My job as a film editor is to construct a dramatic narrative because otherwise it's just a chaotic arrangement of sequences.
Frederick WisemanThis whole business of documentary being a second-class citizen is bullshit. A documentary can be as interesting, as dramatic, as sad, as funny, blah, blah, blah, as a fiction movie. Or it can be as awful as a fiction movie!
Frederick WisemanI'm drawn to making movies about contemporary life. The reason I choose institutions is because they provide a limit, a boundary.
Frederick WisemanDocumentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive.
Frederick WisemanI think I've learned a lot about how to make movies, and particularly about how to edit movies by thinking about how similar problems are resolved in other forms. The issues in all forms are the same in an abstract sense, aren't they? Characterization, abstraction, metaphor, passage of time... Whether it's a movie, a novel, a play, or a poem, those issues exist. And each person resolves them differently.
Frederick Wiseman