Production Journal #7: It's a Wrap!

Wednesday, April 28 2010

Finally, the filming of Commedia dell'arte has come to an end.

It's been a long journey. About two months, I think. I've been physically exhausted for weeks. I'm too tired to do much of anything. It's been a lot of long nights lugging around heavy equipment for the sake of art.

I don't regret a moment of it though. Thus far, this is my favorite film I've made. My rough cut is a little over 5 minutes so far (will be more once I add the new footage) and I love how it's turning out. I'm truly happy with this film.

Perhaps I should show this rough cut to a few more people. Thus far Leanna, Scott, Morgan and Greg have seen it. Most other people have shown their cuts to the class and have gotten feed back and what not. The reason I'm not is because I want to see how this turns out if I stick to my intuition and make the movie I feel is best instead of getting peoples opinions and stressing me out. It's an experiment. Once I'm happy with my rough cut and can call it a fine cut, sure, I'll show everyone. Until then, I want it to stay special. If I show too many people, the final won't be as special.

I guess I should talk about the actual shoot. It was a relatively quick shoot. We filmed what I've been calling "antics" and some inbetweener stuff to round out everything so there are fewer jumps.

The antics were fun to shoot. It was a very mellow, very fun shoot. Morgan made this amazing coffee and some peanut butter sandwiches. It was great watching Morgan, in make-up, try and bite into her food. During the shoot, Morgan and I were switching out our iPod's to pump the place full of tunes. We didn't think it would hurt, considering we're not doing audio. Morgan was playing a lot of Panda Bear while I was sticking to tunes I was listening to while editing: The Dresden Dolls and The Indelicates new album. It really set the mood.

We did so many different things during these antics. We had Greg doing a silly dance with the ukuelele that I've dubbed "the Charlie Brown", we had him pull a bird out of his hat and even tickle Morgan's face with a rather long feather. He really sold the character. Morgan was great too, but most of the focus was on Greg. Greg has the hard job of being happy, yet depressed and ready to crack. To be zany yet subtle. He did it wonderfully.

After we wrapped on my film, we did some credits for Morgan, which was a wrap for her as well and listened to New Order's "Blue Monday". Then shot some stuff for Greg the next day and it was a wrap for his film. Commedia dell'art, Lucid, and The Lady in Black all finishing at the same time. It's a good feeling to be done. Now I just need to finish editing.

Now, time for a video.

"Blue Monday" - New Order

Production Journal #6: Editing... enough said.

Stress is a word. It's also a word to describe my life currently. Fun how that works.

I've been in the editing room for most of the week, and I think last week. I'm not really sure. The editing room has a weird effect on ones mind. Time doesn't exist. It's like the clock in the head is busted. Minutes feel like seconds, hours feel like fractions of that time. The simple process of cutting and taping film onto reels isn't as quick as you normally perceive. I spent an hour (I think?) just re-taping a scene and razor blading the edges to it goes through the projector better.

Yes, it takes time. No, I'm not just a shitty editor.

It's kind of weird to talk about editing, so I guess before I attempt to, I'll give a quick lesson on editing. Not sure how well it'll work. Also, my camera takes bad pictures, as you'll see, so please, bare with me. If you don't like it, fuck you, buy me a good camera.

Here we go.


First, this is the spindle thing we put our reel of film on.


The film goes to this rather dark spindle on the other side. Another reel, known as the take-up reel is placed on there. It takes up the film


This is the Movie Scope. The film runs from the spindle through this to the other spindle. With this, we can see an image.


See? Sorta...


Here's a drawing that pretty much describes what I just told you.

Now, lets say we found a shot we want to use. Well, we take it and attach it to this


That's the guillotine cutter. It cuts the film for you. We then take the bad footage and put it on an OUT roll. An OUT roll is stuff that you either don't want/need or stuff that turned out like crap. You save it for later. An IN roll is your current film or shots you want to use. Usually you assemble all of your good shots at one time. I don't. I just jump in and edit scene by scene and grab the stuff if and when I need it. It works for me.


Guillotine cutter in action.

When we want to attach the new footage to the good reel, we put the two pieces of film in the middle of the guillotine cutter's base.


Once there, we can put tape over the middle of the two pieces to attach them.


We just push the thing down and it attaches the tape and cuts off the excess. If there is still some tape, you just take a razor blade, Exacto Knife or any type of blade and clean it up.

That's editing. I've been doing this for days. It's so time consuming. I'm a perfectionist. I'm trying to get my match-on-action all right and trying to cut out excess time and frames that aren't needed. Plus, inter-cutting footage is a bitch as times. I love doing it though. I wish I had more to say. The days are running together. I can't really tell you about any experiences. Sorry. Perhaps next time I won't wait so long to post. Thanks for reading.

As a special treat, the Indelicates new album has been helping me in the editing room. Fits the feel of the film well. Here's a song from it.

"Europe" - The Indelicates


and another one...

"Flesh" - The Indelicates


Enjoy