Prague Stories

Break Time

Editing

Suggestions. Suggestions. Suggestions. Dangerous if you do not know how to take them. During our class rough-cut critique on Thursday, I received many suggestions about how I can make my documentary better, what was not working and what would work in its place. I don’t want my documentary to suck, so I felt that I should do every suggestion that I was given. But some suggestions were not my style and I wondered, how can integrate their suggestions into my documentary, if they do not fit into my artistic vision? I felt that if I used every suggestion, then my documentary would no longer be MY documentary and would never be a documentary that I could be proud of editing. I pondered all day Friday and woke up on Saturday to a conclusion. All those comments were simply suggestions. I do not need to incorporate them into my documentary if they don’t work for me and some didn’t. On Saturday, I edited my short documentary according to my artistic desires and with some helpful “suggestions” and I felt fulfilled.
In my efforts to make a great documentary, I lost purpose. I became enthralled with suggestions that I felt obligated to do. Sometimes it is hard to know when to take a suggestion and when to leave it. It is a fine line between your work being communicated well to an audience and not being communicated at all. And in time, I think I will get better at communicating my vision through editing. But for now, even though, I am by no means done with my documentary (it is still a revising project) I was able to find a healthy balance for suggestions, incorporation and my own work.