Hey, Richard! Firstly, congratulations on the premiere today and thank you for talking with me. As the editor, I was curious as to what your process was when it came to deciding what to cut in RedT’Blue (R2B)?
Honestly, it surprises people when I say that I edit a political documentary but I’m not that into politics. Yet, I feel like this is what helped me be quite cut-throat when it came to losing parts of the documentary because I wasn’t politically attached to any one side or had some sort of hidden agenda to try and push.
Ultimately, I’m quite happy with the end product.
Interesting! You did an excellent job as I was so engrossed I was taken aback when it ended. What made you decide the documentary should be the length that it ultimately ended up being, as opposed to longer to shorter?
So, it was an organic evolution from what was meant to be a shorter piece into this slightly longer piece. The documentary, if anything, could have been even longer which I would not necessarily have minded – giving it more space to breathe.
That being said, the current length means it’s a contained body of work so I think it’s a delicate balance.
This length was determined in part by film festival guidelines and the restrictions for what’s classed as a ‘short film’.
Jay and I spoke about how his creative process as director and writer was affected by COVID-19. As the editor of the documentary, how were you affected behind the scenes by the pandemic?
Generally, restrictions lost me work as an editor simply because less things were filmed to be edited.
Lots of my work went digital as many other industries did, and things like interviews had to be done over Zoom.
R2B wise, we tried to circumvent this issue by trying to get our hands on archive footage from The BBC. The only problem is that this is expensive and this is a set rate regardless of the size of your production, so financially we definitely felt it.
R2B’s Public Release - Coming Soon
On 12 March, RedT’Blue is making a wider release, and we’ve got you covered all things to do with the film at Voice Mag.
You can read our review, and our interview with director Jay Martin and Conservative MP Ben Bradley, but we also have more content coming up soon on Voice.
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