Shelf Space
Editing
Isaac Nellist
Biography
Isaac Nellist is the editor for the short documentary 'Shelf Life'. He has previously worked as the editor for short film 'Bliss' and directed another short film 'Sleepless'.
Isaac has been interested in a filmmaking from a young age, when he made stop motion videos with his toys. He has worked as a camera assistant on numerous shoots, has shot and directed two music videos and works as a videographer for NSW Rugby League.
Isaac is also currently editing and doing sound design for several other short films. Isaac loves the collaborative nature of filmmaking and is interested in films that reveal truths about people.
The Paper Edit
Assembly
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The Paper Edit
Rough Cut
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Avid Timeline
Assembly Edit
Avid Timeline
Rough Cut 1
Avid Timeline
Rough Cut 2
Emotion in Documentary Editing
Our short documentary film, Shelf Life, is about the intrinsic sense of community that has been built around the physical space of Desire Books and Records, a shop on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. The film will explore how the physical space can create deep emotional reactions for both customers and owners of the shop. As the editor of this film, I will be analysing the importance of emotion when editing a film.
As Walter Murch (2005, p.18) writes, “emotion… is the thing that you should try to preserve at all costs”. He suggests that selecting the take that captures the right emotion for the story is much more important than the technicalities of two and three-dimensional space, and eye-trace. Murch (2005) argues that if the emotion of a scene is correct than the audience will not notice issues such as continuity and pacing. He does not neglect the importance of these technical issues but simply highlights that, “if you have to give up something, don’t ever give up emotion” (Murch, 2005, p.20). However, emotion can never be completely detached from the physical movement of the images that accompany it. Pearlman (2009, p. 88) suggests that the rhythm of emotion is in direct relation to “the trajectory of movement”. This shows how editors must understand each shot as a physical experience in order to understand how to convey the emotional context on screen through cuts. Physical and emotional rhythms must be manipulated to create the rhythm of the final film and selecting the right shots and cuts to create these rhythms is how an editor creates a film that “feels right” (Pearlman, 2009, p.92).
While editing our documentary I will draw on the use of physical movement to create emotional movement in a similar way to how the physical space of the bookstore creates an emotional connection.
References:
Murch, W. 2005. In the Blink of an Eye: A perspective on film editing, 2ndedn, Silman-James
Press: Los Angeles.
Pearlman, K. 2009. Cutting Rhythms: Intuitive film editing, 2ndedn, Focal press:
Massachusetts.
Documentary Forms
drawn from 'Introduction to Documentary' by Bill Nichols
Poetic documentary was one of the first forms of documentary filmmaking. Nichols (2017, p.116) writes that poetic documentary “sacrifices the conventions of continuity editing” to engage with film form rather than characters, narrative, and actions. Poetic documentary strives to create feelings and sensations rather than tell a story or reveal facts.
Expository documentary is what a general audience member would first consider when discussing documentary. It uses direct narration and storytelling to “propose a perspective, or advance an argument” (Nichols, 2017, p.121). This type of documentary relies on information and education, Nichols (2017,p.122) even suggests that the “images serve a supporting role”, to guide our understanding of the information rather than create it.
The reflexive mode of documentary is an interesting style that comments more on the creation of the film than merely its subject. Reflexive documentaries allow the audience to not just understand the subject, but to understand how it has been represented by the filmmaker. These films allow us to “see documentary for what it is: a construct or representation” Nichols, 2017, p.125).
Observational documentaries draw the attention away from the filmmaker, allowing the world of the film to sit and breathe with no change or interruption. Observational documentary films should let us, “look in on life as it is lived” (Nichols, 2017, p.133). Control of staging and composition is ceded as the filmmaker gathers “raw materials, and then fashions a meditation, perspective, or proposal from them” (Nichols, 2017, p.132) in the editing room.
Participatory documentary is when the filmmaker directly interacts with the subject on camera. The film becomes about the relationship between subject and filmmaker which reveals information about the themes. Nichols (2017, p.138) defines this as a change from, “’I speak about them to you’… to ‘I speak with them for you”. The filmmaker becomes another social actor in the film world.
Performative documentary takes the idea of participation in the world to the next level. Performative films “give added emphasis to the subjective qualities of experience and memory” (Nichols, 2017, p.150) and allow the audience to understand the world on a more emotional level rather than intellectually.
References:
Nichols, B. 2017. Introduction to Documentary, 3rd Edn, Indiana University Press: Indiana.