Well, I never thought I’d say this but it finally looks like we’re finished! Fin! Fini! Forever! Well, until next semester at least anyway.
Our end product I have to admit wasn’t exactly what I was imagining at the beginning of the pre-production phase. After having created extensive storyboards, shot lists and script suggestions for the film, I had a pretty good idea about how I wanted the film to play out during the post production phase but as always, there were a few set-backs that stopped that from happening.
The first was time. Our entire film (now The Director’s Cut) lasted 8 minutes and 43 seconds. Way over the 5 minute allowance. But the problem was the only way the film could be shortened was if we went through all the dialogue sequences and sliced out individual words - the scenes were just too important to take out individually. But then we thought about the opening sequence and looked at it realistically. All it did was establish setting and reveal some aspects of Grant’s character but ultimately, we realized that’s all it did. We then decided that we could take out the entire scene (which frustratingly was the best sounding, best looking scene) without affecting the rest of the narrative. So now instead, when viewing the film, it opens onto a black screen with music from the movie playing on the TV with the titles and then fades into Grant asleep on the couch. In a weird way, I kinda like this version a little better than the original. It confuses the audience a little over just who this character is and the importance of the TV is established with it being the first sound we hear. The link the audience makes between the sound of the movie and the opening image of Grant sets up the idea that inevitably, the two will interact, which is reestablished in the second shot when we pull focus to the TV behind Grant as he’s asleep on the couch.
The second setback we encountered was the bad recording of sound for one of our clips which had to be used for a good quarter of the film. The reason why the recording was bad was completely my fault. When I exported the movie that was to be played through the DVD player, I made two versions: one with sound, one without. The reason for this was because I was thinking at the time Luke probably won’t want to hear me saying his lines but I also exported the one with sound because I thought maybe he might read the timing off me and alter his performance accordingly. Unfortunately, due to a whole load of technical issues, we only had time to put one on DVD and for some reason I put the one without sound onto it. As a result, throughout the entire clip we have of Luke interacting with Lara on-screen, you can hear me nattering away in the background. And of course being the crappy A.D I was, I totally forgot to make sure Louise had recorded wild lines with Luke. As a result of all this, we had to get Luke to come in to re-record the entire scene. The obvious problem that arrises from this of course is firstly, the recording is not made in the same ambiance as it was originally and the other thing we didn’t think about was recording from a distance to simulate the distance between Luke and the camera on the orignal shoot. Because of this, the recordings all sounded like they had been recorded in a completely different location to the film, which they had but if you’re a good filmmaker, you try to avoid your audience noticing stuff like that. Unfortunately, the only thing we could do to fix the situation was employ Arthur’s brilliant skills again to assist us in editing the sound so that it had reverberation and depth added to it to simulate the sound we had recorded in the house. It’s still obvious but as many people have said, you get over the initial shock once the scene with the re-recorded material has been playing for a while.
Whilst there may have been many things that didn’t go right in the end for the film, I still think I’m pretty happy with the end result. The colors look great, Lara and Luke are brilliant with each other and film’s conclusion has gotten everyone who’s seen it so far. I just wish that those little things mentioned above didn’t exist but hey, this is uni and it is a learning experience so I hope that next time I just remember not to make the same mistake again.
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