The first tell to me is that, in the preview, the first cut comes :15 in, the first 30 seconds of the video has only 3 shots. That's unbelievably low. One of the most basic, old-school editing techniques is the video insert. Start on the graphic with the audio trailing under, and get cutting. Move it along. There's no "sizzle" to this, nothing that could draw the viewer in, attention spans are incredibly short. If you want people to get interested in this, there has to be a hook. There's no question posed, there's nothing mysterious presented, as far as I can tell, this is just a collection of found footage. There's no dilemma, what are you building to here? If I wasn't familiar with the source material, I'd have no idea.
I think that this piece is going to be way too long. 67 minutes is a very long time to carry, especially considering you're using mostly found footage and probably graphics to depict the "sagas." It's hard to see that from the inside, but I can't imagine a requirement of a high-school course is that your final project must approach feature length. Cut that shit down, start now. First, I would absolutely kill outright the interview with the sped teacher. I don't think any education professional who is paid to care about kids would want their name anywhere near this thing, at the very least, you owe it to him to give him a first look and the right to deny his appearance in this, due to the subject matter. Kill it. I can't imagine a 20 minute talk with that guy would be very interesting or insightful, I can just see it being trouble, right out of the gate.
What's your approach here? Let's think about who the contemporary, popular documentarians are. Three that immediately come to mind for me are Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock and Louis Theroux. Why are these guys popular? Because they have personality. You want to find Roger with Moore, you take a critical view of Spurlock's viewpoints, and Theroux has balls of steel around very dangerous people. These are personality driven -- you watch because you enjoy the slanted, opinionated and personal views of these filmmakers. It's compelling, funny, outrageous, sad, and very very deliberate. Look at what Simon Ostrovsky and Shane Smith do with Vice, they are your guides.
The longest piece I ever cut, my senior documentary in college, weighed in at 11:30, cut down from over 14. It was still criticized as moving too slowly, and I'm sure I'd agree if I could find a VHS player to watch it again. We had tapes upon tapes of original urban exploration footage, beautiful stuff that we had to leave behind because it just didn't fit the time constraints. If you want to be a guide through the world of Chris-Chan, insert yourself into it. Shoot some stand-ups in front of a green screen, pose questions, lead the audience, think out loud, and for fuck's sake, MOVE IT ALONG. I know you're a student, but get ready for it, because losing an audience can be a terrible experience. These are my suggestions as someone who does this shit for a living. There will be times where you put a lot of care and time into cutting something, show your executive producer, he/she says "I don't like it" and walks out of the room. What do you do then?
CUT, CUT, CUT, CUT. Get out that hatchet and bring that runtime down significantly, keep it moving.
