Since 2013 I’ve had the pleasure of tutoring filmmakers at the pitching stage of their projects. Looking at rough trailers and raw material, I and my colleagues from EDN have helped new and experienced documentarists to hone their material and ideas into effective pitches, and select the stuff that best serves their purposes right now.

Do you use the trailer to answer questions, or ask them? Who is your protagonist and how do you present them? Do you use footage that sets up the journey, or shows it in all its glory?

The answers vary as wildly as the projects, and the people producing them. In places like Brussels, Helsingborg, Stockholm, Seoul, Riga, and Lisbon, and working in festival settings and independent of them, one thing’s for certain, helping creators along their roads is at least as rewarding as doing the editing myself.