Documentary First

“People are going to watch your movie for such an infinitesimally small percentage of their life. What they’re going to do is remember it.”That insight from Emmy-winning editor Charles Olivier—who’s cut The Jinx, The Redeem Team, and George Clooney’s Surviving Ohio State—stopped Christian Taylor cold. It cuts right to the heart of documentary filmmaking: your audience will forget most of your film. The question is whether you’ve given them something worth remembering.In this episode of Documentary First: The Deep Dive, Christian explores the neuroscience behind “sticky” storytelling—why emotional moments lodge in memory while everything else fades—and shares how she accidentally discovered this principle while making The Girl Who Wore Freedom.What You’ll Explore:The Memory Paradox: Why viewers forget 90% of your film—and why that’s okayBrain Synchronization: How emotional moments literally sync your audience’s neural patternsThe Gist vs. Detail Trade-Off: What neuroscience says about what sticks and what fade