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It’s a thing of science!
August 06, 2006
My movie, in mere days, has gone from being a script and a (less than thorough) shot list, to a revised script upon several no-shows (“Give me a few minutes before this scene, I need to go in the other room and rewrite part of the script so it makes sense!”), to people in a room talking or fucking (or both) while I watched them on the monitor (this is a truly surreal experience in itself), to a little less than ten hours of tapes.
Now it’s footage with a continuous time code. And boy, is that strange. I have been really looking forward to the editing process because the meticulous nature of it appeals to me, but it’s a huge and weird challenge to look at the movie in terms of takes and shots and angles to the point of virtually seeing through what’s happening on screen.
On Tuesday when I retrieved the dailies from my editor, I asked him how long he thought it would be before I hated the movie and wished I had done things differently. “You don’t already?” he asked, surprised. That hate kicked in around hour four of footage, but an email this morning gave me some cheer: “And don’t worry about how the footage looks. There isn’t a director alive who hasn’t seen the first assembly of footage and not wanted to kill themself. It’s very common.”
Common or not – argggggh. And seriously, if I thought that reviewing porn could get tedious, editing footage that I’m responsible for is a million times worse, not only because watching 10 ours of unedited porno is kind of crazy, but because the “we should have…” factor is there.
Frustrations aside, it’s a damn cool process, and one that I’m more than inclined towards. Lists of shots and working on pacing and stuff are right up my alley, even if I wish that we had just four more seconds! of whatever shot.
Posted by Dacia at August 6, 2006 08:49 AM
Comments
Pretend that it was shot by someone else and that they need YOU to help them make the best of what is in the can.
Take a deep breath and cut, cut , cut
Posted by: PugDuster at August 7, 2006 11:17 PM
The tongue of idle persons is never idle… Anthony
Posted by: Anthony at November 30, 2006 04:07 AM
Four eyes see more (better) than two… Alveredus
Posted by: Alveredus at November 30, 2006 04:16 AM
