Documentary Editing

7Evidentiary Editing

Building Interview-Based Scenes

We will start with “evidentiary editing,” which is the easiest to master. As previously mentioned, this term was coined by author Bill Nichols to refer to a very common “mode” of editing that uses interviews (or at least the audio generated from interviews) as the anchoring element in sequences that describe a concept or tell a story. The words from the interviewees are supplemented and gently reinforced by images that provide “evidence” for their claims. Evidentiary editing can be interwoven with verité editing and used for sections as short as a few seconds or as long as an entire film. While this term is an academic one and isn’t commonly used in the professional world, it nonetheless provides ...