After having changed my idea for the scene, I had laid down a very good rough cut incorporating the new idea for David's drinking and for Alf and Jane to get close.
I had spent the afternoon sourcing classical music, royalty free and free of charge. I managed to find a really good website that has a library of music performed by amateur orchestras and performers that want to share their music for free. The website is called musopen.org and it is a free, non profit making resource designed specifically for sharing music so that it can be enjoyed for free, and used in different projects. As long as the user doesn't offer the recording for sale as an item and try to profiteer from it, then the music can be used in projects and educational material. The range of musical ability of the performers that have shared their recordings on the site goes from the wonderfully amateur to very strong orchestras such as the US Army Orchestra.
For more contemporary music, I also found the site http://www.pacdv.com/sounds/free-music.html which offers a similar resource but provides music written and performed by the site owners. They have recorded pieces that suit various moods and scenes such as; lonely, scary and romantic, such as 'Lover's Walk'.
In my final cut I trimmed the clips to get the timings right. I had to switch a couple of clips with others in the bin as the eyelines didn't quite line up in a sequence, and by using footage from before the clapperboard I got some really nice, natural, relaxed footage that worked really well for the part where the dinner is in full swing and everyone is enjoying themselves.
By doing this dinner scene the way I have, I have made a nice self contained clip but it does deviate quite a lot from the script. I have Alf and Jane getting together a lot quicker than in the script, which I think makes sense, as they are already co-conspirators at the table over the issue of not eating beef and then later touching hands over chicken. By leaving out the part about "Tell us about the awful milkman" [sic] the omission of which doesn't affect any other storyline in the script because we, the audience, weren't aware that Jane had already mentioned anything to Sandra about the milkman, it means that Alf and Jane get together nicely in a relaxed setting with David being made out to be the fool in the group not Alf (which makes Alf a lot more personable and less of a buffoon, and a lot more likely to be attractive to Jane).
In the final cut I organised the sound so that when Alf is talking about not eating beef we are actually looking at Jane's expression as she listens, and understands what he is saying. I also had to make decisions about what sounds should be left in during the eating. I left some ambient noise in that was obvious to the visual, such as Sandra's cutlery clanging and the sound of the chicken ripped apart, but I took the sound out in other places where I didn't think it fitted, or was necessary, for example, when David is wine tasting, he makes a horrible slurp sound which wasn't necessary and was distracting if left in.
I also retained some of the natural 'off camera' dialogue and laughing as this made the party seem real, and therefore, the relationship between Jane and Alf seem real. After all, the legend says that there must be 'truth in comedy'.
To make a happy ending, and achieve the 'Ahhh' factor, I put the last four clips of the film at slower speeds. These clips focused first on Sandra laughing, then on David toasting the happy couple of Alf (aka Winston) and Jane (who, remember, David and Sandra had already presumed were together for a while) and then the happy couple themselves, who had actually just clicked over the course of dinner after a shaky start.
I think the revised idea works really well. I have managed to make David seem stingey with the wine and everyone else find that amusing, as well as bring Alf and Jane together naturally.
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