Two weeks ago, I wrote about a rough-cut screening and the feedback that came out of it. I’d been toying with the idea of handing the edit over to a professional editor, thinking their experience – and a fresh pair of eyes – might bring it to life. Unfortunately, the guy I had in mind has too much work of his own, so it was down to me and I felt a bit swamped.
The general consensus from the screening was that, once past the first hour, the audience was engaged, but it took far too long to get going, and there were too many threads in play.
I tinkered around here and there before hitting on the idea of grouping scenes by location, pulling similar settings together. I ran this past Google Gemini and, for the first time, it flatly rejected my idea, suggesting I do virtually the opposite – organise the film not by location but by emotional charge. Of course.
Of course, of course!
I saved the old version and resolved to take a far more ruthless approach with the new cut. I reworked the first half of the film, ignoring continuity issues. (I’m learning that these are often not as critical as one imagines). I set about trimming back, if not mercilessly, then certainly more assertively. I think in the past I’d erred on the side of caution; this time, if I feel something should go, I’ll cut and be damned.
Editing can be a fairly lonely process, and after a while, I’d had enough of it. But by the middle of last week, I got my second wind. I’d wanted a fresh eye, and in a way I’ve managed to give myself one. I began to see that my earlier cuts had been way too slow. Too methodical. Too unthinking. By then, I was spotting it in nearly every scene. There was too much redundant dialogue left in. One scene in particular is meant to jolt the audience, but was flagged during the test screening as needing more punch. I went back and tightened it considerably, cutting it from nearly 3 minutes to around 1 minute 40.
I’d also been wrestling with continuity in a couple of scenes. Another conversation with Gemini re-framed that entirely. It suggested treating it not as a problem but an opportunity to introduce some disruption. With that in mind, I hacked away at the scene, then brought in some takes I’d previously thought unusable. By the end of the week I’d reduced the runtime from 2 hours 7 minutes to 1 hour 53.
There is still a chance a couple more scenes might have to go, though I hope not. More work is needed, but I feel I’m making progress.
Then on Saturday, I turned my attention to prepping my spare room to double as a call centre for a pick up shot. “Impossible!” you might say? It turns out it’s not. I picked up a useful lesson from my DOP: it doesn’t matter what the whole room looks like, only what you can see through the lens. So, with an 80mm portrait lens and a shallow depth of field, the background falls out of focus. All I needed then was to get the right colours and shapes in place. Fingers crossed, I think I’ve done it.
Tasks for next week: schedule the pick-up shots and carry on with this more ruthless edit. I’m still not entirely certain that I’m fixing all the issues raised after the test screening, and I still may have to hand over to a professional editor for the final pass. But, for now, I’ll see how far I can get with this version myself.
Cave Art 