Week 4 - Editing Strategy

 In this lesson we looked at different strategies we can take with our edit and how we can change our edit to create more meaning. The main thing I took from this seminar was the Four R's of Editing which are: Reveal, Ruthless, Reason and Rhythm. These all highlight necessary things you must do when it comes to the edit of your work. You must aim to show and not tell, which is something in our documentary we will really focus on as it is desktop documentary i.e we can physically show things through clicking links rather than tell. We must be comfortable in being ruthless and cutting any unnecessary scenes or clips from the documentary even if we have personal attachment to those scenes, as we cant include anything that slows down the pacing of the doc. The final thing we really need to take care with is the pacing of the whole film, we need there to be highs and lows to maintain excitement and engagement, but we don't want to be going ten miles an hour from start to finish, or the audience wont be able to keep up. There is a balance we need to find throughout to make the piece as engaging as possible for the audience watching.

A final thing I'd want to reference is the importance of the dramatic arc, that was mentioned above with pacing. The dramatic arc is something we have discussed as a group and the importance of it, from starting with introducing our 'characters' to them going on a journey using the application of Onlyfans, to then giving their judgement on it. We needed to have this idea of the movement of the documentary to help find pre existing footage online that is appropriate for the scene we are in. Once you are aware of your dramatic arc, as an editor you are able to springboard from this and kick on.