Alex Gibney is a documentary film director and producer who worked on multiple big projects throughout his career. In this interview, he shows a little bit of the behind the scenes and the thoughts and challenges of making a documentary.
While watching the interview, I realized how important editing is to a documentary. I’m used to thinking about scripted movies, where the film is mostly captured on set. The editing for those is more like putting a puzzle together when you already have the picture on the box. But for documentaries, this is very different. The story and the film itself are created in the editing room. It feels like the story is actually found and built from the ground up.
Gibney says that he often discovered new ideas and thoughts when reviewing footage in the editing room. He also highlights the flexibility of documentary work, explaining that because the teams are small, they can easily go film new material if they discover a party of the story they want to tell is missing in the edit. That kind of flexibility is amazing and seems vital for this kind of work.
According to Gibney, editing plays such a major role because it guides the audience towards the point of view of the author. It’s how they take all that raw footage and shape it into the final message.
This is connected to a major challenge:
dealing with people in the story you disagree with. Gibney talked about balancing the obligation he feels towards his subjects with his primary obligation, which is to the audience. He was clear that he’s not there to make a “commercial” for someone, especially if they aren’t being truthful. A directors job is to find and convey the truth.
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