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EDITING REALITY Objective: To provide technical editing skills. … To introduce idea of editing sounds to create a programme. … To introduce how reality is edited into existence by the media.
While the training of editing skills requires the transfer of technical skills, (and these will be dealt with during this Session, and afterwards,) it also presents an ideal opportunity to point out how messages are constructed through the selective ordering of images and sounds. The Session dealing with 'Media Functionalism' looked at this aspect of the media. You can usefully ask again: … 'If we haven't had first hand experience with some person, place, thing or event, and yet we feel that we know something about it based on media information, then has the media constructed a form of reality for us'? Or rather, some person or persons in the media have decided to construct a story about these thing and events and tell us about them in a certain way. As the trainees begin to consider editing sounds to create a programme, they will be in the right frame of mind to consider how a 'reality' is edited into existence through media productions. Media training is not neutral, it is a political activity. As you encourage participants to learn how to 'structure the world' through the experience of research, (A process of inclusion and exclusion) and through gaining the skills of interviewing, recording and editing, you are showing them how to select certain events and present them to their community as reality. Once you start showing people how to construct a programme for broadcast, you are showing them how to structure reality. You are showing them how to arrange the world of ideas. Shaping and interpreting reality involves exercising power, it is a political activity. Conversely, deciding to restrict an editing session exclusively to technical editing issues, is also a political position. A 'don't rock the boat' decision. You can't really escape this dilemma. Make sure to introduce them to the 'intrusiveness of the microphone before sending them out to conduct interviews.
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