Development Cooperation Handbook/The video resources linked to this handbook/The Documentary Story/Finalizing the editing script of the documentary

Finalizing the editing script of the documentary

Once that the video resources had been organized in development stories, list of main testimonials and issues and that these had been linked to the manual chapters, we could finally reorganize the editing script. In fact we decided to follow two different lines.

The main editorial line has been moving along a ⇒ thematic subdivision in 10 episodes: an episode for each of the 8 MDGs plus 2 episodes for the new goals we want to propose at the UN conference of 2015. For each episode, besides the "stories" pertaining to the specific theme, we included one of the 10 issues  that are being debated amongst the main testimonial. This in order to create a dynamic interaction between the specific projects, that are implemented "at the grass routes level", and the general debate, taking place in the international institutions and global media. Since the issues are also linked to specific manual pages, we thought that the speaker voice of the documentary could read some portions of those pages and reveal, in the documentary itself, the connection between the TV product and the internet based manual.

The second editorial line instead proceeds as ⇒ the story of our project has been unfolding and as the project challenges have been faced by the team. This in order to generate a suspense in the viewers (will they succeed to achieve the project objectives?) and give to the documentary a film-like plot and structure. We always thought that we need to include "our own story" in the documentary to avoid the risk of pedanticism with the ten thick thematic episodes; and to generate the sense of participation to the ongoing process in the viwers who can interact with the team with Internet, where the project status is constaly updated. But the decision to use our story as the main narrative structure had been proposed by Shachindra, our main editor, in order to clearly differentiate our approach from the one broadcast by the Italian Television.

Naturally the two lines will finally somehow incorporate each other. If we finalize the 10 thematic episodes structure, we will include there portions of "our story" that will integrate the thematic stories and the issues. On the other side, if we chose the evolution of our story as the narration pattern, we will include what we have seen and what we have collected and so we will include stories and issues.

In either of the two narration patterns we move interactively (with flash-forwards and flash-backs) between what we call the "front-stage scenes" that narrate stories of development cooperation and the "backstage scenes", i.e. the real-time recording of the documentary team doing its job and images of dialogues among team members expressing their approaches. The "front-stage scenes" narrate what the team has seen. The backstage scenes reveal the "interpretations" and the work done for integrating diverse viewpoints. Moving from the front stage to the backstage allows us to avoid the pretentiousness of "objectivity"; and since the team members belong to different cultural set ups, their dialogue allows the confrontation of different cultural viewpoints and so the viewers from different parts of the world will find that they are not only the "observed ones" but also "the observers". No God's voice then, no ethnocentrism, but the effort to comprehend the others and cooperate with them.

Next ⇒ The challenge of distribution



⇒ Backstage scenes

See in the handbook
⇒ The Vrinda project Documentary

/Documentary Story