The Technique of Film and Video Editing, 5th Edition

 

 

CHAPTER 24

Documentary

The documentary sequence has very different criteria for success than those of the dramatic sequence. Both must follow certain rules of editing to communicate with the audience, but beyond simple continuity, the differences far outweigh the similarities. As Karel Reisz suggested, “A story-film—and this will serve as a working distinction between documentary and story-films—is concerned with the development of a plot; the documentary is concerned with the exposition of a theme. It is out of this fundamental difference of aims that the different production methods arise.”¹

The production of the dramatic film is usually much more controlled than that of the documentary. The story is broken down into deliberate shots that ...