And I'm Spent...

Final edit of Little Things is done.

Spent the day in front of the computer. 

Some parts are not as good as I'd have liked, some are better than I could have hoped for. 

Just waiting on my score now and the film will be done, then maybe you can all have a look.

Bolloxed now.

Rough as a Bears Arse

Those of you that follow me on Facebook and Twitter, which is probably most of you, will know that this weekend I finished the first rough cut of Little Things. There are some bits of tidying up to do and the sound needs an overhaul, but as a rough cut, I'm really proud of the result.

As it stands, the cut is very close to the script. That'll be the result of me being the writer, director and editor. I've had this film made in my head for a long time, writing and storyboarding it were a method of showing other people what the film in my head was. Shooting it, was just collecting the elements of the film together and editing it was just trimming out the bits that weren't needed. So now I have a close representation of the film I've been imagining for about a year and a half. Advantage of this is that "Little Things" will eventually be exactly the film that I wanted to make.

Disadvantage of this is that if "Little Things " is shite, then it's entirely my fault. Scary thought.

Next steps. Firstly, music. As it stands at the moment, the music in the rough cut are Radiohead and Elbow songs. These convey the moods nicely, but I would never get clearance to use them in a public performance in a million years. I've handed a copy to my brother in Dublin who is showing the rough cut to the guys from I Phoenix who are composing the music. While my brother is pestering one audio artist I will be pestering another. I'll be cajoling some time from Arun my sound engineer mate to give the audio a clean up.

I'm also trying to get some people who are involved in the film industry to have a look at the film. Not as self promotion, I just need someone to have a look at the film objectively who can give me some advice about where I can trim fat.

While all this is going on I'm now going to bribe my cast and crew. If you are a member of the cast or crew and would like to see a rough cut, then I would be happy to show it to you....on condition that I procure from you one guest blog post.

I shall continue to stare at my empty inbox....

Channelling Kev'

it took ages to set up all the bottles to film Chris's real -world game of Pac-Man

I'm Back!!

Apologies to you all for my absence of late, that has been largely down to any time in front of a computer being dedicated to editing Little Things. That and it's a difficult time of year, those of you that either know Rach and I personally or read my other blog will understand why. 

I've suffered some setbacks. I was using our old family PC to edit the flick. When the footage was fine, there was no issue, but where I needed to tweak lighting or colour or sound, it fell on its arse. So a new tool was required for the job. Enter Mister Steve Jobs and the mighty iMac. The new machine was ordered a couple of weeks ago and whilst awaiting it's arrival I called a temporary hiatus on editing. So in the meantime I started listening to Kevin Smith's podcasts in the hope that I would become more well informed about the process of producing indie movies on a limited budget. I'm not. I am more will informed about sucking dick.

The editing hiatus has proved to be a sensible decision as now that the iMac is here, no amount of jiggling about with things has allowed me to get the existing edit files to work with the new machine, possibly due to the questionable origin of the editing software. In the absence of an alternative solution, I shouted at the screen a lot. Then I had a decision to make.

Option 1 - go back to the old computer. Well that would defeat the object of getting the new computer and more crucially might cause my wife to murder me.

Optioin 2 - I trawl the internet for solutions to the problem. Well I'm not techie enough to even know what I'm fucking looking for so that could take forever

Option 3 - Start over. Unappealing as that may have sounded, it would probably be less time consuming, that and I could un-fuck some of my early editing mistakes

So I started over. And you'll be happy to hear that because I know a little more about what I'm doing I have now nearly caught up with where I was before my upgrade. 

I have set myself a pretty tight deadline. Early submissions for the Edinburgh Film Festival ends on the 4th of December. I want to get an edit done, in enough time that I can show it to someone who knows more than me and tell me if Little Things is good enough for it to be worth my while entering. So with only a couple of weeks to edit the flick this is probably the last you'll hear from me for a little while. So in order to keep things going I am putting out a request for guest posts. Cast and crew, I know most of you read this so, please, your two cents would be appreciated. Even if you were one of the guys who was only there for part of one of the days, I'm sure the rest of the interweb that read this would love to hear from you.

I will sit and stare at my inbox awaiting responses.

PS - Peter. Not you.

A Little Treat

Hi All


You'll notice that my posts have been conspicuous by their absence lately. To be honest that isn't likely to change any time soon. However I have a little treat for you all. I have taken some time out from the serious editing to...
...well to piss around for an evening. So here for your viewing pleasure is a selection of out-takes from the Little Things shoot.


My cast may not forgive me


Enjoy


Mark

The Opening Sequence

It may be a while before we hear from Mark again, seeing as how every spare minute of his time is now taken up with editing Little Things, so I’m taking up the blogging reins again. A lot of what follows is a second hand account of the editing process, but I think it’s interesting enough to post anyway.

Mark’s been in pretty close contact with me about how the editing is going and thus far it seems mostly positive. The catalyst of today’s post is the completed rough cut for the opening.It’s a montage sequence showing the life of the main character across a couple of days leading up to the beginning of the story. A few scenes of him at home and working late, culminating in him waiting in the park for a friend he’s meeting.

I wasn’t present for the shooting of these scenes as they were done after the manic weekend shoot, so this was all new material for me. Mark filmed these snippets of Leonard’s life with a minimal crew (i.e. just him and Chris the lead actor) and they turned out very well.

Pacing of the film very much came into play however. When Mark first cut the sequence together it came in at about four minutes, which is quite a lot when you consider that eleven minutes is the target maximum for the whole movie. So instead Mark started cutting short ten to twelve second clips out of the scenes and cross fading them over each other, which has worked very well. In under two minutes the main character is introduced, the loneliness of his everyday life is revealed and we see the setup for him meeting his friend in the park.

As a placeholder the sequence has been set to “Mirrorball” by Elbow, which fits the tone of the opening very well, low and melodic but punchy enough to keep pace with the quick cuts. I’ll be showing the clip to Kevin from I Phoenix this week to showcase what Mark has done so far and the tone that he’s hoping for from the score. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about scoring next week.

Overall I’m personally really impressed with what Mark has managed to achieve with meagre resources, finances, sense and sanity. We’ve included some screenshots from the sequence with this post, but because Mark is hoping for eligibility for festivals we can’t post the whole sequence yet. However for those of you in Dublin I have it on my phone so feel free to accost me in the street[1] and demand to see it.

That’s about all for the moment. Check back for some more updates on scoring and editing.

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[1] Please don’t accost me in the street.