I need inspiration…
It was as easy as using three fairly static establishing shots. And it was as difficult as remembering I didn’t actually shoot any. Doh. Yoda: “Unlearn you must.” However, there comes a point where too much ‘unlearning’ is a bad thing. Managed to cobble together some shots from what I had. Just.
Note to self: shoot static cutaways, hold on the end of action, etc etc etc.
Audio post productions starts on Thursday.
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.
I’ve digitised Simon’s VHS as one long clip and will slice it up into small chunks (165 of them), then replace each chunk with my original material.
Done. It took approximately three hours and involved a bit of slacking off during work time (surely not!). There are still some bits to clean up and a number of points I’ve marked where I want to change things around. That’s tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I wrote to the director of the short I really thought was brilliant the other night, The Least Of These, to say how much I enjoyed it, what I liked about it and to put my name on the mailing list if he ever makes DVDs. He wrote back to say ‘Thanks’ which I thought was really cool; good to make contact with someone whose more or less where you are and making things you think are cool.
Tonight’s film offerings at the same festival were not so good. It was all about use of sound (which was honourable) but the films they choose were mostly sucky. The first one was like 20 minutes of a computer game except that instead of playing, the camera flew around and looked at the walls. Oh, and if I never see another experimental film with shots of the sky through trees, it will be too soon.
Ironically, my first ever shot planned for my first ever short film (waaaay back when) was looking up at the night sky through barren winter branches before tilting down to reveal the actor walking by the Thames…
Make that 165. That’s how many cuts there are in Simon’s version of the film, so that’s how many clips I have. So far I’ve got back 120 of them. Just 40 left to do before I can reconstruct his edit. Then I can compare it with mine and put in the best bits of both…
Except that it didn’t work.
For some reason, my clips didn’t match up with the clips in Simon’s edit at all. Three days later and I’m back to square one. Today I’ve digitised Simon’s VHS as one long clip and will slice it up into small chunks (165 of them), then replace each chunk with my original material.
Or maybe we can just export everything from Avid on to a firewire drive and create a Final Cut Pro project from that material. Then I go to the online editor (Perry) and he redigitises the material at full digibeta resolution and I have a film.
Clear? Good.
I saw this short film yesterday evening, The Least Of These, at a festival just up the road from St Albans, Filmstock. If you get a chance to see it, do. It’s one of those times when you realise someone has incredible talent and has pulled together an equally talented team to create something wonderful, heartwarming and really rather special.
Another outstanding short film of the weekend was Hang Time which is being distributed by Fox Searchlab. Without giving too much away, it’s about this strange guy who shows people how to fly in elevators. No dialog. Very funny. Catch it if you can. This link takes you to a five minute version, which doesn’t include the cinema end, but it’s still great.
It means… that I have 100 clips and they are all showing black and silence
Make that 165. That’s how many cuts there are in Simon’s version of the film, so that’s how many clips I have. So far I’ve got back 120 of them. Just 40 left to do before I can reconstruct his edit. Then I can compare it with mine and put in the best bits of both. Then, at last, I can get back to the composer and audio post-production.
Phew.
Yesterday the EDL turned up from Simon. Yes, nearly six weeks after April 25th. I’ll try importing it into Final Cut Pro at the weekend and conforming my rushes to it. It’s bound to be easy, isn’t it? Taking information from one editing program and importing it into another? Yes. Easy peasy.
Of course, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t actually possible.
Avid and Final Cut Pro both treat video clips differently. So, even though an EDL is simply a text file listing the start and stop points for each clip of video, FCP ignores that and starts every clip from exactly the same place.
“What does this mean?” I hear you cry. I’m glad you asked. The seven and a half minute film contains about 100 cuts. That means there are 100 different video chunks. And Final Cut Pro starts each of these chunks in exactly the same place when you use an EDL. “Yes, but What Does This Mean?” It means, dear friends, that the seven and a half minute film contains 100 identical clips when you use an EDL.
