Assembly

The worst part of any film is the initial assembly edit. It's all the scenes, cut long, bolted together, and it's aways hugely disappointing because it looks and sounds like shit. No matter how much you tell yourself this it still comes as a shock. And today was viewing the assemble.

On the plus side, I could see what things I wanted to change, and the film seemed to make sense, and didn't drag, but it's still a shock watching it this way. To make up for it Kevin the editor and I started work on the first proper cut right away, taking the assemble and cutting it how we wanted. At first the six weeks of edit seems a lot, but after today I think it should be about right. Progress is slow, because rather than just taking whatever is the point for the best edit, we have to cut where the best dramatic point is, and so sometimes that requires a bit of creative thinking in the edit.

Starting at the top we cut the opening walking scene quicker, which works, then put jump cuts in the first hall scene, which seems to work just fine. After that we added the first title card, which not only had the desired effect, it also allowed us to slow down the office scene for more drama, which in turn lead to the first exterior scene working better. By this time it was six o'clock so we finished for the day, very happy with what we've achieved. Tomorrow we'll start on the first gig scene, and we'll see just how happy and cocky we are after that. Less so, I imagine. And that's why we've got six weeks.