Concept tag
#documentary
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A documentary can stage a scene and still be telling the truth
Every documentary editor eventually faces the question. A woman tells us about the night her brother left home. We have her voice. Do we film her walking the street again at night, knowing she is walking it for us? My thesis: staging,…
Started by Parisa Moghaddam4 replies -
Hayden White was right: the historian chooses the plot before the facts mean anything
Last year I worked on a documentary about a factory closure, and I made two rough cuts from the same footage for the director. In one the closing of the gates is a tragedy: a community undone by forces it could not…
Started by Parisa Moghaddam6 replies -
Bullough’s fog at sea, seen from an edit suite in Tehran
Edward Bullough's 1912 essay on "psychical distance" begins with a fog at sea. For the passengers it is mostly misery and anxiety: delays, danger, the foghorn. But if you can set the practical side aside, the fog becomes strange and beautiful: the…
Started by Parisa Moghaddam4 replies