Documentary Editing offers clear and detailed strategies for tackling every stage of the documentary editing process, from organizing raw footage and building select reels to fine cutting and final export. Written by a Sundance award- winning documentary editor with a dozen features to his credit and containing examples from over 100 films, this book presents a step-by-step guide for how to turn seemingly shapeless footage into focused scenes, and how to craft a structure for a documentary of any length. The book contains insights and examples from seven of America’s top documentary editors, including Geoffrey Richman (The Cove, Sicko), Kate Amend (The Keepers, Into the Arms of Strangers), and Mary Lampson (Harlan County U.S.A.), and a companion website contains easy-to-follow video tutorials. Written for both practitioners and enthusiasts, Documentary Editing offers unique and invaluable insights into the documentary editing process.

Outlines each step in creating documentaries, from conception to final film, and offers advice on capturing human behavior and recreating past events, with advice on how to get started in the field, a section on researching and developing a project, and current resources.

This volume is aimed both at more experienced editors, who may wish to skip over the advice offered in the introduction, as well as at those who are new to the craft and want to know how to begin work on publishing historical documents of interest to them.

The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing sets out the techniques, the systems and the craft required to edit compelling professional documentary television and film. Working stage by stage through the postproduction process, author Sam Billinge explores project organization, assembling rushes, sequence editing, story structure, music and sound design, and the defining relationship between editor and director. Written by a working documentary editor with over a decade’s worth of experience cutting films for major British and international broadcasters, The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing offers a unique introduction to the craft of documentary editing, and provides working and aspiring editors with the tools to master their craft in the innovative and fast-paced world of contemporary nonfiction television and film.

The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing sets out the techniques, the systems and the craft required to edit compelling professional documentary television and film. Working stage by stage through the postproduction process, author Sam Billinge explores project organization, assembling rushes, sequence editing, story structure, music and sound design, and the defining relationship between editor and director. Written by a working documentary editor with over a decade’s worth of experience cutting films for major British and international broadcasters, The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing offers a unique introduction to the craft of documentary editing, and provides working and aspiring editors with the tools to master their craft in the innovative and fast-paced world of contemporary nonfiction television and film.