“Huh?” It means… that I have 100 clips and they are all showing black and silence, so I have seven and half minutes of black and silence instead of a movie using this method of working. “Oh!” Oh indeed. Next game is to digitise the VHS Simon sent me and match up his work, edit by edit. Actually, I only want to match up some of his work because there are places where I prefer my own cut.
Did any of this make any sense at all? Probably not. It’s a learning experience, I can tell you. And not every Apple product works straight out of the box.
April 22nd: Simon the editor hasn’t been in touch for three weeks… I wonder if/when Simon will get in touch…
April 25th: I call Simon and he starts another editing job as an assistant on a new feature in a couple of weeks which means he’ll be able to get me an EDL from Avid then.
Yesterday the EDL turned up from Simon. Yes, nearly six weeks after April 25th. I’ll try importing it into Final Cut Pro at the weekend and conforming my rushes to it. It’s bound to be easy, isn’t it? Taking information from one editing program and importing it into another? Yes. Easy peasy.
Bwahahahaha!
Meanwhile, I’ve finished the press kit in advance (four photos at 300dpi, biogs, synopsis, etc) and the website is looking fine (though I do say so myself). Go look. Plus someone else wants to screen Fate & Fortune in London on June 27th and I’ll actually be able to go along. Yay! It’s not all slog, you know. Sometimes there’s a moment of success.
Light pollution is one of those things that’s a mixed curse. On the one hand, there’s all the material benefits (and a few cultural ones) which come from industralisation and living in cities. On the other, I’m sure there’s a loss of spiritual connection through not being able to see the stars.
While I was in New Zealand a few years ago, I made trip out to One Tree Hill Observatory in Auckland so that I could see The Southern Cross, something not visible from northern hemisphere. Although it was a bit cloudy, there were still billions of stars shining and I also got to see Andromeda, our nearest galaxy. It was a chance to marvel at many other beautiful celestial objects too and it put many things into perspective.
Living near the city, I can still see stars when I look up at night. Cold winter evenings are usually a fine time to look straight up and pause for a moment before quickly getting inside to warm up. Looking straight up, however, is the only option where I live. All around the horizon is pink for the whole night and I remember a friend driving me across north Yorkshire some time in the past. The stars seemed to literally press down on us through his sun roof. Very cool. Cosmic, even.
I think being able to see the night stars is actually really important for giving us a sense of wonder about the universe and for reminding us of our place in it. Seeing the stars symbolises our hopes and dreams. Seeing burning skies every night and never having true darkness–notwithstanding what that does to our circadian rhythms–isn’t the best way to live.
I wonder what impact this is having on children who’ve never known any different from the orange-red night skies? Do they hope and dream in the same way? Or are they more disconnected in a way they can’t understand? So many people live in the opening of Fight Club–chasing material gratification and lose sight of the magic of being alive. I wonder to what extent a lack of experiencing true night to contrast with the day plays a part in that disconnected feeling.
Just in case I pass this way again, just for the record, I’d like to blog that:
1. The Car is no further and no nearer audio post-production.
2. But it should be next week when Simon is due to get in touch.
3. Yes, we’ve heard that before.
4. The Ascalon Films website may soon get an overhaul
5. I’ve been learning Dreamweaver, After Effects and a smattering of Photoshop this week. Among other things, I can now make stuff fly around the screen, add snazzy rollover buttons to a website and create animated gifs.
6. The jeans I bought about six months ago and have worn perhaps twice are now three inches too large around the waist (inconceivable!) since for this past month I stopped eating chocolate (no, really), started drinking diet sodas (yes, I know) and… And, well, that’s about it.
7. I’ve also learned more about the Mac and can now backup important files (whoop) and use iCal better [You’re reaching here, aren’t you? Quit blogging already! – Ed]
8. X-Men 2 didn’t do it for me because I am becoming old and cynical (instead of merely young and cynical).
Oh, what a mad crazy merry-go-round existence I lead.