SABRINA'S LAW (1 hour; documentary)
Sabrina’s Law Productions, Winnipeg, MB. This one hour documentary is about a young, energetic and ambitious girl named Sabrina Shannon whose tragic death from anaphylactic shock inspired a law to protect other children. Sabrina’s mother, Sara, promised her daughter that she would help make a difference and does so by sharing Sabrina’s story with the rest of the world.
At the start of 2007 I was basically given a box of tapes (approximately 40-50 hours) of footage shot in 2006 - a lot of interviews and b-roll. I remember it taking me two weeks to digitize everything and I watched it all but by the time I got it all captured I forgot some of the early stuff. I probably spent one more week getting familiar with the footage then I would just start picking random scenes and cutting them together. I had some interviews transcribed and some I transcribed myself then others I would just listen and pull clips.
A process that huge I just find it's easiest to jump right in and figure it out as you go. After a while I had a whole bunch of scenes that I used the same "post-it note on the wall" technique to figure out how they would all go together.
That was the first documentary I worked on that I used that process so it was cool and weird at the same time. It's definitely a more intense way to edit and you tend to lose touch with reality quite often! I have edited docs from scratch with no script and some with a complete script and I definitely prefer to edit from nothing.
I am using the same process for 'Call To Arms' but since I shot everything I already had a good idea of all my footage.
Here are a couple pictures I took with my cell phone when I was digitizing for Sabrina's Law:
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