Editing five months of shoots into an engaging documentary movie

I live outside of Portsmouth, so I guess you could say that I have… a different perspective… of Portsmouth. Poetic. 

As Assistant Editor to Mike, I witnessed the documentary unfold in a similar way to how a viewer like yourself might; not being on the shoots meant my first touchpoint with the film was all the raw footage. All 19 hours of it!

Editing was a bit of a challenge at first. When you’re behind the camera, you often start mentally editing the final cut together in your head, developing a clear vision of how you’ll splice everything together before you’ve even sat down and fired up Premiere Pro.

Cutting footage shot by someone else is a totally different ball game. It’s almost the total opposite: the editing informs the narrative, rather than the narrative informing the editing.

It didn’t take long for me to feel like I had been behind the camera, though! Seeing all the stories from people who quickly and cleverly adapted to the difficult circumstances brought on by COVID-19 was inspiring and eye-opening. I’d never seen a community — a city — come together like Portsmouth did.

People’s attitudes and actions were kind, genuine, and selfless. I couldn’t help but keep smiling to myself — Mike saw, and kept coming over to see which clips I was watching.

My favourite part about helping shape up this feature-length film? Each time the sequences Mike and I were editing separately slotted together perfectly. There are some really neat transitions between ‘chapters’ of the documentary that we didn’t even anticipate ourselves!

Many high-fives marked those moments. I’m sure you’ll notice a few of them when you see ADP. Or maybe you won’t! A smooth, subtle transition is invisible by design, I suppose.

Shoutout to Mike, who’s been an absolute animal on the editing front, and to Sara for all of her support, and to Lauren for holding the operation together. Truly a dream team.

Stream the documentary on YouTube here, or watch via the ADP page right here on the Solent Sky Services site! Hope you enjoy watching it as much as we all loved creating it.