Wednesday 5 November 2014

Part 4 - Post-Production part A. Picture Edit of your film.Turning the pieces into a story.

Back in 2005, when most filmmakers used to shoot on film, you would shoot the entire movie without ever seeing a piece of footage, send it to the processors, and obtain a working copy of your footage within a few days. Or, you'd pay a premium and get it done within the hour, which is something you generally couldn't afford if you were making a short film. Kind of like when people used to take pictures of their kids birthday party, drop it off at the photo booth at the grocery store and either pick it up after shopping or wait until next week when they shopped again. Remember those days? I guess if you're under 20 as of this writing you have no idea what I'm talking about. But in the past you would have to wait awhile to see the results of the photo you just took. Today is a better time!

So after I dropped off the footage and waited for a few days, I set up my post-production schedule. Craig, my editor, would take the footage and assemble his best cut while using the script as a guideline. I always liked to leave the editor alone for at least a week after I looked at the footage and say nothing at all to them. When I first look at the footage, I write down a lot of notes and give myself a week to ponder them. Then when I go to the editing suite (or in future films, the editing laptop at the coffee shop), I would have a good idea what I wanted to see and either be surprised by the editor's current cut (sometimes a great surprise, other times a bad surprise), or just content because he saw what I saw.

I never believed that a director should edit their own film as we are just too close to the subject. Just like I believe that a parent shouldn't teach their kid in school. You know too much and you're going to hurt the film/kid in the end. Plus, you're ruining the opportunity for fresh eyes and new mentoring. If you get lucky, your editor can turn a good film into a great one, just like a teacher can push your kid to a different level of excellence. Or, that's just my belief as many directors have been able to successfully edit their own work without much suffering, so in the end I guess it's all about the individual.

BUT, in the game of short films, many have tried and I truly believe that most shouldn't have edited the film they directed. It's hard to discipline your baby when you need to, or, you're too nostalgic about what happened on set. For example, say you spent 3 hours honing a shot you loved but it just didn't work after you saw the footage. It's hard for you to throw that shot on the cutting room floor. In order to edit your directed work you have to pretend that the shoot didn't happen and it's your assignment to turn a story into the footage you've been given. That's a hard thing to do.

I remember when I was Producing big budget short films in 2003-04. One film I was working on was a crazy $50,000 budgeted film that had over 25 speaking parts. The director was a family man who directed many TV episodes back in the 1980s and was attempting to get himself back in the film industry. It had been so long, his union urged him to direct a short so he could show everyone that he still could direct. Unfortunately, he got a little too ambitious and decided to direct this Ben-Hur like short. And that he was going to edit the film too to "control his interests" and save some money. The film got done...well the shooting got done and the people who were a part of it made their money (including a sizable chunk that went to the Actor's Union), but it was such a difficult shoot that the director suffered from depression afterwards because he didn't get what he wanted. He couldn't see a great movie made out of what he shot, so he decided NOT to even edit it. But if he gave it to a creative editor, there was definitely a great movie in the footage. And there still is. It's the seeing the forest through the trees analogy. You need to hand off your baby to a trusting hand for awhile in order to see the entire forest.


When I first looked at the Start to Finish footage, I was happy that everything turned out and in focus, but of course I was disappointed. You never get exactly what you wanted. Certain things just didn't work and it had to be scraped as other things worked out great. One shot that we put in the credits of the endless stream of tree branches was an idea of my cinematographer as she just put her head out of the window while I was driving and got the shot. The Niagara Falls shots were hit and miss as we were very limited by the 8mm camera without artificial lighting. But in the end, I got enough to make a film, and that's all that you can ask.

I handed the footage off to my editor, sat for a week, and came back to see his rough cut. It was an amazing experience seeing what he put together as I actually saw the film differently than he did. Some of the stuff he did was magnificent as I wouldn't have thought of it if I sat with this footage for 20 years. Other things, I was really adamant about and some shots he didn't add I found had to go back in the film. My idea initially was to go from long shots to hard cuts, long shots to hard cuts to have a more unique tone as this was at its essence, an experimental film with a beginning/middle/end story. I wanted to make sure that people got what was happening right from the start.

We worked on the film for a few days and finally had ourselves a fine cut. Now all we had to do was the sound design and color correction. The hard work hadn't even begun.

- Matthew Toffolo