Tabloid

Deb 7 Me 8

I knew nothing about this movie going in and that’s a good thing. That meant the director had to guide me through the experience, and with no expectations, he could provide turns and dead ends and new horizons as he saw fit. This is a pretty straight-forward documentary, mostly talking heads on film. But then the editor got creative and some art director got involved and punched it up with totally cool graphics. Now it’s fun to watch the story unfold.

A word about the editing. I did a video interview with a guy in the 80s who was brilliant in his thinking, but unorganized in his speech. A typical sentence might go like “So we went to the store, it’s on 3^rd and Elm, a big blue building where there was a helicopter crash way back when, and we drove in an old truck so we could carry the keg back and I don’t know who was working there when those kids set the fire.” So in editing I had to stick to the point and eventually ended up with “So we went to the store in an old truck so we could carry the keg.” It looked pretty chopped up on the screen so I did cutaways where I could so it looked cohesive. I wasn’t trying to change what he was saying, just make it on-point. They did a lot of this in the movie, maybe why the graphics guy got to contribute so much, but I felt like the integrity of the story remained in-tact even though the on screen interviews were severely cut up.

Back to the movie, I liked it! It was a crack up, stretched credibility at points, but constantly reassured us that this is the real thing. It was creative, compelling and a real roller coaster of a ride.