Editing

So yesterday I touched on the fact that I was struggling with the editing, purely because of the amount of footage that there is.

We put my idea of watching the footage together, scene by scene, into action today with scene 2. It took a few hours going back over takes and angles and deciding what worked and what bits of takes worked better than others. For the three and a bit page scene 2 we managed to agree a take for every line of dialogue in the scene.

Some of it was easier than others. I found there were subtle differences in lines that potentially could help the mood/character and so we zeroed in on every little thing to come up with this list. What I especially wanted to retain were the moments when the actors took something that wasn't written down but somehow saw it anyway - I know it's my film so I'm probably too close to it but I honestly believe there are a few amazing deliveries that make me feel slightly bad for bringing the whole thing down later by throwing flying scarecrows into the mix.

In some of the auditions (and also away from them) people have commented on how the dialogue in the script 'flows'. Even though I wrote it, I can't see that. I truly am my own worst critic and it's something I'm really trying hard to move away from but I only ever seem to focus on the bad.

However, I've now edited the first 48 seconds of scAIRcrows and I can finally see it working. The dialogue does flow but I really don't think that's down to me but whatever, it does work and that's all that matters.

I've watched these 48 seconds over and over trying to pick fault in it and there's a few tiny things that need to be fixed but on the whole, this is the beginning of the end. There's all the other stuff to shoot and this cut will still need to be colour adjusted and the sound cleaned up but for all intents and purposes, a finished 48 seconds of the film exists.

It sounds tiny but I couldn't be happier - something I wrote a few months ago now exists in complete form and it's a surreal thing - to be watching a page of something I've written actually playing out.

I had doubts about doing editing whilst shooting was still ongoing but I think it was a wise move - seeing what didn't make the cut and why it didn't has definitely informed how I go about the next lot of shooting.

I did think that editing was the devil's work but I'm actually coming around to it - I think it's all in the approach. Once I had the takes that I knew I was going to use it moved quite quickly. I want to say it all just slotted together but that isn't true. In cutting the takes together, I realised that some of the things that we had on paper just didn't work in the greater context and so it took a bit more work figuring out how to get to the next shot I wanted to use but as with this entire project, I haven't expected any of it to be easy.

I keep threatening storyboards - they exist and they are rubbish but they will help immeasurably in trying to co-ordinate one of the next scenes. Seems too easy now and no doubt something will happen that means we have to deviate slightly but we have a fairly solid 'map' now. I will post some of them sometime this week.

We also went over various bits re. the next shoot but that's all fairly boring stuff. We've settled on a poster design now, just tweaking a few things here and there so that should appear fairly soon and hopefully, after the next shoot, I might be in a position to cut together a short teaser. Who knows what the next few weeks will bring but we're definitely moving in the right direction.