Assignment: Editing Historical Documentary – An exercise from SPIRITS OF REBELLION on the Watts Uprising of 1965
A (re-) editing exercise using footage, archival photos, transcripts, and interviews from the documentary Spirits of Rebellion: Black Independent Cinema from Los Angeles, produced by Zeinabu Davis (UCSD) and D. Andy Rice (Miami University)
The folder linked below contains compressed raw footage selects used to make an historical documentary about black filmmakers from Los Angeles for an exercise in editing with interview, transcript, photographs, and archival news clips. It also includes Adobe Premiere CS 6 project files with sequences illustrating steps along the way to finishing the scene.
The original scene is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tjXDUrkHVpFRJTSHN2axv5aIECtsuI9s/view?usp=sharing
In the two interview clips, Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and Africana Studies Ed Guerrero recounts his experience of living through the uprising in black Los Angeles in 1965, a.k.a. the Watts Riots. In a 3 hour class session, students may be asked to replicate the master sequence (which develops technical facility with the editing software) or create a 1 minute sequence of their own. They might work individually, collaboratively, or in parallel fashion on their own computers but with partners. Students working with these materials should learn how to use a transcript, animate still images with keyframes, reinterpret archival footage, insert lower thirds, integrate music, and adjust interview sound levels (the level of one interview clip has been intentionally lowered so students must learn how to remap audio gain, and the second clip, in stereo, must be converted to two mono tracks to delete the backup mic). Ideally, a technically-skilled instructor would demonstrate these techniques at appropriate moments as students moved forward in (re)making the sequence. And then students should also have a chance to reflect on the racial politics embedded in this history and the representation of it within this historical documentary.
While the learning objectives afforded by this exercise could apply to many kinds of interview-based documentary forms, the content leads students to think through a watershed event in the history of black life in the United States, the uprising in protest of police violence, lack of infrastructure in predominantly black communities, redlining, and decaying public schools in Los Angeles in 1965, from the perspective of a black observer who went on to become a leading historian of the representation of blackness in American cinema.
This assignment “emphasizes active and experiential learning” by asking students to edit a scene from sources in tension with one another. Students must contend with the complexities of using archival news footage to illustrate this scene, given that the implicit bias of the white newscaster reading the interpretive text in 1965 is at odds with Guerrero’s sympathetic firsthand account. Working with this material also offers an opportunity for students to reflect on the power dynamics entailed in using words like “uprising” and “rebellion” instead of “riot” in interpreting such an event. In addition, the composer of the music drew from blues traditions to create the mood for the scene. Adding the music with proper rubber-banding of sound levels transforms its texture and transforms the significance of the burning buildings in Watts.
In short, making, screening and discussing the scene collectively at each stage along the way to completion (highlighting a transcript, creating selects, adding images and archival footage, optimizing interview sound, and then incorporating music) offers a range of opportune moments for conversations with students about relations among language, aesthetics, race, archives, and music in the formation of cinematic meaning and its social power. Finally, there is a feature film about the group of filmmakers from which this scene comes that might be used in another class session to provide broader context to the significance of this story for radical and experimental black arts and film movements of the late 1960s to the early 1990s. There is also a body of films made by this group of filmmakers that are accessible for free to university libraries and other non-profit institutions.
Access all assets here (for educational use only):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pr8x-71NjmQN5MmG-Pt69RrmPMJZSRYa?usp=sharing
The complete Spirits of Rebellion film is available at Cinema Guild: http://store.cinemaguild.com/nontheatrical/product/2569.html
More films and resources for the LA Rebellion here: https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/la-rebellion/book-dvd
All footage and rights for use comes from Spirits of Rebellion: Black Independent Cinema from Los Angeles, produced by Zeinabu Davis and D. Andy Rice.
Ed Guerrero granted permission for use of the interview excerpts in this exercise.
If you have additional questions about the LA Rebellion film movement or the editing exercise, feel free to contact Zeinabu irene Davis at zeinabudavis@gmail.com or D. Andy Rice at riceda@miamioh.edu
Keywords: african-american, documentary, editing, interview, race
