Witspeak Podcasts
Log in Start a podcast
Natural Light artwork
Natural LightS1 · E20:5497 plays Preview: first 60 seconds

Four Hundred Hours: An Editor on Finding the Film

0:00 / 0:54

Sample the first 60 seconds free. Sign up free or log in to hear the whole episode.

RSS
Show notes

Four hundred hours

Most documentaries are written in the edit. Thandiwe Khoza has cut twelve features, including two that premiered at IDFA, and she walks Lwazi through her process from the first week of watching everything to the moment a structure finally shows itself.

  • The viewing log and why she writes down feelings, not just content
  • Selecting a spine: one character, one question, one place
  • Honest cutting: what you can rearrange and what you cannot
  • Working with a director who has lived with the material for years
  • Craft segment: why lens choice changes how an edit feels

A conversation about finding the film you actually shot, not the one you planned.

Transcript
Welcome back to Natural Light. I am Lwazi Mthembu. Last time we were in a clinic learning to live with the light we were given. This time we go into a dark room in Cape Town where the real writing happens. Thandiwe Khoza is an editor who has cut twelve documentary features, and she has a saying that I think about on every shoot. The film is in there, you just have to stop looking for the one you planned. We talk about the first weeks of a cut, when you watch four hundred hours and write down how each moment feels, and the strange day in month three when a structure appears that nobody designed. And in the craft segment I explain why the lens I choose on set changes what she can do in the edit. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
Open as text

More from Natural Light