January 28, 2016
We have hit a rut in filming. We weren’t able to film yesterday because Patrick couldn’t be there. He had an engagement scheduled “months prior to this”. (I think it’s completely legitimate. I was just quoting him.) We lost a day which means another day in February. We plan to make it up today, but we have run into a couple of other snags. Mainly tennis.
The season is about to start. Thomas, Mayah, and I have all made the team. I didn’t realize how fast the turnaround time was for playing and we have several practices scheduled throughout the upcoming weeks. Luckily, boys’ practice begins at 5 so we may be able to wiggle in some filming today. However, girl’s practice is earlier and Mayah won’t be able to make it. Ayla says that she would cover the sound. We will lose an extra for the classroom scenes, but I think the audience will understand it as “student absence.” (Thanks Ayla!) On top of that, Thomas says he wants to leave at 4:45 so he can make it to practice on time. I hope to stay until 5 because this was schedule “month’s prior to tennis.”
I’m trying to wrap shooting as fast as possible so that we can go to our activities without worrying if we can get the film finished. Ironically, it is said activities that are keeping the film from being wrapped. I hope I can convince the cast and crew that if they invest initial time into the project, they won’t have to worry about the film anymore and they can do whatever they want after school.
In my downtime, I’ve been going through the scenes we’ve shot and assembling a rough cut. I haven’t edited something this big before so I’ve changed my method of editing. I’ve broken down each scene into its individual sequence. Once I’m done, I will put them into a Master Rough Cut sequence, export it, and get it reviewed.
I have been cutting together 3 scenes a day. However, I can’t keep that pace. Don’t get me wrong, editing is one of my favorite parts of filmmaking, but I actually needed a break. The way some scenes turned out stressed me out and I needed to take a step back. I didn’t reach my editing quota yesterday because I forced myself not to even open Premiere. I think the break helped me out a lot and once I start again, I will have no problem catching up. Of course, I have a lot of homework today, so I may need to skip today as well, but I can edit a lot over the weekend.
And in terms of the “bad scenes” I discussed earlier, if there was anything I’ve learned from previous projects, it’s not to judge the cut when the audio hasn’t been edited.
Overall, I hope we can get a great move on the movie soon. I can’t wait until the photography is done and I have all of the needed scenes. After this, it’s just me and my computer.