While showing the film to some friends a few days ago, I realized that the most compelling content in the film — and my primary motivation for the film in the first place — is the interviews with the people on the street during the protest.
Furthermore, it’s perhaps jaunting to cut between the protests and the “expert interviews”. It really detracts from the Cinéma vérité tempo and ambiance of the material from the street.
So I’ve put together a new cut of the film. I kept the first scene, with the bike riders getting arrested, and simply removed all of the non-street interviews and left the rest of the film as it is. So this is very rough around the edges, jumps around a bit topically, and has some awkward cuts.
However, this cut serves its purpose — to illuminate how the film changes when we stay on the street the entire time. I like it a lot. Of course, I miss the expert interviews, but I don’t yet know how much of that is because I think they were saying things relevant to the topic, and how much is because I’ve seen the film 500 times and got used to them being there.
Moving forward, there is a some more street interview footage that I can dig up that I was previously wishing I could include in the film, so I’m looking forward to including that. I think the film will then end up being about 30 minutes.
I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on how the two cuts compare. What do you like and dislike about version 2, compared to version 1?