DOCUMENTARIES
"Condition Critical:
The American Healthcare Crisis"
PICTURE EDITOR, SOUND EDITOR (Re-cut),
ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY
This hour-long documentary was made for Australian television, using the American medical system as a model of how not to structure national healthcare.
I was hired after a rough cut was completed by another editor. The film consisted of dramatic testimonials from doctors and patients, describing their horror stories in various American hospitals. The stories were all chilling, but somehow not cinematically enagaging. I decided to shoot reenactments, and also made extensive use of music, sound effects, and stock footage.
For Sequence One, to visually illustrate the story of a man slowly bleeding to deathl, I photographed street scenes in Compton, CA, establishing shots of Martin Luther King hospital, where the man died, and reenactment footage of bandages, dripping blood and hospital clocks. I then intercut these into the existing interview footage of a lawyer recounting the story. I added music and sound effects to heighten the mood.
For Sequence Two, I again tried to visually illustrate the story being told: a search through Los Angeles hospitals for a motorcyclist hit by a car. I first found shots from another part of the documentary, showing crowded hospital waiting rooms, and added them into the narrative. I then filmed additional hospital corridor scenes, including some fairly abstract P.O.V.s. to give the impression of someone searching through the catacombs. Later I found stock footage of a hospital morgue to accompany that part of the story.
The combination of additional shots, music and sound effects helped build a cinematic reenactment of two chilling and tragic stories.
