The Role of a Story Backbone in Captivating Documentaries

Welcome to The Radio Edit!

Today we’re looking at The Last Repair Shop, a short documentary that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2024. We also hear from Steve Audette, ACE about his decades-long career as an editor for Frontline.

I hope this issue fuels your week and inspires you onward with your films!

The Last Repair Shop

Every documentary has a backbone, the key story element that provides structure to the rest of the film. A good film will then deepen that backbone by humanizing it with a personal story. Let’s see how The Last Repair Shop does these two things.

The Story Backbone

At first glance, a film about instruments and repair is very topical. Last Repair Shop organizes its story by instrument (first strings, then brass, and so on), and starts each section with the supervisor reading repair notes. He acts as the story guide who smoothly transitions from one instrument to the next.

The language of the film, how it will move through the story, is established when it gets to the second category, Brass. Setting this story language is helpful in keeping the audience engaged because now they know what to expect. If they have history with an instrument, they are now waiting for it to show up.

Humanizing the story

How do you personalize instruments? The Last Repair Shop starts with a child with her instrument. What does she feel about it? What does it mean for her to be able to play? Hearing these stories show the value and emotional weight of the instruments to a specific student, not just in the abstract.

The film then gets to the true heart of the story. Each section is a look into the history of the person doing the repairs. As Dana repairs stringed instruments, he shares his history of coming out in the 70s. Paty’s journey as a repairperson coincides with her immigration from Mexico and the struggle to reach the American dream.

In focusing on the stories of the people doing the repairs, The Last Repair Shop shows the power of documentaries: that every person has a story worth telling.

Tips for your films

1. No matter how topical your film is, look for the personal story.

While information about a topic can influence minds, personal stories change hearts. People care about people, so always look for an individual’s story to be an example of the film’s topic.

2. Find the person who can lead you through the story.

Often you’ll have an interview that is just stellar. They are great on camera, personal, and explain the topic in a clear and concise way. Can they be your documentary’s guide? What would it look like to structure your film around them?

Look for a clear story backbone and a personal story. it will will make your documentary stronger and have more impact.

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Q&A - Steve Audette, ACE

Steve Audette, ACE is an award-winning editor and worked with Frontline for over three decades, in addition to many other documentaries series and films. He now enjoys retired life aboard his sailboat with his wife. He was gracious enough to answer a few questions via email. (Edited slightly for clarity.)

What is your first step when you start working on a new documentary?

For the first day of a film, I will kind of hopscotch around and look at various characters and try to get a sense of their demeanor, their personality their position in the documentary. I’ll do the same with B-Roll, looking for sequences of shots, things I can put together that tell a story just visually and that’ll take a day or so on a big documentary.

I then sit down with the producers and the director to get a sense of what they are looking for from the film, what it is they think the story is. The truth is always in the footage.

How do you find the backbone, or the through line, of a documentary?

Chronology is your best friend when cutting a documentary. My first pass is always to assemble the chronology of the events that make up the story. Once I have that established, I can see how to maximize the drama of that narrative and make the film as compelling as is journalistically possible.

Documentaries can throw curveballs at you at any time. What is an unexpected twist that stands out to you in your career, and how did you respond?

There are two big kinds of curveballs when cutting a documentary. The first is something you think you know about a film that isn’t true and you have to modify your understanding of the film to accommodate the truth that is obviously portrayed in the footage.

The second curve ball that can happen in a documentary is when a scene blows up the film. An example of this is when I was cutting the 2015 Clinton/Trump choice film for Frontline. About 2/3 of the way into the film, there was a scene where Trump is being roasted by Barack Obama at the Washington Press Core Dinner. The scene was so full of meaning and purpose for Trump that it basically blew the film apart and you really didn’t care what came after it.

We solved this problem by moving the Trump scene up to the front of the film and used it as part of a prologue where you could see the motivations of Trump to become president. We could keep the balance of the film and move on to the historical documentary after the prologue.

How do you create an emotional connection with the audience in a documentary?

This is actually pretty easy, the secret is to love your characters. Love both your good characters and your bad characters. Treat them with respect and show them in the best light.

What documentary has impacted or inspired you the most?

Lord, there have been so many. I like films that demonstrate deep access to the subject and the people involved. The Frontline film on Waco, which I did not cut, is a really good example of how having access to all the data, all the media, then sifting through all that, leads to the most compelling of documentary stories.

I also thought the series “The Staircase” by the French director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade was also spectacular. Again because they had such tremendous access to the individuals, the protagonist in the story.

Looking back on your career, how have you seen documentary storytelling change?

YouTube and the use of the jump cuts in interviews… It isn't filmic but I never care. It is its own form. I generally get physically disturbed when I watch bad cutting or storytelling in film, but somehow on YouTube, all is forgiven.

I do very much like the democratization of documentaries, whether that be podcasts or live streams, reels or ticktocks. The truth is always in the footage, not in the presenting medium. I believe this will lead to a burgeoning collection of films that are important and will stand the test of time.

Cutting film is an art that's only 100 years old. We have no idea what this art form can do yet. How good was painting or sculpture at a century? I'm very excited about the future.

To read the full interview with Steve, including his specific techniques for creating emotional connection with the audience, click here.

That’s a wrap!

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Until next issue,

– Jesse

P.S. One of the best ways to raise funding for a documentary is a proof-of-concept scene. Get yours in 5 days.