Documentary Edit: Update

Tonight I spent another three hours working on the rough cut of our rock climber documentary.  It is now at a stage where it has a definite shape and flow.  Although there are still many, many points that need sorting.  It is nowhere near finished but I am happy at the progress we have made.

Tonight I altered the speed and saturation on the bedroom clips and I slowed down minute beginning and end frames of the on screen interview clip so that it has a bit of a run in and doesn't cut away too quickly.  (I know I said that I didn't want the climber on screen being interviewed but I thought I would try it when he is talking about the damage to his hands and it fits really well as it references the close up of his hands in the previous bedroom scene.)  I also linked the sections for the different climbs and arranged them so that the continuity of the climb ie, how far the climber had gotten at each cut, made sense.

In an effort to provide a connection between the audience and the subject I used the footage of him falling off his several practice climbs.  This was quite nice footage as it makes him more human and it catches him smiling.

I have deliberately used the scene in the bedroom with the sun lens flare from the window.  In colour it looked awful but I slowed it down and made it black and white and it made a nice intro into the arty black and white sequence.

I have also deliberately put together three pan shots.  I wasn't sure if it would be too much at first but I remembered reading in Scorsese on Scorsese how (inspired by Vincente Minelli) Martin Scorsese cut together tracking shots in New York, New York so that it seemed like a dance, he also used it with the pool table scenes in The Color of Money.  So I thought I would give it a try.  I will discuss this, and the other decisions I've made with Alex and we will review them together to see if we keep them in.

I wasn't able to put the music tracks down today as the internet connection was down on the mac in the edit suite so I will have to do that tomorrow.

All in all I feel I've done a good night's work and that we have a decent rough cut to show tomorrow.

I know that there is a lot of work still to be done, especially on the sound, and the colour correction of some clips, and there is a clip that I have used that has another person in shot which I didn't intend so I will have to replace that clip.   

A major problem that I encountered tonight was the fact that the machines were running extremely slow.  It took a long time for Final Cut to do the simplest of tasks.