Friday comes. And goes. Simon has his answerphone on. Both times. One message. No return call. No final cut from him, then. No. It’s Saturday. Hell, I have an edit suite. I’ll finish cutting it myself. And I do. By Sunday morning, I have a cut I’m almost happy with. Almost. Lots of Simon’s sequences are in there, intact. Others I’ve cut tighter (oo, suits you, ma’am) to match. Just can’t get it to start.

I need inspiration. Editing inspiration. Need a good yet simple film to get a clue from. Maybe just need sound to carry an introspective long opening shot. Need something. Something. What? Don’t know. Just need. Where on earth do you get ‘editing inspiration’? Atom Films? I’ll look later. Maybe I should just go back to my original opening shot and ignore Simon’s changes.

For now, I colour the whole opening sepia and fade into colour over the title. Okay, it works but it seems forced. Want, need something more natural. I cut it up four shots in a load of one-second images and run them quickly in a five second, six second, eight second sequence. Flash flash flash flash flash. Headlamp / Charlie / Wheel / Charlie / Headlamp / Charlie etc. Nope. No good.

Call Simon again. Answering machine still on. He’s probably looked at the pick up shots and thrown up his hands in despair at my not providing a decent opening shot. Well who cares. It’s my film anyway. Mine all mine. Got. To. Finish. It. An ‘aha!’ moment comes: editing inspiration equals MTV. Got. To. Tune. In. And drop out. I love my MTV. Ridley Scott goes there, I seem to recall.

Nicholas Nickleby preview on Wednesday with Q&A by the DOP. Maybe that will help some.