The Editor’s Guide to Creating Powerful Documentaries

Real stories, real people, and real life. Documentaries are the cheapest form of long-form filmmaking. Don’t fall for the hype about needing tons of money. We can shoot a fascinating feature-length documentary that gets millions of views on YouTube for under a £1000. All we need are compelling characters, a dramatic story arc, and great access.
The democratisation of filmmaking equipment has empowered millions of filmmakers worldwide to create visually stunning documentaries. With small, high-resolution cameras and affordable shooting kits, technical limitations are no longer an excuse for crafting beautiful-looking films.
But there’s always been one massive problem: how do we edit it?
Editing: Where the Film is Made
No matter what anyone tells you, editing is where the film is made. It’s where the drama is created and an exciting structure with peaks and valleys is built. A bad editor can take a fantastically shot documentary with dozens of great scenes, compelling characters, and edge-of-your-seat action, and turn it into something boring and dull.
An amazingly talented editor, on the other hand, can take a bad set of raw footage and not only make it watchable but actually save the day. High-end editing skills are what make the film watchable by millions of people. Otherwise, all we have is just a collection of beautifully filmed shots in a story structure that doesn’t work.
If you’ve shot a documentary, are struggling with an edit right now, or want to infuse high-end visual storytelling techniques into your YouTube docs or corporate films, read on...
I don’t know where you’re at on your journey, so I’ll start at the beginning.
Essential Editing Questions for Crafting a Documentary
Much of editing is a succession of questions you ask yourself and your client. The more questions you ask, the clearer the film becomes in your mind. Let’s start with the questions I ask the director about every new film I start working on.
1. What Kind of Documentary is It?
- An observational documentary following a character over the course of an event?
- A historical or political documentary telling the story of a specific period or event?
Of course, it could be anything, but once we know the answers to these basic questions, a picture will start to take shape in our mind of what kind of film this is.
2. What’s the Rough Arc of the Story?
- What happens in the film? What’s the story?
- Who are the main characters, and what do they experience?
- Can you explain the rough series of events that take us from start to finish?
The key is to get to know the order of events as quickly as possible. The sooner we have that story in our head, the sooner we can start experimenting with structure and giving feedback about potential ways to edit or spotting holes within the narrative logic.
3. What Documentary is This Similar To?
A favourite trick I always use is to ask the client about a film this might be similar to. Directors love it when you ask for references, as they may even have taken inspiration from some of their favourite films when writing or shooting it. This can give us clues into things like:
- How it was shot.
- Potential cutting styles.
- Music choices.
- Pacing and rhythm.
At this stage, the film is becoming clearer and clearer. Next, we’ll move from macro to micro and map out a first draft of the structure as the client sees it at this early stage. For this, I love the bullet-point exercise.
Using the Bullet Point Method to Structure Your Documentary
Sit down with your director, producer, or client and get them to guide you through the story in much more detail. Of course, this structure may change once we get deep into the edit, but it gets us up to speed as quickly as possible.
As I’m listening, I take it all in and write out the story in bullet points. Here are some subjects and questions I ask to create my bullet points:
- Tell me the course of events in detail.
- Tell me all of the characters or interview subjects.
- Tell me as much detail about the characters as possible: age, gender, relationship to the story, etc.
- Tell me about any separate narrative streams.
- If relevant to the type of film we’re making, tell me about any character arcs.
With all these quick-fire questions to the director, and us writing down the answers, the film should now be roughly taking shape in our mind. The initial stages of the editing process are a lot like a very slow pull-focus shot, where things gradually become clearer the more we know.
At this point, we’re ready to start cutting, and for many of us, it can be overwhelming. So, I’m going to share four key concepts to keep in mind when starting to edit. If you follow these, they’ll help guide many of your editing decisions. They are:
- Structure
- Jump-Off Points
- Revelations
- Tonality
What do all of these mean? Let’s go through them
Four Editing Techniques to Create a Powerful Documentary
1. Mastering Structure: Building the Backbone of Your Documentary Film
Structure is everything in storytelling. We need to take the notes we made when asking our client all those questions and start looking at how they fit into some kind of structure.
