Weeks 13-15
As I sit here typing on my new Apple iBook on the 9.10 from Marylebone to Beaconsfield, it feels like an age since we started editing of our "Moment Of Truth" documentaries but has in fact been little more than two weeks at time of writing this. And my God what an intense two weeks it’s been.
My director, Julie, a student on the documentary direction course, choose to base her five to ten minute "Moment Of Truth" on a personal experience she went through five years ago, when something triggered the fragmented memory of a traumatic childhood event.
Twenty-five years later and unable to decide whether these fragmented memories are any representation of a past truth or merely just some kind of unexplained mental visual abstraction, Julie decided to confront friends and family about this issue in the hope of unearthing the truth about whether it really did happen. Up until now, this event had largely never been spoken about and subjects were not briefed before each interview in an attempt at capturing an emotionally honest reaction to her questions on camera.
When I first heard the pitch on this one I was amazed anyone would want to bring such a personal and intimate family issue to the public eye by making a film about it. I couldn’t decide whether this was this going to be a potential act of bravery or merely a self-absorbed emotional minefield. Either way, I was a little unsure at the outset as to what my director wished to bring to light through making this film.
Editing something like this was like nothing I had done before. We were not concerned with visual aesthetics or continuity editing; it was a film using images and sounds in their purest form, veering away from convention and resting somewhere between art installation and video diary. Personally I found this sort of approach hard to digest at first, but, I thought, this is film-school and will probably be the only time I get to experiment and put new approaches to the test.
It has to be said, I did find the whole experience very frustrating an an editor. Julie started out with a very fixed idea in her mind as to how the material was going to go together, which is of course no bad trait for a director to have. But when it became evident that these ideas were indeed "fixed", I realised I was going to have to develop new diplomacy skills in the art of verbally advancing my creative judgement. That said, it was very stimulating working with an older student and we engrossed ourselves in some fascinating discussions for several hours before we even started editing each day.
On the Tuesday before the Thursday when we were all due to come together to screen each other’s work in the Screening Theatre, the film was shown to our tutors and, well, let’s say it was an "enlightening experience". We had lengthy discussions about alternative restructuring and the possibility of re-introducing continuity editing in order to create a greater sense of coherence, but it all seemed to go against Julie’s preferred creative approach and jarred with what elements of the story could be told. But with only a day to go until the screenings, some fairly radical changes had to me made, so I suggested to Julie that she go home and return tomorrow afternoon so I could put together a more "conventional cut" in an attempt at screening something that would at least, in my view, tell a more coherent story, even though it may not be the entire one.
By Wednesday afternoon when I had finished the re-edit, we arrived at a most peculiar stage of the project where neither of us was happy to declare our new final cut as either Julie’s or mine. Julie wasn’t happy with the overall end result because she felt I had steered the film well away from her original intentions, and I wasn’t happy because I simply hadn’t the time to start the edit from scratch and develop the material in the way I saw fit.
The screenings went okay (and were very intense) but I did feel a little deflated afterwards; the final general feedback from tutors was "diplomatic" though naturally very constructive. But most interestingly, the post-screening discussion further sparked a very emotive debate surrounding the ethics behind the method used to obtain a "truthful" telephone interview with one of Julie’s relatives as the film’s key subject. Julie was concerned that if she briefed her subject before the interview so they were aware their voice were going to be recorded on camera, they might not give a truthful answer.
Our own "moment of truth" came when it was decided to include this interview in the film without the subject’s consent, for fear, as I understood it, of rocking the family boat. As this was just an exercise it was argued by some that obtaining consent wasn’t really an issue but I disagreed.
On the evening following the filming of the recorded phonecall, I was left to cut down the single eighteen-minute take into manageable chunks ready for editing the following morning. As I sat there on my own in front of the Avid that evening, it was the most bizarre experience listenening to such an intimate and totally private conversation between two people where one of them had no idea that potentially every word they said was about to be made public by its inclusion in a film to be watched by anyone who cared to see it.
In the end, after lengthy discussion with tutors, students and, incidentally, a visiting lawyer from Channel 4’s legal department, we decided to omit the actual recording and let a voice-over explain what the subject said instead. One of our tutors heavily disagreed with doing this and compared it to watching a porn film where the editor decides at the last minute to blur out the penis. Interesting analogy.
Of course if the subject consented to the inclusion of their conversation within the context of the finished film, then okay, no problem. The penis would be in. But this was not the case and as a result, this whole issue raised quite an ongoing debate within the documentary and editing departments.
In fact, I would be very interested to hear some outside opinions on this matter. Would it have been right to include the recorded conversation without the subject’s consent in the name of obtaining and hearing "the truth"? Anyone with anything to say on this issue, please drop me a line: eguertin@mac.com
Meanwhile, as the Easter break nears an end, I am looking forward to working on my first piece of fiction, although I will be giving up the Avid on this next project in favour of editing on Final-Cut Pro. I’ve never edited on FCP, so it’s going to be interesting taking the transition from Avid to Apple. The question is, will I have to blur out any more penises?
Okay, cut there.
