Rough Cut; or the Joys and Sorrows of Finally Looking at What You’ve Done

Well, that’s that isn’t it? I just finished the first cut of MirroLantern, and after doing some test screenings with my close confidants (my mother, father, Patrick, and Anastasia) I’m feeling wonderful. Getting a rough cut finished feels like a weight leaving my shoulders; no matter how rough the film is in it’s current iteration, I know at least that it works. Not that it works on a fundamental emotional level (yet!) but that in theory, these clips can be sequenced in such a way that the film makes sense. Having chipped away at all the excess, I feel like a sculptor slowly removing bits of stone until the final form is revealed. What I see in my timeline now isn’t pretty, and in some cases downright bad, but therein lies the paradox of a rough cut. On one hand, euphoria at having something to look at, on the other, horror at what it is you’ve done. This is the juncture at which I acknowledge what parts need work, what parts need a lot of work, and what parts need to be completely overhauled. Is this rough cut close to the final form of MirroLantern? Not even close. In a way, this rough cut has been the easy part. All the decisions so far have been large scale, choosing what takes to use and what order to put them in. But now, the hard work of diving into the minutiae begins.

That perhaps explains why I feel I am at a bit of an impasse. Where should I even begin to start working? Scene 3 has been on fire ever since I first cut it together. It’s an exterior scene where the light changes drastically between takes, so I was locked into certain editing decisions based not on performance, but on continuity. Ah, the joys of indie filmmaking! Scene 7 is one of the most pivotal in the film, but currently falls flat. I can see pieces of it’s beauty, but like a prized painting after some protestors have thrown paint on it, much work needs to be done to remove all the shit covering it.

But even the prospect of fixing these things doesn’t affect my otherwise excellent mood. It’s rare that I get to look at something this early on and like it. Sure it’s not perfect, far from it, but the images our DP Alex McClaran has crafted here are stunning. The film feels more like portraiture, character’s faces painted in soft oranges against stark backgrounds. I always marvel at Alex’s work, it’s why we’ve made so many films together. His shots are always impeccably composed, always have the perfect bit of movement, and while they are perfect they manage to stay grounded. A little camera shake, a slight breath of focus, these things make the images feel human, real.

But enough praising Alex, I do that enough as it is. I’m going to go take a walk and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.

xoxo

Dream Logic

I love editing montages, especially if they’re dreamlike, intimations of memories drifting through a character’s mind. Crossfades that suggest the slippage of time, opacity dipping in and out as moments blend into each other. There is a sequence at the end of MirroLantern where the main character stares into a fire and recalls a significant event that occurred in her past. The event changes everything and nothing at the same time, causing her to reexamine her life, turning over memories like rocks to see what creatures live beneath. But under those memories are more memories, their significance eternally in question.

Cinema can speak the language of dreams and memory better than most art forms. This can be done simply, by putting two shots together and cross-dissolving them, almost instantly conveying the passage of time. Like a dream, a film flows from one shot to the next, one location to another, drifting across time. This is one of the many reasons why I love film so much, nothing else can so closely approximate the feeling of dredging up the past and examining whatever floats to the surface. As someone who obsessively thinks of past moments, I love being able to create a character’s memories. What do they choose to remember? How do they remember it? Are the memories real or imagined? Does it matter?

Forgive me for the pretentious, overly indulgent past paragraphs. I find myself in a verbose and poetic frame of mind because I am enjoying editing this sequence so much. I get the overwhelming feeling that the film is working, it’s various parts coming together like gears in a clock, tick tick ticking time away. A few weeks ago I was concerned about coherence; would the film speak clearly, if at all? But now I’m certain I am on the right track. I can feel MirroLantern becoming something, taking shape. And I find that very, very exciting.

xoxo

Little Pictures Make the Big Pictures and Big Pictures Put the Little Pictures in Context

As I get closer and closer to a first draft edit (eight of the ten scenes are cut together) I find myself thinking about mosaics. Each shot of a film is made up of hundreds of individual pictures, and each scene is made up of shots, and each sequence is made up of scenes. Each shot is it’s own self contained bit of information, and when placed next to another shot we create context. Like a single piece of a mosaic, the big picture simultaneously informs and is informed by individual pieces. I think my approach to MirroLantern is different than my previous films. I’m trying to think about context a bit more; how do these scenes relate to each other? What feelings are evoked when we cut from one to the next? What information is relayed?

Editing a narrative film is such a different experience from any other type of editing. In most situations, the edit is subject to the whims of a client, an algorithm, an audience. Your choices are dictated by requirements placed upon you. But with a narrative film, there is none of that. The film can be what I want it to be. Shots can go on longer, shorter, scenes can be placed in different chronologies. I was talking with another artist over the weekend, an illustrator, and he asked me how I approach the seemingly infinite amount of creative decisions that constitute a film. It was an interesting question, and I didn’t really have an answer. I’ve only ever approached narrative editing how I approach hiking a big mountain. Look at how far you have to go sparingly, and instead focus on placing one foot in front of another. Sooner or later you’ll find yourself at the top, unsure of how you really got there, because the simple explanation seems absurd: you just walked.

