• About
  • Short Films
  • Contact
|Gail Hackston | WRITER DIRECTOR |
Connect with me

The Power of Editing

9/2/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
I have to confess that before I made my film, to me, the post-production process was a dark art carried out in dark rooms. As such, the whole thing filled me with dread. Having worked with Simon Reglar on the post-production for 50 Kisses, I went to ask him - once Cancer Hair had wrapped - what the devil I do next.

I’m very clear to me that my weakness as a director is my technical knowledge – ask me something about frame rates, ratio or format and I’ll turn to Isabelle my producer for a) understanding and b) reassurance that I’m choosing the right one. I know this is limiting some of my creative choices because I have to understand it first before understanding it what it means through the prism of the project.

Simon put me in touch with Dean Harding, whom he was editing Atlantis with. Dean and I met for a coffee and I am happy to say he reassured me of the process and dark art ahead. Within a week, an assembly edit had found its way into my inbox.

Assembly edits are strange beasts. They essentially take verbatim the script film and put it on screen. As a writer/director, I had to deliberately divorce the writer part of myself to keep the director part happy. Why? Honesty – heaven forefend but some of it just didn’t work.

Bottom line - You construct the final story out of the rushes you’ve got, you get the rushes by relying on the script. One thing that became very clear to us after watching that assembly edit was that the “heat” of the story was in the romance. Now the script and indeed the project had, in my writer/director mind, been geared towards female friendship and solidarity but up on the big screen it just didn’t quite work.

A deep breath taken, the cuts began

Over the process of about four weeks, we got the film from close to 11 minutes to just over 9 – which was roughly what I thought it was going to be.

This was after “locking” the film – then sending it to Chris Jones for his opinion and reopening the damn thing after a his fresh eyes found other ways to make it tighter. Arse ache though that was, the film is ultimately better for it.

Chris is great at giving straight between the eyes advice and although I didn’t take it all, the words left ringing in my ears were “Fix it now while it’s a small problem to unlock the film, rather that fixing it 6 months down the line when it’s not getting into festivals”. Ouch!

Where are we now? Well we’ve completed. We’ve locked. We have delivered. The film is now being submitted to film festivals and I am gingerly showing a few relatives and friends why I have been absent for the last year. It seems to be going down well – but the true test comes in getting entry to the festival we are applying to.

What I found in Dean during the editing process was that he was able to reassure me on the technical aspects of things without making me feel like an idiot for not knowing it.  Also, he had a natural understanding of what worked and what didn’t, seeing things that I didn’t and correcting them. This in my book is a big plus.

I’m going to be working with Dean on the next short, and from an earlier point in the process too which again I think will help tighten up some of the technical quicksand in my mind.

And here’s a recommendation for all you filmmakers out there, if you are looking for a smart up and coming editor you could do a lot worse than hooking up with Dean Harding.


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Gail Hackston is a filmmaker, screenwriter and producer. Her blog is about getting things made in the UK Film Industry.

    Archives

    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    October 2011
    September 2011

    Categories

    All
    50 Kisses
    Art
    Cancer Hair
    Crowdfunding
    Eiff
    Entrepreneur
    Filmmaking
    Invisible Girl
    Networking
    Picture
    Producing
    Recommendations
    Screenwriting
    Short Film
    Social Media

    RSS Feed

Connect with me

© IN NUCE CONTENT LTD 2014-2016