LAUNCHPAD AND THE FINAL EDIT

LAUNCHPAD AND THE FINAL EDIT

I spent some time making  the changes to the film, even going so far as to go back to Lanjore Farm to get some more footage with one of my actors. After this I realised that I needed to find a way of solidifying why " The Very Dead " failed upon its initial release, So I wrote and directed an additional scene with the distributor of the film, who is seen selling pirate films from the boot of his car. while perhaps not entirely realistic, at least it helped to stitch up a glaring plot-hole, when people saw it, they didn't make any comments afterwards about why it was there, so I took that as the new footage had integrated itself into the film.

My Editor who was also my sound engineer on the project, was unavailable to work on the film until after the public screenings which were held as part of the summer show. So I did my best to tighten the edit and adjust the sound levels  so it could be shown effectively. The film was shown towards the end of the evening amongst some very good work that had been receiving massive applause throughout the night, so I was anxious to be showing my " rough cut " when everyone else's film had been properly finished. I think a problem that may have been unique for me  from everyone else was that I would know within the first minute whether or not it was working because if there was no laughter, I'd be sunk basically.

Thankfully, the film seemed to go down very well, people laughed and kept laughing throughout the film until the very end. I was told by a fellow student that the changes I had made had the film way more effective that before. I did enquire as to whether anyone thought it was too long, but no one gave any indication that it was. I was surprised by the reaction, it was very positive. I was even offered the services of an actor for future work, which was a massive confidence boost for me, Knowing that someone was actively seeking me out for work.

The night was strange , in the sense , that whilst everyone was finished , I still had work to do and if anything the reaction to the film encouraged me to go back into the edit suite and to try and get it in the best shape possible.

Russell, my editor/sound engineer was only available on the very last day before all the edit suite computers would be wiped of all work and data ready for the next academic year. With no available hard storage or way of editing the film any further effectively outside college, I had to rush to make any final changes to the film before my submission date, I knew that I could always come back later in the year and make more changes, as I'm planning on taking a PGCE placement at the college, but at this current time, I knew that this was the last day I had.

Russell made some suggestions about the edit ,that were quick and effective and even taught me a bit about how to label  and organise my audio clips, to make it easier to clean up sound elements in the future. Overall, he said that he felt that the film worked very well, which I really took as a compliment  as his work is regarded by peers as being of very high quality. After some work, we actually finished earlier than expected, so I then set about uploading it to my vimeo page and finally be able to share it with my friends and anyone else who would be willing to spend almost 19 minutes of their lives watching it.

On Reflection, I have lived with this film for the last few months, thinking about it, I have been building up to this film for the last three years. In that time I have experienced some amazing things and I have been afforded opportunities that I thought I would never have as well as having to make sacrifices in my personal and social life to try and complete this degree. Ultimately this film is tainted by  some of those trials and although they will forever be woven into the fabric of this project, this film is meant to be fun, I see it as a culmination of my practice, my love of script writing, low budget film-making techniques, acting, comedy and horror. It's a celebration of my time in PCA and a tip of the hat to my peers and my heroes. I wanted to make people smile and laugh and perhaps act as an antidote to all the stress and seriousness of  the importance of the final module, so although the process was extremely draining, physically, emotionally and mentally, I wanted the final result to be fun, I think I suceeded.

THE FIRST SCREENING

THE FIRST SCREENING

At the time of the first screening of our work, I knew I had a lot of work to do, I had more or less captured all the footage that I had wanted according to my planning, but it was clear that  the assembly was a bit muddled.

There was certainly potential, the jokes seemed to hit their mark and the performances seemed to work. The two central characters needed to be seen as delusional idiots, people who appear to have lost their perspective on reality. The horror footage came across as authentic, no less aided by the rather wonderful soundtrack given to me by Neil Rose and Cafe Concrete.

I think the film lost its direction when I decided to include lots of still photographs from other sources to try and fill the gaps where there was narration but no visuals to accompany them. Although they did get some laughs from my peer group, I think there was concern that I had lost sight of my original intention, which was to try and set this in some sort of reality, i.e. a fictional documentary. This idea could only work if I were to treat the content of the film as a real thing, I needed to give it its own sense of Verisimilitude.

This meant that whilst the dialogue was highly absurd , the film footage ridiculous, the voice over somewhat pompous, the documentary had to be presenting these element as if they were real and the content of the film had to obey those rules.

I don't think that this really occurred to me until the second screening, by which time I had written an opening and closing statement for the film to try and give the audience an bedrock on which they could anchor themselves and also provide a more fitting coda for our characters.

By including these additional elements and not changing anything else, holes started to appear in the flow of the project.

The voiceover delivery was stumbling at some points and missing the mark on others, I realised that my direction of Guy could've been a little more developed. The opening scenes were taking too long to get into the story and I felt that there could probably be more footage of the " The Very Dead ".

I Realised very quickly , that I had become too close to the project to really be able to edit it objectively. After all, I had more or less been steering the ship on my own , so to speak, perhaps the benefit of having others involved in the creative process was to let me know where changes could be made  and to give advice as to what could be done to maximise the potential of the film.

So I decided to do several things

1. Remove most of, if not all, stills from the film

2. Shoot more "horror" footage

3. Cut down some of the scenes , especially near the beginning, with the intention of including the new "horror " footage against the interview dialogue a bit more, if just to give the audience something more interesting to look at.

4. Cut some of the voice over where I felt it was becoming garbled and misleading

5. Enlist the help of another editor to give advice and make additional changes, this person would be an external party away from the production, so as to give the post-production a fresh perspective.