The Rough Cut
Aronson was scheduled to show the rough cut to Fanning and Wiley on October 4, 2005. The piece would air on November 8. In the rough cut, Fanning would be looking for narrative coherence. Fanning, says Aronson, is the “king of narration… Every single question he asks is related to ‘What’s the story?’ … It’s all about creating a narrative that hangs together and works.” For his part, Wiley would be looking for “what’s missing here from the viewer’s point of view,” he says.
Is this as clear as it could be?... Is there some entity or person that’s been left out?... Sometimes it’s as simple as the acknowledgment that someone wouldn’t talk to us. It’s very important sometimes to get that in, because the viewer doesn’t know we tried.
Wiley was well aware that the legal story alone was complicated. “What was being conveyed here were some very sophisticated legislative approaches to regulate abortion, and you needed to know how does that work,” he says. In addition to content, he and Fanning would also look at pacing—the rhythm of the narrative. It could be grueling to produce the rough cut. “When you shoot all this material, you can easily get lost and you can have scenes drag on much too long,” says Wiley.
You can have no pacing in terms of changing from this location to that location. All these things have nothing to do with the content… We’re just talking about how are you going to sustain people’s interest for this period of time?
As they pulled together the rough cut for October 4, the documentary production team had plenty to consider. Among the many issues they debated was what to do about the abortion support group. Aronson, Baxt, and Bomse had to decide—should they use the scene at all? If they did use it, which excerpts worked the best? How, if challenged, would they defend their decision to Fanning and Wiley? They sat down to look at the highlights of the abortion support group one more time. As they watched, they tried to keep in mind the various dimensions of the film they wanted to make.