Pre-screening 3-28

Today we present our most completed cut to date in class for workshop. At this point, we have completed the visual edit with credits and have progressed with our sound design. There is still touch-up work to be done with minor audio clipping, general room ambiance, and possibly working some more score into the film.

As of now, I am leaning toward utilizing only diagetic sound (no score) until the final moment where a swelling, contemplative score highlights the final tone of the film. I feel that "The Basement" would benefit from heavy incorporation of vacant room tone and some atmospheric wind and things of that nature in order to depart from any reliance on a drowning score.

Beyond that, I am interested to hear what the class has to say after this screening. Christina and I will have about a week to take their suggestions (as well as the things we know we need to work on) and incorporate them into our "First Final Cut" to submit to Reel Teal Film Festival. Though we will likely continue to make changes as we prepare the film for a festival run, I think that Reel Teal is an appropriate place to premiere the film and I think we will essentially have our finished film, with the exception of a few tweaks down the road.

Finessing the Edit

At this stage, Christina and I have completed the film in terms of narrative coherance.... now comes the time to delve a bit more intricately into each edit and make sure everything is working. Additionally we will have to take out 21.5 minute film and chop it down to a more manageable 15-17ish mins.

There are a few scenes that drag out a bit and some moments that could be shown a little more concisely so I think the first couple minutes we have to cut wont be too difficult. Beyond that, it could become tough to part ways with 'our babies' in order to bring the film to our eventual minimized duration.

However, the most important part from here on out will be the sound edit. Right now, we have a rough sound edit with roomtone, sound bridges, and fade in-fadeouts masking some of the sound glitches. But much more needs to be done. There are an infinite amount of ways we can add atmosphere with foleyed breathing, footsteps, and various basement sounds. Through playing with our audio tracks we can bring out many new elements into our film that could not exist soley in the visual edit. Im excited to see how these last few weeks progress as we guide our film toward a festival run.

Rough Edit 2

At this second stage of due-dates we are through the bear-trap scene and about 11m30s deep into our film... according to the script, we should just be moving onto page 7. This means that my script is running shorter than the pace of this film will allow. In total, we have 12 1/2 script pages. In order to keep this at a festival-appropriate length, we may need to trip some scenes.

So far, most of what we have is pretty essential and may be tough to cut down. Its the opening half of our film and it is important for us to establish our tone, style, and story in this time, and I think we have pretty much done that. Luckily, from here, the pace quickens and I'm confident we can get this within a 15-18 minute range.

Our in-class workshop today really help because this lengthy bear trap scene is probably the most memorable and most iconic scene in this film... if it isnt working, the film wont work. I hope it plays out on screen as the creepy, threatening, at-times humorous, and bizarre scene that I originally wrote. But regardless, Im looking forward to hearing the comments of my peers and working to get the most we can out of this moment in our film.

Editing Key Scenes

We are now moving on to editing one of our most important scenes: The Bear Trap Scene. In this scene Phillip disclaims in a frantic/psychotic way that he has set up bear traps in the woods so that "no one could come and hurt you." What he is masking as a safety precaution is clearly just a threat to keep Jim from attempting an escape.

This scene will be particular difficult to edit for a few reasons. First off, pacing will be important... we essentially shot this entire scene in a close up of Jim and a separate MCU of Phillip. In this scene Phillip literally does all the talk so we will ultimately have free range when it comes to deciding when to show Phillip or when to show reaction shots from Jim.

However, our free range may not be that free. Dave (playing Phillip) definitely has some memorable moments with his takes but there is not one take that is best from start to finish. As a result we are really going to have to craft our scene around his performance in a way that makes it memorable, believable, threatening and shocking. Simultaneously we also have to be sure to highlight Jim's performance and make sure that we remain sympathetic to him.

These next few scenes definitely mark the turning points of the film and really start sending the narrative into motion. It will be vital that we maintain our tone but also increase the steaks and use what we have to our fullest advantage.

