Filming was the easy part. Kyndall is a swimmer and I liked the idea of shooting at the pool. It made for some interesting shots. Although it did feel kind of weird directing her to swim around, like "Swim from here to there in a breaststroke," and "Okay, now do it again, but butterfly this time and stop right there." 'Tis the life of directing, though.
Once I sat down in the editing room, I was optimistic that I could finish in just a few hours.
Ha. Ha ha ha.
Eight hours later found me staring at the screen with glazed over eyes. Even when I closed my eyelids, I still saw the same images flashing before my eyes. Kyndall swimming. Kyndall drawing. Kyndall biking. When we filmed, I felt like I had gotten plenty of footage to use in my project, but after sitting there and watching it over and over again, it felt like I barely had enough to make it through. Maybe it was just because the clips were so short and repetitive.
The editing process itself wasn't hard, just tedious. After awhile, I got into a sort of rhythm. 5-15-5-10-5. Over and over and over again. And again. After the first three hours, I eventually memorized the exact length of a clip I needed to drag into the timeline for it to fit the number of frames. It made the remaining five hours a little bit easier.
One of the nice things was that everyone from our class was in the editing lab late, slogging away together. Even though we were all focused on our own projects and didn't speak much, it was still nice to have the company and know that we were all laboriously cutting down every clip frame by frame. A class that edits until two in the morning together stays together, am I right?
The life of an editor. Good for the screenwriter to understand for sure.
ReplyDeleteAlso, love the bonding! Good for future projects.