The first frame is a covenant. What follows is where that covenant is either honoured or broken. Documentary editing depends on this early stretch of film, a space where the audience is still deciding whether to give themselves over to the world being built. These minutes carry a peculiar weight, they must orient without over-explaining, intrigue without manipulating, and establish trust without begging for it. The editor is, in this sense, a host arranging the room before the guests arrive, deciding what is seen first, what is withheld, what mood settles into the walls. Get it right and the audience stops watching and starts inhabiting. Get it wrong and no amount of brilliant material that follows will fully recover what was lost in those first, irreplaceable minutes.
