Editing process

As editor for Documentary, I was keen to create a story from all of the footage we filmed over the past few weeks. There weren't any major problems with editing, only a couple of days i was unable to go to an edit session but a lot of our filming had been postponed anyway due to our contributors; making the editing sessions pushed back a few times until we filmed the contributors. We began with plans to interview each contributor early on in the process and we had got in contact with them; receiving their approval to be involved in the film.

However, many times we came across different problems with the filming for example Kane (the General Director of The Forum) could not attend a couple of dates that Hannah had suggested we meet him and we had to wait until he was free. As well as our other contributor, Lucy (from Syd and Mallory) we decided to film someone from The Green Room; Bill, and he gave us a lot more to work with aswell for our Devonshire Area part of the film.

As we began to form a narrative structure for the film, we felt at a standstill as we couldn't work out a desirable structure to present our story. We didn't want to simply show footage of the city followed by shots of the Devonshire Area, with a couple of interviews in between. We wanted a more interesting and appealing approach to our story and felt we had to split it into 3 main sections;

1) Descriptions of Devonshire Area by contributors and footage of the area
2) Introduction/revelation of the issue (demolition plans) and footage of the city
3) Contributors talking about the effect plans have for Devonshire shops with footage of the quirky independent shops

It took us a while to figure out the structure we wanted but eventually it became easier throughout the editing process and included a variety of different features, such as screengrabs of articles featuring the demolition plans covered by a voiceover and also music we recorded from a busker we met one day while filming. Although sometimes the editing was shared between us, I took on the role in order to expand my skills and felt I have learnt a lot through this process and had the others also there to help me. Despite there being times of stress and not knowing what direction we were going in with the edit at certain times, we pulled through and found the desired narrative structure that we wanted.