interesting topic for international students as well as
British students, so we could inform people of how students that come abroad to
study adapt to living in a different environment away from their friends and
family. We thought this would be a relatable subject for other international
students and reassure them that everyone experiences difficulties moving away
from home, as well as highlight the positive things about being somewhere new
and exciting.
Because of our subject matter, we wanted the documentary to focus on our
interviewees and their experiences. As editor of the documentary, I wanted to
keep the editing simplistic and minimalistic to give a more personal feel to
the film and help the audience focus on the people. To convey this, I used
straight cuts and fades for a smooth transition into each shot. The shots of
the interviews are lengthy and match cuts are used to match with what the
interviewee is describing. I feel all of these elements will help the
documentary flow nicely and create a sense of momentum. As stated in our
proposal “The
whole objective of the director is minimalism. This will be the guide of the
editor. The edit will be simple by the use of the quick frame transition
between the interviewee sitting down and to the small footage being cut into
the interview.”
For inspiration of how to edit our documentary, our director showed us a
documentary he made last year.
Figure 2
Whilst watching
the documentary, I made notes on elements that inspired me. For example, we
wanted to use the shot shown in Figure 1 where the rule of thirds is used, so
it draws the audience attention to the person being interviews and creates a
sense of balance to the shot. Also, he is slightly side-on to the camera which
appears to make him look thinner, as David W Samuelson states in his book
‘Motion Picture Camera Techniques’, “Slightly side-on view makes a person look
slimmer” (Samuelson, D.W. 1984. p.47). We also decided that we wanted text to
appear with our interviewees names, as shown in Figure 1, so the audience know
who the interviewees are. 
In regards to
sound, we wanted to have the interviewee talking over cutaways for fluidity and
smooth transitions, such as ‘The Ordained Artist’ does. Figure 2 shows a
cutaway shot which has the interviewee still talking over.
Whilst being on this course, I have learned that it is important for the
camera operator and editor to work together. As editor, I wanted to contribute
on what type of shots we could use so I could think ahead of what shots I would
be working with. I also took inspiration from our lectures for Craft and
Technology, CINE1078, about continuity and montage editing. Even though I
wanted to incorporate this more into our edit we just did not have the shots to
be able to do this.
To attract potential interviewees, we decided to post a
status on Facebook as social media plays a big part in our society. By posting
on Facebook, we knew this would appeal to students as the page we posted it on
was for students of the university. We wanted to make sure that our potential
interviewees would be suitable to be on camera, so we got together and did a
small over the phone interview with people who had shown interest in being in
our documentary. We found a couple of people who would’ve been suitable for the
documentary but found that they were not available on the day/s we were going
to film, and we could not change this to suit our potential participants
because of our own schedules. In the end, we decided as a group to ask Tom’s,
our camera operator, flat mate Duarte to be interviewed as he had showed
interest in being in it, and also to ask Alice Cafferty from our course as we
knew when she was available as she has a very similar schedule as us.
Fortunately, both agreed and were free to film on the same days we were.
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