Al’s new movie
By S Simmons. Filed in Editing, Movies |
There is an interesting article over at studiodaily.com on Al Gore’s new documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Everyone calls it Al’s movie but in truth it was directed by Davis Guggenheim. And no doc is complete without mention of the “2nd director,” actually the editor, Dan Swietlik. Editors are so vital to a documentary’s final form and the story it tells that to talk about a documentary and not mention the editor is doing a diservice to the film. I have not seen the doc yet as it hasn’t arrived in Nashville, even though we all know that Washington Nashville is Al Gore’s home town. (What gives there Al?) The article is a great read as they talk about all the different formats they deal with in making the film. HDCAM, HDV, 16mm film, 35mm film, 8mm film, VHS, DV, stills, 24p, even VHS. That’s a whole lotta formats but that’s nothing unusual in documentary filmmaking. In the current doc that I am editing I even had to use these!
One thing that struck me as interesting was that they used Avid to cut this picture. We all know that Al is now on Apple’s Board of Directors and even uses Final Cut Pro himself, so I would have thought that maybe he insist that the film be cut on Final Cut. Truth be told, while Al and his global warming lecture is the star, it should be the filmmakers who choose what they use to make the film. I’m just proud that were able to shoot some actual film when making the pic. I can’t wait to see how all the mixed formats came together. So Mr. Gore, if you are reading this, please bring your picture to Nashville… we know you’ve already had a private screening here for yourself and Harold Ford Jr. … so let the rest of us see it too.