So, Lachlan and I have been logging insane hours trying to piece (by piece) together How Socrates Bought the Farm now that we’re in the post production editing phase of things. You think when faced with doing a rough cut, it’d be pretty straight forward. Wrong! First we had to sync the footage together with the audio that’s recorded separately. Syncing isn’t difficult, it’s just time consuming. Then we had to export the files (confession: I don’t really even know what exporting something means! Saving it maybe? Lol. I’m in trouble when my prof reads this.) Exporting was painfully slow because of using such a high resolution camera. But after everything had been exported, the cut and pasting could begin! But it’s actually a pretty complicated process because we have to try to figure out what takes work best in terms of a) acting, b) camera angle, c) focus, d) sound, and e) continuity… and probably a whole pile of other things that I’m forgetting right now. Finding a take that scores highly on all of those gradients is very difficult. And you have to remember that viewers now a days are used to a very high level of visual stimulation. No one wants to watch one continuous take. So even if you do find a good piece, chances are…that’ll only hold anyone’s interest for a small period of time. The audience wants to be shown as many vantage points as possible without the jump in position feeling awkward because otherwise they get taken out of the story. IT’S A MULTITASKING NIGHTMARE! But, when it works and you do manage to string a series of shots together as seamlessly as possible you land up doing a little dance in your seat! But most of the time you’re shushing people around you in the computer lab while loudly cussing yourself and sporadically slamming your fist down on the table to get some small sense of accomplishment. Ok, that was a little bleak.
Moving on!
Lachlan and I have done several reworks since our original rough cut and so now, after class today, we’re swapping the footage that we’ve been working on. After spending just under two weeks working and reworking the same footage, our stamina is fading, so we’re swapping it up. In other words, we get to play around with each others work (Lachlan’s probably sweating about it RIGHT NOW).
Truth is, I’m sweating the swap too.
Wil