‘The First Wave’ Crew on Editing the COVID Documentary: ‘It Was Just Death, Death, Death’
Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorMatthew Heineman’s “The First Wave” takes audiences to the frontlines as New York became America’s epicenter at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.Heineman’s camera follows doctors, nurses and patients in a cinema vérité, as he shows the strength of the human spirit. Behind the scenes, he worked with editors Francisco Bello, Gabriel Rhodes and David Zieff to follow along and start weaving the dailies together.Rhodes says they went through mountains of footage captured by Heineman at Long Island’s Jewish Medical Center in Queens, N.Y., from March to June in 2020.