Little Successes

Yay!!

I finished the first dinner scene!  ("finished")  I can't tell you how relieved this makes me!  Yay!

I will probably go back and tweak it again, eventually, but for now - it plays all the way through from Bill's "Heyyy - there she is!" to Amy's "Oh shut up."  For the time being, I even left the cheer at the very end of the take on it (RJ and I in particular burst out with joy that we got all the way through the scene -- only Bill is thoroughly unamused because he realizes that we skipped the song, somehow -- but only in that take, not on my "timeline," so ten years later, the cheer is well deserved). 

Now I move on to the Skip Gates (who should probably have been Cornell West -- confused my Black intellectuals alienated by Harvard U) dream discussion and Marissa's recognition of Larry.  Wow, I will be glad when this whole dinner sequence is DONE -- five people talking is tough to edit.

I am rather re-impressed with this whole minute-per-page dealio.  I had five and a half pages of the dinner scene; I cut out the bit about "serendipity," which was about a half a page, and the scene turns out to be five minutes long.  Amazing!  Nice.  If it keeps up like that, I'll hit all my formulaic page-marks.

The different color temps and exposures are really something though.  The light on Sarah's CU is bright and white, while Larry's is so dark it was almost unusable.  Most of the others are just too yellow.  I've done a little color correcting, but I am trusting that eventually we'll have someone who really will know how to make them all match.  Fingers crossed.

Pleeeeeased with the progress though -- although worried a little that I won't make my deadline.  We'll see.

Naked Doorways

Okay - I know I said I was going to move on to that important Marissa-breakdown scene, but I just haven't had the stomach for it.  So - back to the 1st dinner scene it is.

I hate editing.  Just so we're clear.

Anyway, this scene was particularly hard -- not just because of the nature of it (lots of reverse angles), but because of the way we shot it.  It's a great example of how breaking the 180-degree rule can cause problems.

Watch the video first.  It's a little less than a minute.

As Larry approaches the hallway to try to find the bathroom to wash his shirt, the camera follows him from behind.  He leans a little to screen-left to be able to peek through a door that's slightly ajar. Then we cut to the reverse angle in order to see his face as he peers into the room -- but we've crossed the 180/vector line, so he is now leaning toward screen-right.  Generally one would want to cut on motion (i.e., cut away from the shot of the back of him when he's mid-lean, and then show his face for the rest of the lean, to complete the motion process) -- the motion helps hide the cut from the viewer's attention ("motion draws the eye," right class?) -- BUT what happens here?  He is leaning to the left - cut - leaning toward the right!  So if we cut on motion, it will be jarring because it looks sort of like he's changing direction.  So I tried to cut it as close to his "rest" as I could -- but THEN, of course, he sees Marissa by accident and jumps and ducks off to the bathroom - toward screen left.  I need to show him going into the bathroom because we then see him in the bathroom, but when I cut back to the angle we shot from behind him, the bathroom is on his and screen right!  Rrrgh!

So this is what I came up with -- using the takes we had, which is also a factor:  in some takes he flinches more physically than others; in some takes he "rests" longer as he looks; in others, he leans farther.  Also, the shots of him from behind are the same shots as the ones when Marissa exits the room, so there are considerations there.  She is sometimes more visible as we approach the room than other times.   You can hear Greg and me discussing this, and there are some rehearsal takes to try to work it all out, but we never quite got it _all_, and we never indicate on tape that we were aware of the leaning-direction problem.

Also, there's the issue of how far away the camera is that is supposed to be representing their POV.  The angle of the POV has to match the shot of their face in terms of how far away the object of their vision is.  So -- for example -- I liked the close up of Marissa best, but her wider POV shot best -- but I can't use both together because they DON'T MATCH.

Anyway - as I said - this is what I came up with. 

