Production - Edit Week Review 18-24th March

Continuing on from last weeks blog, I will continue to show the updates and thought process from the edit and how we are making subtle changes to ensure the documentary continues to have the tone and style I wanted from pre-production. This week we focused on four main sequences, most of which had been recorded a while ago and recorded further fine-tuning to fit the time length for this documentary.

What's to come sequence
This was a sequence that we had planned to record a while back but due to the stressful nature of this project, it had been overlooked. After recording it recently and putting it into a timeline we needed to see if it worked. George edited it together but unfortunately, right away, we realised that this was a dull sequence which took much longer than expected as well as not having the energy or tone we were after. I take responsibility for this as I did not give this sequence as much thought due to a lack of time. Nonetheless I knew after seeing it in the timeline, edited, that it needed to be changed.

George and I had different views at first about how we should change this. I thought it could be covered in voiceover, with possible "flash forwards" being placed as visuals to the voiceover. George's plan was to shoot it while I was driving to a sequence [logically, to the Abbi Pulling interview about fitness]

At first, I was not a fan of George's idea as it would be very cinematic and I did not want a lot of the film to consist of driving shots. But after some thoughts as well as feedback from Simon and Helen I agreed with George we should film it his was. We can still make this scene visually interesting by showing shots of me changing gear, shots of the speedo etc, to diversify the scene. I now feel that this is the way forward and we will be filming this scene very soon, probably on the way to the Abbi Pulling interview, which would be true to the story!

Interviews
In our documentary, we have a number of interviews, two of which [Jamie and Bobby] are 15-20 minutes long, most of which needs to be cut. We started off with a standard cut to watch through, but over the past week we have cut them both down further but they still sat at around 3 minutes each when showing them to Simon. Our intended length was around 60-90 seconds and I firmly believed we could achieve this.

George proceeded to write a transcript for these interviews as they would help further decipher what we needed to include and what we did not. Simon mentioned in our meeting that we needed to cut the parts where Jamie speaks about himself as the story is about me and my journey, not his. After looking through George's transcript we decided what we wanted to include in the Jamie interview and George put that sequence together. I think it looked much better and was less than 90 seconds which was perfect.

As for Bobby, after Simon's feedback, we decided to remove this interview from our university cut as there were not many hard-hitting points, and as this was the purpose of this sequence, there was little point in keeping it. Whilst a harsh decision, we needed to be ruthless to get our story, and my journey, in the 20-minute timeframe. Even though Bobby was a great guy, it just didn't add enough to warrant it being in our documentary.

Overall we are very happy with the Jamie interview now and Dan's interview was always good and just needs grading before it is included. We still have the fitness interview to be shot [as our first contributor let us down on multiple occasions] but we are very happy with our replacement who is actually much more interesting and will benefit the documentary.

Introduction
Our main introduction consists of a number of scenic and drone shots that were filmed over the past few weeks. When put into a timeline it looked really good and now just needs a voiceover to work. We may decide to include some throwback and archive pictures in this opening as well, but these decisions will come later on in the edit when we have more of a structured documentary. Right now we have a cinematically pleasing start but it will be transformed once it has the voiceover. Right now I am very happy with how this sequence is looking and I am pleased with how this opening should impact on the viewer.

Race License
After feedback from Simon, we decided to take a further look at the race license scene. Our biggest issue with it is the length. To tell the story and show all the relevant footage, it has ended up being too long. Simon suggested we work hard to reduce this sequence and also look at the "I passed" moment as Wil [the instructor] does talk over me, which somewhat ruins the moment.

We are working on the latter and thinking of ways to possibly cut the part where Wil interrupts and cover it with some footage of me on track. Whether this will look odd or not, we will not know until we try it.

We are also cutting and sometimes completely removing some of the parts with me on track with Wil as some don't need to be included in their entirety. This is helping save time and not removing anything from the story. Also removing a few shots of myself and Wil speaking before I get going is helping save time.

However, the main part we have adapted and condensed is the opening. We still start in my room with me speaking, but we head to an L Cut and show me walking down the stairs, driving and arriving while I am still speaking. This means we have cut down this sequence by over half a minute and makes the scene itself more interesting. It flows better and keeps the correct tone, so this change to use a long L Cut has really helped us.

I am much happier with this sequence in its fine stage right now, but even more work on this scene will allow it to have the meaning it deserves. The addition of further audio work and music will be the catalyst for this scene having more power.

Overall, a productive week in which a lot of work was completed and I am happy to see the edit evolve at such a rate even though we have a large number of shoot dates still to come. The crew are doing a fantastic job and I feel I am doing my part as well.