Went round Ben's yesterday for the first edit and I'll be honest it's a marathon not a sprint. I found it really interesting to piece the film together bit by bit. We experimented A LOT. We had to and more important I wanted too to convey something a little different. Scott in his book Writing, Producing and Directing a Low-Budget Short Film has gave me a few pointers to think about when reviewing Ben's skeleton -
- Story flow (It doesn't but we discussed ways to help such as the addition of still images to distract from a lot of the jump cuts)
- Mistakes in the shots (Ben had already selected the best shots and removed those with Boom shadows etc.)
- Sound levels/consistency (Again Ben being skilled with sound had addressed any issues)
- Colour Correction (I must say Ben had done a great job by giving a slight bleached effect to the the footage and taking away the yellowness.)
This morning he posted the scenes we had ripped apart and vommited back into a visual treat. I have a good feeling about our progress. I posted this on facebook -
"MUCH, Much better! Great start. Interesting way it juts about visually. I'm looking through peoples images now. That shot of Adams face outside isn't good I'm thinking cut it completely and just have his voice off screen with maybe his dialogue subtitled. The flashes arn't right. I'm thinking of using party images and then saturating them one neon colour and using them instead of just block colour. Will do some experiments and get back to you tonight. It's looking good :)"
We decided that we would use subtitles for chracteres key dialogue to disguise some bad-ish acting and distract the eyes away from a jump ut or unfocused shot. Before our next edit day I'll create some still images to enhance the party/hedonist atmosphere and select the character fonts. Our next edit is planned for the 15th to give Ben time to go through my notes.