I would LOOOOOOOVE it if several people commented and said something about what level of success this version has achieved.  I've lost perspective.  Does it work?  AT ALL?  Is the shot of the doorway from Marissa's POV even intelligible?  What would make it better?  (you can comment without a Blogger acct very easily, just choose "url/name" when it asks you to identify yourself and then type in your name)

Please comment.  I hate editing - have I mentioned?  Company - even virtual - would make things so much better.  Maybe I'd procrastinate less.  I ain't too proud to beg, sweet darlin'. 

Why is the lemonade full?

Here - I thought this might amuse you.

(this is "Sarah" at the first dinner, setting up the "woo-woo" conversation)

Love,
Rachel

On Directorial Acting (& Update)

I had a tough few weeks and didn't edit for a bit, but I'm back to it now. 

Before I gave up for a spell, I had started the first dinner scene.  I did the beginning:  Marissa tries to get Bill to help her figure out what to wear; Sarah arrives and confers with Bill about weight gain; Amy and Larry arrive with a blotchy shirt and juice; Marissa and Larry accidentally see each other half-undressed; Marissa refuses to tell Sarah where she's been; food arrives (I cut around "Get it while it's hot!" - we'll see if it works) and they all sit; Marissa asks Larry if they've met before, he says no, and Amy says he plays piano at the Fielding, which Sarah then explains is run by "fucking union busters," to which everyone responds, and she expounds. 

Actually, the latter is a really good example of why I SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN A ROLE but should have stayed on the "other" side of the camera.  Because I didn't realize that Bill and Marissa were sort of poo-pooing Sarah for this statement and her following explanation about how the hotel operates in a union-busty way.  Amy should have been the only one who was unsympathetic, thus marking her very early on as  something of an outsider.  Bill says "uh-oh," when Sarah curses, but this should not have been derisive of her main point in any way, only of her generally "angry and shit" attitude (already alluded to in the Davis Square scene); he doesn't want it to derail his pleasant dinner party.  There should have been no eye-rolling as she proceeded to explain herself, more concern that she not go too far into uncomfortable topics.  And Marissa's response, "Unfortunately that's pretty common nowadays" was meant to show that she is knowledgeable about such things herself -- she's joining in _with_ Sarah -- but it comes across as if she is implying that Sarah is getting upset over nothing.  Larry makes a good "Huh" noise (as in, "I just learned something interesting") but it's inaudible in some takes, and I can't cut to a CU there because that would over-emphasize the importance of the moment (viewers might then log away a mental note that Larry is becoming politicized about his job and expect this to be a developing subplot).  SO it ends up being _Sarah_ who leaves this moment as the alien, as it were, while Amy ends up emotionally grouped with Marissa and Bill.  Darn!  If I had not been _acting_, I would have noticed this. 

Also - I would have realized that we needed one more take of me singing (yegads) because we only got one and it doesn't work.  Trying to cut around it.

All that is, as I say, a good example of what I meant about a lesson that I have learned in watching this footage.  Keeping track of all those _little_ moments (for this exchange about the hotel really is a _little_ moment) so that they all add up to the right sum is what a director needs to be able to do well.

Anyway -

I've decided that I've been procrastinating getting back into editing because I'm bored of the dinner scene  ("Uh-oh," says Bill).  So rather than keep avoiding it and doing no editing, I am going to move to a more interesting scene.  I think I'll try the Marissa freak-out scene.  Christine and Kevin and crew will remember that this is the scene we shot twice, i.e., on two different days because the light and the blocking were somehow off - ?  It's a very emotionally intense scene and both actors were fabulous troopers about it all, staying committed as best as they could.  

I am going to do this scene next, A) because I'm curious about it, and B) because it really is Marissa's big turning point and the dialogue in it probably gets at the point of the movie better than any other single scene.  If I can get a decent cut of it together, it's something that I will be able and willing to post here and share more widely than the other scenes I've cut so far.  That is, it has a potential "P.R." quality.  We'll see.  It may be that once I get into looking at the footage I realize that it's too important a scene for such an amateur as myself to handle.  I'll let you know.