An independent reading of your project

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I work as an independent story editor with documentaries at both ends of the process: with projects still finding their shape in development, and with films in post-production where the edit has stopped moving. My only commitment is to the film in front of me and to the people making it. I have no role in your financing and no institutional stake in the outcome, and everything you show me is treated in confidence. That independence is what allows the work to be candid on both sides: you can bring a project in whatever state it is in, and I can tell you exactly what I see.

I am a documentary director myself, so I know the position you are in from the inside. My own films have won the First Appearance Award and a Special Jury Award at IDFA, a Generation Award at the Berlinale and a Golden Calf, the Dutch national film award, and have been nominated for a Grierson Award. As story editor I worked on House of Hope, which premiered at IDFA in 2025 and went on to win Best International Feature Documentary at Hot Docs in 2026, a film that found its shape in the edit. For more than a decade I have taught documentary directing at the Netherlands Film Academy, and that is probably the part of my background that matters most here. Teaching is where you learn to say a difficult thing about someone's film in a way that opens the work up rather than closing the maker down.

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Development consultation

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An idea can be strong long before it is a film, and the work at this stage is finding the shape it wants. What is the question at the heart of it, and is it one the material can answer. Who are the characters that can carry it, and are they the ones you have been looking at. What is being promised to an audience in the first minutes, and is that a promise you can keep. What has to happen in front of the camera for this to become a scene rather than an illustration. Where should the research go now, and what should you be watching for while you are in it. And, often the most useful question of all, what should you be shooting that is not in the plan yet.

Working in development also means we can still shape what gets filmed, which is no longer possible once the material is in. A conversation at this stage tends to have the widest reach: it can change the research, the casting, the approach, and what you go out looking for on a shooting day.

Send me what you have. A treatment, a project plan, a funding application, research notes, first footage, or a proposition you cannot yet get down on paper. I read it closely and come back to what the project is about, as opposed to what it says it is about. The project stays yours throughout. My part is to sharpen what is already there and to point it towards the strongest version of itself.

This works well before a funding deadline, before a shoot, or at the point where a project has been in development so long that it has lost its centre. It is equally useful for a proposal that keeps being turned down without anyone being able to say why.

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Rough cut consultation

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There is a stage in every documentary where the maker can no longer see the film. You know the material better than anyone alive, and that is exactly the problem: every choice in the timeline is held in place by a reason you can still remember, and the film has quietly become a record of your process rather than a story.

I watch your cut meticulously, more than once. The first thing I look for is what is already working, the scenes that are genuinely alive and the instinct the film keeps returning to, because that is usually where the answer is hiding, and because after months in the edit it is the first thing a team loses sight of.

From there I take the cut apart scene by scene: where the dramatic question is posed and whether the film keeps its promise, whose film this is and where the point of view slips, which scenes are carrying story and which are carrying information, where the structure is protecting the material instead of exposing it, how time is being handled and what the ending is quietly asking of the beginning.

Before I watch, I ask what you have already tried and where the discussion in the edit has got stuck. You know this material and I do not, and an outside reading is only useful if it takes seriously the work that has already gone into it. Often the most valuable thing I can do is not to introduce a new idea at all, but to recognise which of the ideas already on the table the film is actually asking for.

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How a consultation works

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Both kinds of consultation take the same form. I bring no template and no structure decided in advance. Documentary dramaturgy is not a set of rules but a set of questions, and the shape of any particular film has to be found in its own material.

Once I have read or watched, we meet for a two hour online session. Who joins it is entirely your call: some teams prefer the director alone, others bring the editor and producer in as well, and both work perfectly well.

Afterwards you receive a written report. It combines a full dramaturgical analysis with practical, concrete feedback, and its purpose is straightforward: to get the project moving again. It sets out what the film is doing and which options I consider genuinely open to it, and then it gets specific. In development that means a restructuring worth testing, a proposition sharpened into something an audience can follow, characters or situations the project is missing, scenes worth going out and shooting. In the edit it means scenes to move, restore or let go, an opening to build from, a passage of narration the film may no longer need. These are proposals rather than instructions, offered in the knowledge that you know the material and I have seen only part of it, but concrete enough to act on and to argue with. The report is written to be worked from, and to still be useful weeks later, when the session has faded and the decisions are in front of you.

Fees

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A single consultation, in development or on a cut, is €800 excluding VAT. This includes reading or viewing your material, a two hour session, and a written report of two to three pages within five working days. A cut is viewed at least twice, and cuts of up to 120 minutes are covered by this fee. Longer cuts, series in several parts and additional viewings are quoted separately.

Three consultations across the life of a project is €2,100 excluding VAT, valid for eighteen months. Most films are better served this way, because a conversation at the treatment stage, one before or during the shoot and one on the first assembly do something no single session can.

I normally read or view within ten working days of receiving your material, and I can work faster around a deadline if we arrange it in advance. Sessions can be rescheduled without charge up to 48 hours beforehand. Invoicing is per consultation, or on request per project for financing purposes.

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Writing and rewriting

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Where a consultation gives you a reading and a report to work from, this is the writing itself. Treatments, project plans, story outlines and funding applications, drafted from the ground up or rewritten from what you already have, so that what ends up on the page is the film you mean and a reader who has never heard of it can follow it. Useful when a deadline is close, when the plan has been rewritten so often by the people closest to it that it no longer reads, or simply when there is no one on the team with the time to do it properly.

On any given film I take on either the consultation or the writing, never both. Reading a project independently and writing it are different jobs, and keeping them apart is what makes the first one worth having.

Writing is quoted per project, based on scope and deadline. As an indication, a rewrite of an existing treatment or application starts at around €1,500 excluding VAT, and writing a full project plan from the ground up generally falls between €3,000 and €5,000 excluding VAT.

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Emerging filmmakers

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For filmmakers on a first or second film, a graduation film, a short, or a project without a production budget, I keep a separate and lower rate. A single conversation of one hour is €250, at any stage from first idea to fine cut, with a short note afterwards setting out what we agreed and the questions worth carrying forward. Come back whenever you need to.

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Who I work with

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Directors, editors and producers, at any stage of a career. I work in English and in Dutch, and online, so wherever you are is fine. In the Netherlands we can also meet in person.

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Getting in touch

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Write to me at astridbussink@gmail.com with a short description of the project, where it stands, your delivery or deadline date, and what is troubling you about it. If I think I am the right person for it, I will say so. And if I think someone else would serve the film better, I will say that too.

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