Keeping It Simple and Exciting in the Edit

Most people who haven't edited a story before in documentary filmmaking tend to ignore some of the principles that should be adhered to in order to make a successful edit exciting for all audiences.  Keep it real and keep it simple making sure all of your edited sound bites don't take up too much time....usually about 4-6 seconds is plenty when it comes to interviews and sound techniques.  You want to keep your viewers attention and making sure sound doesn't drone on for too long and put your viewers to sleep is key.  But sometimes this all depends on the subject matter itself.  An animated interview will surely keep the viewers attention opposed to a subjects long winded monotone rants that could just cause you to lose your audience.   As described earlier, use your preproduction time wisely to find subjects that will talk in bites and articulate your topic matter with elequence and style.  Allow the interviewee to tell the story in their own words and lead them into painting a picture through sound and storytelling that is engaging and most important coherent.  Make sure to have your interviewee recite the questions and incorporate them into their answers.  We make a point of telling this in advance to our interviewee so that they can also think carefully about their answer.  Remember, good interivew practices will allow the editor to pick and choose soundbites that have simple and short meaning in your documentary.  Simplicity leads to excitement and a sucessful edit.