ABSTRACT
A picture of the whole of the film starts to form in our minds, even if it is a jumbled and confusing one at first. More important, whether practitioners recognize it or not, practitioners’ brain is absorbing everything practitioners view. With a film that contains 160 hours of raw footage—not at all unusual these days—we're talking about spending four weeks just digesting it. This is precious time that could theoretically be spent doing something else. The simple act of writing it down will help further imprint this clip in practitioners’ brain, and if practitioners have done practitioners’ project organization work properly it will not be hard to find even if the notes go missing. The first viewing is not to be treated casually, because practitioners will never again see the footage for the first time; this is practitioners’ best chance to watch it in the way that practitioners’ audience might.
