Thoughts for the day

Sadend

But what a life he had, if I get to enjoy life doing what I love half as much as sir Boby did, then what a fricken brilliant life!

Laters,

Chalkster

OR AN AXE

Yesterday, myself and the Tom’s went out on a mini shoot, the idea to get our incidental sounds.  We used a 20 year old Mercedes and an Axe. The axe was for the choping sounds and the car, well that was for car sounds.  What a huge amount of fun using an Axe, making cars sound like racing cars, squealing wheels, and fast breaking.  If work could be this much fun all the time!

Today

That was for the credits, and what a lot of them there are considering  how this is a short film.  I can only imagine that as we get bigger then the cast and crew list will expand exponentially.  It’s soooo impressive the hard work that people have put into this.  I also think that we have come up with something that is pretty fucking good too.

So it’s all up to the Toby Monster now!

And I am sure that my man will not let me down.  It’s on days like this that I love life!

Laters,

Chalkster!

Rough Edit

The thing is, I’m a Writer Director and I can do a little bit of most things; I understand light, sound, camera angles, I can act a little bit, I generate ideas and I can write a good structure.  More importantly when I set my mind to it I can finish writing too.  One of the things that we have been short of in the past is a quality editor.  So about a year ago I took a basic course, as it happens I have a good eye for detail and am fairly natural when it comes to editing, even if I am a bit ‘messy’ and disorganised. Enter Tom [well don’t enter him, I don’t think he would like that at all].  A Friend, a fellow Ford Capri Owner & all round nice guy.  He lives two doors down from me and is a real editor.  A very, very good one as it turns out.

The point of all of this?

Ah yes, so I did this rough edit, I find it’s the easiest way to get my thoughts out, and give the basic feel to a film.  And I then carefully select or drunkenly invite any number of people to view.  I sit them down and explain that I’m not an editor, and that yes it is a very, very rough edit.  So far only a few people have got ‘it’, it frustrating that when you ask for opinions you actually get the majority of people thinking that they could make a better film then you, and make a whole host of uneducated [in film only] suggestions, that are blatantly not helpful.Another lesson learned.  None of the comments are negative, just not very useful.  But you then get the odd insightful and even more occasional detailed and well thought out constructive criticism, which makes you think.

 It was with that in mind 

That I approached the Final ‘Visual’ edit with Tom.  I had my concerns, I was to direct his edit and risk friendship meltdown.  It is not often that people click together in these processes, they tend very much to stomach each other.  So it was with pleasant surprise that we slipped into a rather good working relationship.  The other really important thing was Tom’s utter no nonsense organisation.  As this is a second job for Tom it has taken a while but last night, we pretty much finished the look of the film, or the edit structure.  It now needs to be color matched and the sound tidied up, incidentals and surround sound put in, then over to Sir Toby to add the music score.  Perhaps another two weeks and we are done as they say in France.

And the thing is 

The last edit was I would say a little over average for a short film.  I’m not blowing my own trumpet, not really.  We are all very serious about being filmmakers, and we have all put a lot of hard graft into learning how to do it.  And understanding what it is we are doing. ~But it looks pretty fucking good now as it happens.  For those of you that have seen the rough edit [and thank you for all the feedback, even the frustrating stuff!  It is very much appreciated, not matter how negative I sound about it!], we have a substantially improved film.  Thanks to the feedback and Tom and my effective working relationship.  It’s left me excited about this film, and what the future holds!

And that is all she wrote,

Laters,

Chalkster