Production - Edit Week Review 25th - 31st March

We had another very productive week of editing in which we focused on three main sequences. These were, the diary room, the sequence with my Dad and karting and which all had a lot of attention this week.

Diary Room
After re-filming the Diary Room after some feedback from Simon I was really excited to get this edited. George did a great job with it and the four camera shots enabled him to have a diverse range of options with the edit. I was a big fan of the ultra wide shot that I planned for this reshoot and Simon agreed that it was powerful and especially good because it showed the garage and enforced the mise en scene that we had set out throughout the garage.

The mixture of four shots along with my better presentation really meant the Diary Room was vastly improved over its initial version. The lighting and mise en scene meant I was immensely proud of how this scene looked and felt. I am very happy to have made the decision to re-film this and I feel it will benefit the production.

When Simon saw the edit he really liked George's cut and I agree that it works much better. He suggested that we cut down the final one because it does go on for quite a long time. This could dislodge the momentum built through our documentary, especially as this would be towards the end.

I worked with George and we decided to remove a few of the discussion points [pictures] as we both felt that some did not add that much to the story. In doing so we drastically reduced the length of the sequence but when we show it to Simon he may suggest going even shorter. Personally, I do not want our sequences to become too short as then we have the possibility of our sequences being jumpy and all over the place. The rest of the Diary Room looks great and I am really happy.

Simon suggested that we could use some of the Diary Room to spin off into other segments [eg. Karting] but we have not yet tested this to see if it would work. It would also end up with us going back to the Diary Room much more than I would have liked as these are supposed to be special sequences. I feel the more times we visit it, the less impact they have. However, I am more than willing to test this idea as it could work really well.

Sequence with Dad
Over the weekend we had filmed the sequence with my Dad and as we were almost caught up with all of our shoot dates, Cailan could get to work on this edit. It was a short sequence, one that did not need any shortening, but one that did need a lot of time spent on sound design and shot choices.

We had four cameras to use and all of them did get used in Cailan's edit. I was a fan of the track and dolly shot but I agree with George that it was used a bit too much. As for the audio, camera quality and scene length it was perfect. It was a really great little scene and I am very proud of my Dad for doing this because I know he hates being on camera.

In my personal opinion, I felt that the music for this scene did not work. For a scene that was supposed to be happy and remembering good times, I felt the music was somewhat sad. Both George and Cailan disagreed with me and I did not have much choice but to stick with the music as even after trying new music they still believed that the original music worked best. I am happy to agree with them as we are a group and we need to do what is best for the project and if the team thinks this is best then we should stick with it.

Overall this sequence is in a really good place and just needs a little more work to ensure we don't use the track and dolly shot too often as it could lose its effectiveness. Typically this scene still needs to be graded, but the music and sound design are pretty much where it needs to be.

Karting sequence 
Simon reviewed Cailan's edit of the karting sequence and agreed with the opinion of the group. While it is exciting and nice to see the karts, it doesn't really work as a sequence within the documentary as it currently stands.

I think Cailan did a great job to edit in my answers between the race footage in a montage but I agree with Simon that the journey I am on isn't really affected by what I say in this sequence, especially as I repeat a lot of what is said in this sequence in the much more powerful Diary Room sequence later on.

As Simon says, we should attempt to put some of this karting footage over the top of one of the Diary Room sequences and see if it makes that particular sequence a little more powerful. If this does not work, in my opinion, we should use this footage in a sting, counting down to the race as karting provides a part of my learning experience.

These stings which "hype" up the final race and build intensity will be vital in this documentary portraying a challenge. These still need to be edited as they require a large amount of GFX which Cailan has not had time to work on yet. When we have an idea at how the GFX will look we can start to edit these sequences.

I would be disappointed to lose the karting sequence, however, as we spent a lot of time gathering all of the footage. But if it does not add enough impact, then we need to cut it as we are already very tight on time and tough decisions like these needed to be made. I am sure we can use the footage elsewhere and it will still have an impact on this documentary.

Very happy with the progress made this week and I am excited to go further into the edit next week, as we are now only just over a week away from the final few filming days and the big race. A very exciting few weeks are ahead and we can be proud of the scale of this project and how we have tackled it.