Remote Documentary Editing: My Proven Formula to Overcome the Pandemic

Remote documentary editing during the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed how many creatives work, including me. Covid-19 has deeply changed our lives and affected many parts of our daily routine, especially how we work. Moreover, I often collaborate with clients abroad (you can check out my work at www.michelangelotorres.net). For years, I have been accustomed to smart or remote working. Therefore, I adapted my workflow to this method, even though it remains less common in Italy.

Editing an entire documentary remotely during a global crisis was an entirely new challenge. Just recently, I completed both the editing and grading of ‘The Spirit of Camden,’ a twenty-eight-minute documentary. What proved most demanding were the length and the large amount of footage.

THE PROJECT: THE SPIRIT OF CAMDEN DOCUMENTARY

The Spirit of Camden is the first episode of How Does It Sound?, a documentary series produced by the London agency Seven/Eight Studio. The series explores cities through music, grassroots venues, and the personal stories of musicians. For more details, you can visit the project’s official website.

The documentary official poster designed by Carlo Polisano

ORGANIZING FOOTAGE FOR REMOTE DOCUMENTARY EDITING

Guided by director Carlo Polisano, Benjamin Legget (DoP), Andrea Pasqua (first AD), Virginia Malavasi (filmmaker), and Holly Xue (filmmaker) shot the documentary using various cameras: Canon C100, Canon 6D, and Panasonic GH5. In addition to interviews and b-roll, footage was captured during a concert held at the Spiritual Bar in London, featuring the musicians involved in the project.

They filmed interviews, b-roll, and a live concert at the Spiritual Bar in London. The musicians involved performed there.

I edited the documentary using Final Cut Pro X. Keyword collections were essential to organizing the footage.

I created subgroups based on the six main artists. Each subgroup was further divided by situation: interview, live performance, or post-interview music. For example, ‘Amy & The Calamities Live Performance’ includes clips from the live event. ‘Amy Interview’ contains her interview footage. ‘Amy Music’ groups clips of her playing music after the interview. I repeated this for each musician.

Another subgroup was named ‘Event B-Roll’. It contains off-stage clips, audience shots, location footage, and performances from the open mic night.

Additionally, I used general keyword collections such as ‘b-roll wide’, ‘b-roll medium’, and ‘graphics’. These helped me find suitable clips quickly for different documentary moments.

THE EDITING

The documentary consists of four chapters plus an intro. I edited it following director Carlo Polisano’s script.

I organized the timeline with primary and secondary storylines. The primary timeline contains the intro and interviews. Secondary storylines hold b-roll, music performances, and soundtrack. I used roles to keep the project visually organized.

Besides the main documentary project, I created separate projects for interviews, teasers, and trailers.

The documentary is structured in four chapters plus an intro and therefore I adapted the editing to the script of director Carlo Polisano, while as regards the storylines, in the primary I inserted intro and interviews, while in the secondary I inserted respectively ‘b-roll’ , ‘music’ (performances by musicians) and ‘soundtrack’, helping me in this with the ‘roles’ which, also visually, helped me to keep the main ‘project’, the one in which I edited the actual documentary, in order.
In addition to the ‘project’ containing the edited documentary, I have created others for the individual interviews, the teasers, and the trailer.

REMOTE COLOR GRADING DURING THE PANDEMIC

Initially, the color grading was planned to be done in DaVinci Resolve. However, due to the improvements Apple made in Final Cut’s color tools, I decided to continue working with the same software used for editing, relying on FilmConvert to add the finishing touch of film grain.

As for the film look, I was inspired by the Fuji 3513 film, reducing the contrast and modifying the intensity and saturation of the yellows, reds, and oranges, while I gave a slight emphasis to the blue and celestial shades. For the black and white photos in the documentary, I used the Final Cut preset instead.

REVISIONS

As mentioned, I did the post-production of the documentary during the pandemic linked to Covid-19, furthermore the director Carlo Polisano lives in London while I live in Turin (Italy) so it was necessary to use an online platform such as Frame.io for revisions and editing notes, which I do very often as almost all of my works are commissioned from abroad.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Personally, this work, in addition to being creatively stimulating, has helped me to keep my mind busy in a complicated period such as that linked to Covid-19; furthermore, Final Cut proved to be an excellent workmate (both for editing and for color) and in particular, it was fundamental when it came to organizing the several hours of shooting.

As for ‘The Spirit of Camden’, the idea is to propose it around festivals, waiting for the new episode of ‘How Does It Sound’.