ABSTRACT
In the life cycle of every cut, there comes a moment when practitioners have to take a step back to evaluate the work. Pacing will be awkward, concepts and narrative beats will be unclear, sound edits will be jumpy. Make a thorough set of notes and get back to work. After making modifications practitioners are soon going to need some feedback from the director. Geoff Richman expands on this idea by relating it to the fundamental issues of documentary editing: Everyone has opinions; of course as an editor practitioners have a lot of strong opinions about how things should be put together, and so does the director. Documentary editing is a long, arduous process that is built on the need for revision. Because of the myriad possibilities inherent in the raw footage, a workable structure and flow is built only partially by design.
