Pre-Production: Inspired Editor

“One of the films chief assets is its gorgeous look, aided immeasurably by Iain Kitching’s lean editing. Slick, muscular, entertaining and emotionally satisfying.” - Hollywood Reporter on My Brother the Devil



An editor who has inspired me a lot is Iain Kitching; a London based editor who has television programmes and documentaries for the past 15 years. He is a member of the Guild of British Film and Television Editors. I thought it was only natural to contact Ian to see where his years of experience have got him and if he has any tips or tricks for our documentary. I asked him what advice he had when it comes to editing and what inspires him when  editing, "what makes your style yours?." Sadly I didn't get a response and assume he was just very busy. However, this didn't stop me from wanting to find out more.

In 2014, he worked on 'Babylon', Executive Produced by Danny Boyle. In 2012 he edited the feature film 'My Brother the Devil' winning numerous awards including Best European Film at Berlinale. His list of accolades could go on. But something that really stood out to me in his editing style was  'Captive' which is his latest project he edited for the Netflix documentary-series. 


He has developed an understanding of many other aspects of the industry through his belief in practical experience. He has learned about the performance by acting in theatre productions. "He even played a zombie in ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and a young Abraham Lincoln in ‘Mystery Files’ which placed him in the most narcissistic situation imaginable - editing himself!" (Iainkitching.com, 2018)




The use of archive such as newspapers have slow zooms or animate in some way to make them more interesting than just a still image. This has even inspired me to include the parallax effect with archive footage. As an editor, I would like to make still images move int he documentary, something that was used in a documentary on Vimeo I analyzed in the first year.






Video Archive is edited in sequence to make the audience visualize what genuinely happened and the scene of events; in this case the riots.

The recreation of footage to associate with the archive is very effective here and is a typical editing style in documentaries.







Overall I really like Iain's work and think it really resonates with a lot of audiences. His work is lucky enough to be complemented with some really well-told stories and well-shot interviews. Whilst his style isn't completely original, he remains one of my favorite documentary editors.



References:

Iainkitching.com. (2018). [online] Available at: http://www.iainkitching.com/documentary.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018].

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