I don’t mean to seem aloof or give the impression that I’m doing something radical. I especially don’t think my approach is novel. But I’ve been thinking more and more about the process of creation. If you’re an Artist then is everything you make art? Are all the rough drafts and wireframe edits art, or is it only the final product? I don’t feel like an artist most of the time. There is an air of self importance about the term that I don’t care for. I think if there’s one thing that I am, it’s a battering ram. I just pound away at problems until they break or I do. I don’t think anyone is born a great filmmaker; the language of cinema is too complicated to understand implicitly. But I do think that anyone can become a great filmmaker, if they just keep trying and have an eye for self critique.

That being said, I’m going to get back to smashing into all this footage.

xoxo

Finding Flow: or Shut Up and Get to Work

I’m only two scenes into editing MirroLantern but I am feeling much better now than I did a few days ago. That might be because now that the sorting and merging of clips is finished (all 497 of them!) I can sit and actually start the real work. Not that file management isn’t real work, it’s just that it isn’t very satisfying work. Finding sync points when the auto sync tool isn’t behaving is beyond tedious, requiring far too many steps and resulting in incredibly annoying clutter. But now I have that stage of the edit behind me, I find myself falling back in love with the process of editing.

I don’t remember which filmmaker said it, but there’s a well known quote that goes something like “editing is the final rewrite of the film,” and I fully agree. I don’t think I fully understand a film’s story until I take the footage into the editor and watch the scenes and cuts back to back. How do two shots feel next to each other? How do scenes interact when you put them in the same living space? I think this is where flow comes in. I mean flow both as “flow state” but also in reference to the edit.

Finding flow both in the artistic process but also in the edit is paramount. Each project requires a different approach, and you have to get yourself in tune with the material. Our previous film, Those of Us Left Behind, required a very different approach than MirroLantern. If TOULB was an elegy, then MirroLantern is a sonnet, the former a mournful reflection on the intransigence of certain memories, the latter a Shakespearean verse about the troublesome origins of legacy. MirroLantern is fundamentally a story about characters uncertain what to do with information they never should have been privy to that simultaneously recontextualizes and destroys a family’s identity.

The flow of MirroLantern’s edit, the rhythm of it’s cuts is only now slowly revealing itself to me. A certain structure is emerging, and I feel at points that I am just along for the ride, letting the footage take me where it wants to go.

Anyway, back to editing.

xoxo

Editing MirroLantern: or How Actually Cutting This Thing Together Scares the Heck Out of Me

I recently switched from editing in Premiere Pro to DaVinci Resolve. I did this for many reasons, but the main one was I was sick of paying Adobe $50 a month for software that is temperamental and prone to exploding. The whole idea of software-as-service is anti-consumer and absolutely bogus. After hearing wonderful things about Resolve, I paid the upfront cost for the program and was ready to wave goodbye to my old frenemy Premiere.

Except I forgot that learning a new NLE is like learning a new language; sure the programs functionally do the same thing just like how English and Spanish have the same words, but the process of figuring out how to speak is still time consuming and requires practice. It surprised me how something as simple as putting text on the screen could be a challenge, or how syncing audio and video tracks could send me on a thirty minute quest down YouTube Lane. Resolve is certainly a better program than Premiere, but the process of learning it has slowed down my editing efficiency massively.

I would like to believe that it’s my inexperience in Resolve that is making me hesitant to edit our new film, MirroLantern, but I don’t think it is. Sure, it might be a part of why I sit down, open the project, and feel dread, but it doesn’t explain the whole thing. See, I know from experience that I always hesitate before really jumping into an edit. I did the same thing with our 2021 film Those of Us Left Behind. We wrapped shooting on that film in August 2020, but I didn’t begin cutting it in earnest until mid September 2020. I feel as if I am standing at the edge of a really sweet pool, one with water slides and those little fountain things that squirts water everywhere, and I know that once I jump in I’ll have a grand old time playing water polo and having breath holding contests but the act of committing to it remains daunting. What could be in the water? Sharks? Beautiful fishes? My childhood best friend Carter? Anything could be in there.

Uncertainty, yes. I hesitate to jump into the edit because I know once my head is under the surface, endless challenges, difficult choices, and frustrating processes await, and I fear that I am not up to them. No matter how many projects I work on, I can never shake the feeling that I am a fraud, that I am stumbling around in the dark feeling for the solitary thread of logic that will make the film coherent. Confronting the footage that so many people worked so hard to get and realizing it’s shortcomings and its triumphs is genuinely terrifying.

But I also know that all of those things are what keep me coming back, the great joy of solving a pacing issue, or the euphoria of finding a truly bold cut. My issue is one of fixation. Once I’m in this edit it will dominate my thoughts, occupy my brain like a rowdy tenant, keeping me up late at night with it’s endless parties and stomping footsteps.

Anyway. This writing is just another excuse to not edit, so maybe I should stop messing around and do my job.

xoxo