Documentary Editing Quotes

I don't know if I'd mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.

'Waiting For Guffman' was different right away from 'Spinal Tap,' because we didn't show the interviewer. That person became invisible immediately. That created a different way of tuning it and ultimately editing it.

It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.

Even if it's a "talking head documentary" about a social movement or something along those lines, I've always thought of editing the timing and the sense of the piece for the theatrical experience.

With documentaries, what's beautiful about them is that you capture something unique in a shot, something that will never repeat itself.

My background is sociology. Combined with my graphic approach, if I could do some film projects, I think I'd be very good at making documentaries eventually, but people don't think of me for that, of course. But dialogue is something I know I can be good at.

When I'm filming a documentary, I feel like I should be the straight man, watching with a raised eyebrow.

I did documentary film for a long time, and I spent a lot of time behind the camera, fervently wishing that the reality I was filming would conform to my narrative propriety. But you can't control it.

Documentary films have always been my passion, I have done documentaries.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

But one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made.

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.

So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go.

Even a fiction film is hard to end. You can going on shooting and editing a documentary forever.

I started in documentaries, and that was a great help to me with improvisation, because with documentaries, you're handed a big lump of footage, and you have to shape it and make it into a story - which I love doing.

I started as a documentary maker, and they're my first love.

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

I don't think the subject of a documentary film should be producers on it.

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

I always thought of documentaries as films through which you find your voice as a narrator.

On 'Senna,' it got to the point where there was so much footage that our first editor had the wild suggestion that we only use the archive.

I don't think there's so much difference between making documentaries and feature films. I think it's even harder to make documentaries.