@Realpasta: Disagree. With bits.
Really, your attacking the editing. How exactly would you have liked it to be edited? Maybe you didn't like the font they used either?
Since you asked a question, I'll answer it.
Many of the individual editing choices end up reducing the audience's ability to understand the facts of the situations and feel the emotions of the narrative. Because we cut between locations so rapidly, we need to see an establishing shot of each location to understand where we are. Because of this, we lose valuable time that could be spent providing information and telling the story.
I'd agree with this if it weren't for the fact that, if memory serves, many of the establishing shots feature VOs from the contributors. They establish the new location without interrupting the narrative. And, in truth, the location is a big part of the narrative. I really liked, for instance - and I don't think these shots had VOs - seeing Mangini hailing the taxis, and Roddy (was it Roddy?) at the airport. They're only brief snifters of footage offered, but they help show us the process from the auditionee's perspective, which I find quite exciting and refreshing. A little footage going a long way.
We've had a lot of documentaries set entirely in the studio, and they're all well and good but you don't get a sense of movement. I like the peripatetic form where you see the process unfold in its entirity, rather than just from DT's POV, and that requires establishers.
A major aspect of reality TV is telling the audience about what's happening rather than showing it. In the context of reality TV, this is a good thing. You're trying to take complex events and create a narrative that gives them meaning in a larger context. If we just see the Jersey Shore cast partying in a club, the camerawork isn't sophisticated to let us see the little pieces of body language that really tell us what's going on. We need the confessional cuts to keep us up to date.
But the narrative of this documentary is incredibly simple, and because the situations aren't so chaotic they can be filmed in a way we see their subtleties. Again, the biggest thing I hated was when ANTR started. Just as someone seeing this for the first time, I got mild chills. Instead of playing Mangini talking to tell us what we already know, cut to the other band members and their anticipation to make us feel it more.
I think it's more a matter of trying to squeeze seven drummers into sixty minutes. We already know the band's POV, and if there were new elements then they've got plenty of time to cut them in across the length and breadth of the documentary. Mangini footage, meanwhile, has an eight-minute window. And that has to intercut with footage of the auditions, naturally. There's a section after his audition where they all talk with him, which kind of emphasises the point that they need to know him as a person, get along with him as a human being. The viewer, in theory, already knows Dream Theater. More crucial that they show Mangini footage.
The biggest problem though is aesthetic. Dream Theater is a relatively sophisticated band for a relatively sophisticated audience. Why did whoever was is charge of this creatively feel the need to dumb down the events into a reality TV format? I feel like the image of the band is cheapened a little bit by the narrative construction. When Petrucci is talking about Portnoy leaving, we see three cuts to Rudess of him making dramatic faces. In the actuality of the moment, he was reliving something emotional through Petrucci's story. But simply to us watching it, the way it's cut it implies "LOOK AT JORDAN FEELING EMOTION. NOW LOOK AT IT AGAIN. IT'S DRAMA!" Drama doesn't come from us being told it's dramatic, it comes from being dramatic.
I think, more probably, the reason it's cut like that is conciseness.
Make cuts in a video interview with John Petrucci and he'll appear to leap from corner to corner of the screen. Make cuts in a video interview with John Petrucci while the screen shows footage of something else somewhere else of similar narrative emotion and thrust, and you're square.
If you like it, that's fine. There's no objective reason for you to like or dislike it. But the editing objectively influences the tone and subtext of the narrative quite a bit, and I don't like the result. The nuances are few and far between. And it feels like a lower standard of product than what I'd expect from the band. Obviously since the documentary brings a lot to the table, it's free, and I appreciate its mere existence I'm going to keep watching.
Aye! Absolutely likewise. Well, swivel a few words here and there but I'm not telling anyone to like or dislike it.
Heck, I've got criticisms. I think the use of music was pretty clumsy. The Best of Times was not needed over that shot of Mangini gazing out his window, for instance. A little too maudlin and sentimental, it felt insincere. Plus, there was way too much of it. Of course, megamillions of different footage sources, might've been needed to mask the changes in background noise, but I didn't like it.
So yes. Just offering my two cents, but I think a lot of the editing decisions were not only justifiable, they were justif
ied.
Topic: An Exclusive Look into The Band’s Search for a New Drummer (Read 664686 times)