In this episode, I help director Vicki Lesley revamp her rough cut's slow ending. Now released, The Atom: A Love Affair (2020) is a  witty documentary about the politics of nuclear power. It was the first indie feature for this experienced BBC TV producer.

Analyzing the rough cut, I discovered a powerful, story-driven documentary that loses its dramatic oomph in the final 20 minutes. It suffered from what I call “the deadly denouement”. When a film can’t find a way to wrap up,  viewers get bored. 

To accelerate the ending, we explore 3 techniques that can be applied to any documentary suffering from a tedious conclusion. 

I’m confident we hit on the right solution because to date, the film has received an astonishing 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes! 

For me, our next task was the most exciting: how could we frame this documentary to expand to a wider audience?  How could we appeal to multiple worldviews?

After all, nuclear power has been a divisive issue for decades in the West.

It’s difficult for a single doc to actually change someone’s worldview--though most of us filmmakers try!

When Vicki said, “I got obsessed about different worldviews,” I knew she was on to something. She wanted audiences to listen to another map of meaning--without getting so emotionally reactive that they stopped watching. 

We explore an “integral” approach that speaks to the three major worldviews at play  today: traditional, modern, and post-modern (or "progressive"). 

Toward the end I share my own current “map of meaning":  Integral Theory culls the important values of the 3 worldviews, while critiquing their drawbacks. 

From this meta-perspective, a documentary can invite viewers to understand people who live in different ideological worlds.

EPISODE 2 TAKEAWAYS

• Three techniques to add climactic oomph to a film’s ending
• Expand a film’s audience beyond the choir
• Combine story-driven and essay-driven structures
• The importance of a professional narrator
• Evolve a metaphor or motif throughout the film's arc

QUOTABLES 

“The Atom: A Love Affair takes no sides, and pulls no punches in its witty and admirably objective archival account of the West’s relationship with nuclear power.” 

-        New Scientist

“If a documentary can simultaneously present different worldviews—and point out the beneficial values of each worldview while critiquing its disfunctions--it can do something astonishing: expand beyond its target audience.”

-       Karen Everett, Story Consultant

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Watch Film Trailer

Watch The Film 

Director’s website

New Doc Editing, LLC

Karen Everett IMDb

Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics

PERMISSIONS

Permission to use the content of this podcast is provided by Vicki Lesley, Producer/Director of The Atom: A Love Affair.” 

Music provided by award-winning composers Gunnard Doboze and William Ryan Fritch.

BIO

Karen Everett is one of the world’s leading documentary story consultants. Her business New Doc Editing helps filmmakers structure and edit compelling films. Karen taught editing for 18 years at the #1-ranked U.S. documentary program, at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.