Plan of Action

For the documentary me, Ravyn, and Abir are making about the importance of including unskilled attendant care in medical insurance, my primary role is editor, because I am fairly good at and enjoy video editing. Therefore, in order to create the rough cut of our documentary, I am in charge of cutting up the footage we have, listing the shots, and arranging them (with assistance from my group members), along with spaces for quotes and B-roll. This is, I think, my favorite part of editing: when I actually get to do stuff. Despite my fondness for writing, I dislike writing scripts, particularly when I feel like I don't have all the parts organized: we've done lots of research and two really good interviews, and we know what we're trying to say, but somehow the parts don't seem to link together quite yet. Abir's found a lot of good pictures and music, and he and Ravyn have come up with the beginnings of a script, but I really think it'll all start falling together once we have a rough cut. The rough cut and the script are going to be formulated together, which I think will help us visualize the final product a lot better: I'm always reluctant to write scripts prior to putting together footage, since it's likely to change drastically as we accomodate the clips and pictures, and figure out the arc of the documentary. Those are our basic goals for the next week, but to put it plainer:

(I don't remember the exact dates on the handout, so this is subject to change, but):

Monday, Jan. 28: list all shots, B-roll, and pieces of information to include, and organize by order to begin establishing a narrative line.

Wednesday, Jan. 30: begin putting shots, B-roll, and text slides with research (to be replaced by voiceover, etc. in the final video) in order in Final Cut, so we can see what it'll look like, and arrange accordingly.

Friday, Feb. 1: finalize rough cut of documentary. I'm not sure exactly what that'll look like, but it'll entail finalizing the narrative line and finishing the script, as well as polishing clips, B-roll, etc. to make sure it all basically hangs together.