A great editor will create a highly structured order of the progressive events by breaking the film into individual scenes. A great way to do this is by putting them all on post-it notes and sticking them to your edit suite wall. You can then start practicing creating the structure by moving them around to test the narrative logic.
Some films will have a very linear structure in their storytelling that will be obvious. Maybe we’re following a character over the course of a specific event. Others, for example, a biographical doc, may break down the story into two streams:
- The personal history of the character told through interviews.
- The larger events they are famous for.
These streams are then intercut.
Once we start experimenting with this, we’re beginning to get the outline of a film. Of course, we need to go in and start cutting all the individual scenes together, but now we have an increasingly clear vision of how this film is looking.
Now, we want to start thinking in more detail. Individual scenes can be compelling, but how do we weave them together into a story so that the audience stays invested? There are many creative techniques, but a major one at this early stage is what I call Jump-Off Points.
2. Jump-Off Points: Hooking the Audience in Documentary Storytelling
Jump-off points are the narrative springboards that take us out of one scene and into another while keeping the audience’s interest high. They’re also the logic we use to structure these scenes within the timeline.
Ask yourself:
- What happens within the scene?
- What happens at the end?
- Is there jeopardy, resolution, or an unfinished question at the end?
- How well does that ending relate to the beginning of the incoming scene?
These are the pillars of logic we must establish across the whole timeline. We need to test the logic, drama, jeopardy, resolution, and screenwriting from one scene to the next to make sure it’s compelling.
Ask yourself these questions and design this narrative glue as you piece scenes together, and you’re well on your way to a high-quality rough cut.
But there’s another great narrative tool to consider.
3. Key Revelations: Building Narrative Drama and Audience Engagement
A key question I ask my students when talking about the structure of any scene is:
What are the most important pieces of information that a character reveals, or that are within the narrative, and when should we reveal them?
Much of great long-form editing is about identifying these moments and designing where and when they get revealed to the audience. Narrative or character-based revelations are like marble pillars—they are the foundation of any film. They must be placed specifically on the timeline for maximum dramatic effect. Here’s how:
- Write out a list of all the most important facts, events, and moments of revelation.
- Look at your timeline in terms of duration. Are you working on a 30-, 60-, 90-, or 120-minute documentary?
- Experiment with where you’d place these moments of revelation on the timeline.
Revelation is progressive in the minds of the audience. Put yourself in their place and remind yourself constantly of what they know up to each point.
4. Crafting the Emotional Tone of Your Documentary
Finally, let’s talk about tone or the tonality of the film.
I often get asked “what do you mean when you say creating the tone?”
The tone is the emotional feeling of each scene as well as the overall film. Events and revelations play a significant role in keeping the excitement alive in a well-structured film, but tone is the specific stylisation of the elements that reinforce the meaning of the film. What does that look like?
Maybe we’ve got a slower and sad scene where a character is telling us a difficult event or memory from their past. If that’s the case, I may create the emotional tone by cutting the scene at a slower and more introspective pace. I may also use slow music that will be in a minor key to create a negative atmosphere. I probably won’t allow fast camerawork etc…
I’m building up an emotional tonality to the scene by choosing a destination first and a cutting style that emphasises how I want the audience to feel.
Of course, the opposite maybe true. We may have an exciting or funny or energetic scene just before a big event or a race towards a stressful conclusion. To create this kind of tone I may choose faster music, in a major key. I might put in quicker camerawork, cut faster, include crash zooms etc…
Tone amplifies the emotions of each moment and creates a consistent mood throughout the film.
Bringing It All Together: Your Role as the Editor
Editing a documentary is an amazing but cognitively demanding process from a creative and intellectual point of view. It requires us to be aware of every single thing the audience experiences across the rollercoaster of their viewing experience.
It’s our job to design that for maximum effect, no one else’s. So think deeply on these four every time you start working on a new doc.
- Structure
- Jump Off Points
- Revelations
- Tonality
If we constantly keep these four pillars of documentary logic in our mind we have all the tools necessary to construct a beautiful and compelling film. Every film we work on will have a unique structure, jump off points, revelations and tonality but they all have them. And it’s up to us, as professional editors, to find out what type should be used to make this individual film.
Therein lies the game...
I wish you the best of luck with your edit.
Stay cool, stay safe, and stay cutting.
Paddy