ABSTRACT
Most documentaries operate with a slight fudge in the way they deal with time, in that they use the present tense when referring to their characters. It's common practice in documentary to put title cards onscreen marking objective moments in time. A scene can begin with a card on the bottom of the screen marking it as "January 2018," for instance. The important thing to note about these tools is that they only carry meaning within the context of the narrative. In Lost in La Mancha, documentary editors crafted a "ticking clock" structure in which time is marked in relationship to the start of shooting on Terry Gilliam's ill-fated 2000 production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Time has a rational, objective measure to it— documentary editors all live in the same clearly designated days, hours, and minutes—but they experience of it is often wildly subjective.
