ABSTRACT
The documentary sequence has very different criteria for success than those of the dramatic
sequence. Both must follow certain rules of editing to communicate with the audience, but beyond simple continuity, the differences far outweigh the similarities. As Karel Reisz sug-
gested, “A story-film-and this will serve as a working distinction between documentary and
story-films-is concerned with the development of a plot; the documentary is concerned with the exposition of a theme. It is out of this fundamental difference of aims that the differ-
ent production methods arise.”1
