This Documentary

So I've been working on this documentary about the survivors of Typhoon Pablo, shot on December 2012 and January 2013 and for the longest time, I haven't come to terms with it. Documentary is the hardest to make, for sure.

Just like the documentary "All You Need Is Love" that I edited in Dubai and Bangkok last 2012, I was struggling with processing the film's narrative. Having to deal with hundreds of hours' worth of footage, it's not easy if the editor is also the scriptwriter (which is the case of both documentaries). Especially with "All You Need Is Love" where the director had no slightest idea how to go about it, leaving all the editing/writing to me as if I was God.

Editing timeline of "Baranggay Andap".

It is of the same rationale that reality shows have huge teams of producers, scriptwriters and editors to deal with even a segment's story. Documentary should, in a perfect world, never be left in the editor's hands, especially if he is the scriptwriter as well.

I was able to edit a 29-minute worth of rough cut last year. Though I was quite happy with how it turned, I still had 7 more hours of rough cut to trim and polish.  So what I did with "Baranggay Andap" was disconnect from it for a few months and came back for it this November and tried putting all the pieces together. 

And here I am - working on it and 4 more hours left to trim. Still a long way to go but I'm quiet motivated to finish it this month. With the Typhoon Haiyan wrecking havoc in Visayas last year, it could be possible that after more than a year, Typhoon Pablo will be forgotten. A number of filmmakers must've shot their own documentaries in Haiyan-stricken places and I think I need to finish this film before it becomes passé.