Friday, July 26, 2013

IN THE SHADOWS OF NOVEMBER EDITING WEEK 3

I took advantage of my vacation year starting over and took some time off from work and spent three days editing for 4 hours a day.  I've got 8 scenes down and it clocks in at 15:05 as it is. In theory it supposed to translate at one minute of screen time for one page of script.  At this rate it's just a bit more than one minute per page.  
The only major change I've made was to swap some of the scenes around.  Three of the characters have scenes outside of the main building where the story takes place so I could poke around and give the viewer a hint of what the world they are living in is like.  Originally it was two drama heavy scenes then a third lighthearted scene.  I swapped the last two scenes because I thought it would balance the feel a bit better.  They also give me a chance to slow the pacing down a bit. It just feels like it's going so fast.  Spent about 45 minutes editing one of the few exterior scenes into a series of 12 cuts.  Watched it and realized I was doing it completely wrong and found the best take so it's now in one shot with a very short insert.  When it's said and done it really comes off as a much more personal conversation between two characters.
Also edited the first of only two scenes that involve green screen.   I have the basics down and got everything across in the scene it needs but need to try and expand it a bit later.  We took some footage of Jenn facing the green screen and delivering her lines.  My goal is to get just one shot of the two actors together, even though there's 4 months between the actual shooting.  It'll take a great deal of time, trial and error to get it right but my goal is to have a video edit done first.  That way I can pass it on the two people who, hopefully, will do the music and then work on the details.  Same thing with turning the video we shot during the day into night scenes.  I found a tutorial on how to do it with Adobe After Effects but it's a complicated process so I'll do it in the second draft of the edit.
For the most part the scenes I've edited remain very close to the written page.  Twice I changed the dialogue order to flow better and there were a few lines I got rid of.  Also have to admit there was one cringe worthy line of dialogue I took out.  I'm sure there was some logic when I wrote it but once I actually heard it and saw it I just shivered.  Luckily none of the other actors in the scene reacted to it so it was easy to remove.  
Plan is to take a few days away from it, nothing this weekend, then go over two evenings next week.

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