LAST EDITED ON 07-21-06 AT 09:54 AM (EST)

Editing is my favorite thing to analyze apart from each player's game plan. It is especially rewarding to do so in Survivor, a social game moreso than in Races where the editing is more linear. To give you an idea here are some examples taken from last season's Survivor analysis by the editing expert Veruca Salt:

1) The first scene makes us think the La Mina tribe is agreeing on keeping Ruth, but only Dan was adamant in keeping her. (From Veruca's analysis): There were actually TWO separate conversations that happened. My thoughts on how this basically occurred was that perhaps Dan mulled over Ruth Marie as a “fifth” and he speaks to Terry only about it which Terry agrees with but another conversation at another time occurs with the young men and Terry. I do not believe Dan was privy to that conversation and I believe that other suggestions were made. The shots of the four men have various close up shots that suggest Dan may have been shown to be there for this conversation when I do not think he was but in actuality, had a separate conversation with Terry. In the first portion where Dan is shown Dan has his buff on at this point

Terry (in voice over) “We’ve got the numbers here, got the four guys and stuff; all strong guys." The shot then goes to Nick only:

Nick “Yeah”

The shot then goes back to Terry but Terry does not look like he is directing the conversation as it is made to appear, it looks like he is listening.....

Nick “When we merge, we need a fifth...”
Terry (in voiceover) “Right” (shot of Ruth Marie walking in the distance is shown)
Nick (in voiceover) “...and Dan suggested Ruth Marie”(This part of Nick’s sentence was not shown coming out of Nick’s mouth; it sounded extremely edited and it may very well have been from a confessional Nick had made at another time. (Remember the illusion is being created that all four men are talking and agreeing completely that Ruth Marie will be their “fifth”)

The next shot goes to Dan who is standing with Terry but Dan suddenly is NOT wearing his buff and we see Dan speaking with Terry and says::

Dan “I said okay, final five to Ruth Marie”
Terry “That’s fine, that’s fine”

(Again, I believe that Dan is only talking to Terry here. We then see Terry, Nick and Austing, Dan is NOT shown and we have a voiceover)

Terry (voiceover) “We got a really strong alliance of four guys and KIND OF a fifth RIGHT NOW is Ruth Marie” (During this we see another shot of Ruth Marie in the distance)

Again, clearly there had to have been two separate conversations, Dan had his buff on in the early shot of him with “all four men” then the buff is gone during the supposed same conversation with “all four men” As indicated it appears that Dan thought about Ruth Marie and suggested same to Terry. Note how Terry tells us “kind of a fifth right now” which sounds extremely “willy nilly” whereas the intent of this scene was to show the audience it was a solid situation which all four men agreed upon.

Later on in the same episode they voted Ruth off.

2)In the first episode, we saw Courtney winking at Aras when the tribes were first introduced. We kept note of it as a possible clue down the line. They did wind up on the same tribe but were constantly at odds. The wink we had seen never even occured. From picture gallery shots we found out later that the images we had seen on TV of Courtney winking were reversed. On it Danielle, a tribemate, was standing to Courtney's left while the picture gallery showed she had been standing on her right troughout. Courtney had blinked while looking at the setting sun! In the opposite direction of where Aras was standing!

3) Discussing Misty's boot we join a conversation as Austin says, "What about Misty..." The idea was to make us think Austin first suggested Misty as the boot option but the conversation had been going on before we joined it. Dan and Terry had been the ones suggesting Misty and Austin was responding to their suggestion. That was to make us think Terry wasn't the one deciding for the whole tribe.

Back to Treasure Hunters
We see 45 minutes of action of events that, in Treasure Hunter lasts over a day. With numerous cameras filming the different teams, editors can pick and chose what they show us. They cannot create images but they can certainly stress a trait of character. As far as the Katie's rant goes, if it was one rant that lasted 2 minutes as they approached the dock, it could have covered a distance of 100 yards. There would have been plenty of occasions where shots wouldn't include the river. Those 120 seconds could have been broken up in 10 sequences and interspersed through both swamp episodes. Suddenly a momentary loss of control, something that could be understood, becomes a constant uncontrolled breakdown.

I'm not saying that is what happened, I just want to remind everyone that things aren't exactly as we see it. The important point is that the scenes had a redemption quality to the Fogal parents. That forces us to consider them not only as villains who go far without winning but also as possible winners.