Major Project Production Unit - Assisting The Edit 2

After our last edit review session with Simon it was really clear that the shoot days had to be to the same standard as the scenes we had already done. Since we have filmed new scenes, Andreya sorted them into folders, named all the clips and put them into bins on the edit. The next part was to then see how the footage looks amongst the previous shoot days. I am really happy with how the footage looks. It is clear and bold but also keeping in theme with the cinematic style. All of the footage appears to work well with what we have of the film so far. Since we had worked well getting the other 2 scenes to a fine cut we felt the next thing to do was to start doing the same thing with the new scenes we had shot. We first worked on the scenes we shot a Stonewall Park as this was the biggest bulk of what we have done. Again Andreya would edit the clips together finely and I would help to get the clips flowing right and make smaller adjustments to it. This worked really well and we kept editing until we were both happy with it. We looked at the scenes with Sophie in the living room, the dining room, hallways and in the bath.

In the living room scene, this was only one shot of her drinking a glass of wine. I got a variety of coverage for this but a lot of the close-ups looked a little bit grainy so we decided to go for the wide shot and stay on it. Although it was not quite what I had planned, When Drey edited it together it actually worked nicely rather than an overkill of different shots. I also asked her to put a shot in the middle of the scene as it needed something to break it up. We put the shot of a corridor cut away from Bradbourne house integrating the two locations together which worked really well. It also gave a really nice pace and flow to it going from one shot to a cutaway and then back to the original shot.

In the dining room scene, we again had plenty of coverage to work with but some of the shots you could see us in the mirror. This room was particularly hard with mirrors. I had even blocked out this scene knowing where the mirrors were but we still could not avoid them in every shot. Thankfully there was enough coverage to work with and drey was able to cut around it. When she finished I changed a couple of shots around and helped make the clips flow a little better from the close up of where she picks up the knife to the wide but this was a small fussy thing that I noticed. Overall this scene looked really nice and I am pleased with the way drey had edited it together.

The hallway scenes were again quite straight forward to edit. I gave Drey some music to lay alongside the clips in the edit which helped get the flow and pace right from the offset. The music changes to more slow and ominous which gives a great sense that things have turned darker. I explained to Drey that I wanted the cutting in this scene longer and more drawn out which she did really well to the music. After reviewing it I made minor adjustments to the clip lengths and changed a few shots from wide to close up and the whole thing stitched together really well.

We finally worked on the scene where Claudia is in the bath. There was not as much coverage of this scene but we had enough to work with. The shots were all really clear, in focus and had all the right movement so I am really pleased with this. I felt that when she was in the bath with her eyes closed she could be dreaming about her journey so far and where she has been. I asked Drey to put some flashback shots in of some of the previous scenes. This worked really well and adds to the scene helping it to flow a bit better than just the three shots that we had.

Finally, the last scene we edited was the garden scene that we had shot back at Bradbourne House. This was quite a difficult scene to work with as it was very complex in my head to how I wanted it shown. Although it was one section of the film, it had a lot of different moments in it that all added to the scene as a whole. There is the archways scene, the spinning scene, the bridge and the rose drop. Although I wanted them all shown separately in the sequence at first, I then imagined them all to be intertwined with each other cutting back and forth quite quickly towards the end. This was quite difficult to explain and it took a few attempts to get the pace going how I wanted it to. Also, some of the footage looked quite overexposed but I feel the colour grade will help this towards the end. The music for this piece was also really difficult to find as I want it to have a beautiful sounding score but also dreamlike and sombre at the same time. I will continue looking until I find the right piece.

Overall I have really enjoyed directing the editing process so far. We have got a great system where Drey will edit clips together and I can help refine and change a few things to a place of how I feel the story should be told.