Most of us never get to see the raw footage from movies. By the time we get to the final product, the film has been carefully edited -- and while most of us are dimly aware that a lot more footage is shot than actually makes it on the screen, it's never an idea that is front and center.

With Monday night's Summer Arts lecture, the audience got a rare peek at what the editor of a film is confronted with: lots and lots of raw footage that has to be shaped into some kind of cohesive experience. The film is "Ars Medicina," a documentary from Bklyn2LA productions and MEDIA OFFLINE. It follows a group of Los Angeles doctors who take an annual week-long trip to rural Guatemala to offer medical assistance. The film at this point in time is smack in the middle of the creative process, with the footage all in the can but the editing still to go.

Participating in the panel discussion were editor Alan Jacobs, executive producer Michael Berlin and cinematographer Erin Henning.

The doctors followed by the filmmakers in Guatemala saw more than 1,000 patients and performed 131 surgeries -- a tough workload. Among the most common operations were those to fix cleft palettes.

It was interesting to contemplate how an editor takes all that footage -- in this case more than 50 hours worth -- and cuts it into something that makes sense. Jacobs explained that a documentary such as this has to be shaped by various themes. In the case of "Ars Medicina," those themes include the humanitarian nature of the medical staff, the gratefulness of the patients and the positive depiction of the United States helping others (especially in an era when the country's image has been tarnished.)

While the story has the potential to be compelling, I do think that the film's creative team has a bigger challenge ahead of them than you might think if they're going to make an interesting and effective documentary. The mere story of generous doctors helping disadvantaged patients isn't a new one, and there's always a danger of a film such as this fawning over the volunteers as if they're superheroes. Berlin spent much of the panel discussion enthusing over those doctors, noting at one point how the lead physician on the team got down to the physical level of the child he was treating -- as if that were some major accomplishment. Isn't that what doctors do? These patients were poor and uneducated, but does that mean that it should be somehow noteworthy when they're treated with the same respect and professionalism afforded paying patients in the States?

Most disturbing during the panel discussion was the emphasis that Berlin, who seems like a sincere and earnest believer in the project, put on the social status, wealth and prestige of the doctors who made the trip, as if that somehow makes it a better story. There are lots of doctors in this country who do a lot more than devote more than one week a year to the care of indigent patients -- I know because some of them live right here in Fresno County -- and don't go back to rich patients in Beverly Hills. I found Berlin's repeated juxtaposition of the doctors' wealth and the poverty of their patients a little disturbing.

Of course, we're talking about a film that hasn't yet been completed, and we don't know that Berlin's attitude toward the doctors will necessarily make it into the finished result. You have to reserve judgement. And, as Jacobs pointed out in response to a question from the audience, it's his film to cut. In that regard, it will be interesting to see "Ars Medicina" in its final form.