Post 4-min Workshop

The showing of our ~4min rough cut went over well and we received a bunch of good, specific suggestions that will surely improve what we have so far. It is essential to get multiple 'second opinions' on whatever it is you are working on. It is easy to get lost in your own little bubble and lose sight of what is actually working. One of the first suggestions was building upon our Scene 1 opening shot that I mentioned in my last post. Some class members felt that it seemed to appear as more of a POV shot than a slowly revealing tracking shot. In order to clear up this confusion it was suggested that instead of using a separate reveal to introduce Phillips character, we should utilize the POV feel of the opening shot to bring Phillip close to Jim without physically seeing his approach. We roughly cut this progression together... it clearly changes the scene but I think it works to our advantage by dragging out Phillips reveal and potentially adding some tension and creepiness by letting him linger just off screen. Not to mention, this will help cut down the length of our film (which will inevitably be an issue we will face down the road).

Getting back to what I mentioned before, a workshop is a great chance to get an outside impression on your work. And these fresh sets of eyes can help guide you through the essential phase of "killing your babies" as Pack refers to it. At first I was attached to the idea of seeing Phillip's looming approach down the hall but thanks to the well-intentioned opinions of the class it allowed Christina and I to see a different way to drag out the scene.

We still have some cleaning up to do in these opening few scenes but I am glad that we have some direction to head in and make effective and efficient alterations to our original cut. From here I am excited to progress into some of the more pivotal scenes and continue through the process of shaping the best possible film with the images we have (sound will come later, and that will be a nightmare... gonna need a foley pro!).

4 Minute Rough Cut

This week we had to complete at least a four minute rough cut of our film to present to the class in a workshop format. Christina and I began by editing the chronological opening of our film.

From the start we began to encounter issues we were forced to work around. The entire film was shot hand-held in order to capture the images and events in a raw, stark style. However, as a result of this choice, there are some shots that possess a bit more shake than intended. The first shot of our film falls into this category.

It is a long 'tracking' shot moving slowly down a hallway toward our lead character, Jim. The inherent shake of our camera operation translates more to a POV shot than a steady reveal of Jim and his environment. In order to combat this issue we applied the SmoothCam filter in FCP. After about 8 minutes of reading the clip, the effect was applied and it essentailly masked the camera shake and created a smooth, fluent-looking camera move. My one concern is that the image looks a bit off as a result of the effect; almost like looking through rising heat in a desert or something.... we will have to see how the class reacts to this effect in the workshop to get a better pulse on the result.

Some of our more dynamic shots may require use of this effect, but for the most part we will be able to utilize the footage as-is without too much reliance on dramatic filters.

At this point we have our first 5m30s edited. My intention is to establish the films tone, style, and environment by this time, and I think we have done that. I hope to get some useful suggestions in the workshop but I'm really excited to hear which of our many decisions are working exceptionally well.

A big issue I will want to bring up is how to open the film. We could start with the shot mentioned above, revealing Jim in the dank basement, or instead we can open (as the edit exists now) with a title sequence intercut with a sporatic scene of Jim running frantically though the woods, then flash back in time to Jim in the basement in its standard chronology. This will be something to think over repeadly as we progress in the edit but it will surely help to hear what people's innitial reactions are to the choice.

Pre-Edit

This is easily one of the more dragged out periods in the editing process: from trascoding footage, to naming, to dealing with freezing, more transcoding, organizing and working out technical issues. All of this takes an extraordinary amount of time before you can even start thinking about your first cuts.

Moving beyond this set-up period, we bring ourselves into the primitive stages of editing the opening scene of our film. At first it feels a bit weird to move into it this quickly. Ideally I'd like to take some more time and filter through every shot and pick out exact moments I like and slowly forge an edit around those moments. However, so far we have been progressing along in-the-moment.

Luckily, I spent some time creating a very rough edit over winter break so I have already encountered many of the issues we need to work around in the opening scenes. Performance issues, sound problems and continuity have all already been worked around once before so I have a pretty good understanding of what we have to work with and how we can cut around any faults we may want to leave out.

Though my early edit will certainly help us as we begin to cut, I do not want to be tethered to what I did over break. I think I was able to develop a style and tone in the rough cut that I want to maintain but there needs to be something more that what I did over the last few weeks. It needs to be sharper, more thought-out and effective in intent. I think, for now, slow and steady wins the race... each decision now will set up a progression for the rest of the film, so we need to stride in the right direction early on.