Monday, March 9, 2009

Spring Break Day One


It's official: I have a cold. I am feverishly blowing my nose and staying in my pajamas all day. I don't have much energy, but I see this as a good thing because it's forcing me to sit at my computer and work on my film.

Today I went back through the first five minutes of YCC and discovered two important things:
1). It needs more energy
2). It needs more structure
These are two things that most documentaries need when they are first being born, I think. So, I made notes for Tim where I think it drags. Then, I went and found more sound to give it more structure. I still struggle with inserting new clips without making the whole sequence go haywire...knocking things out of place, unsynching the audio, etc. If anyone reading this has any suggestions, please let me know. For now, what I do is make a copy of the project and fiddle around with the copy. Then I show Tim the copy and he "does it" to the original. I know there must be better ways to operate. It's a good thing brain surgeons don't work this way.

This evening I made several index cards and placed them on the piano in my edit pit:
First card: Central Organizing Principle: Talent and Perseverance lead to Creativity and Success
Second card: Act one must answer two important questions: What is going on here? Why does any of this matter?
Third card: Act 1A: The workshop (list of elements follows)
Fourth card: Act 1B: The rehearsal (list of elements)
Fifth card: Act 1C: The concert (list of elements)
The end of Act 1 will be Stella Sung taking a bow. I've decided I need just a few title screens for transitions. I still like the idea of a "young famous composer history" at the beginning and I have two students trying to find me drawings/photos for that.

It was definitely worth taking a day just to observe, take notes, organize and regroup. This spring break is going to go by very fast.

1 comment:

chris walker said...

my editor and I work like this actually. I have my own assistant edit project file and give him the project file with the sequence and he look at it and take from it.

the problem you are having with your timeline could be a number of things (making insert edits rather than overlay/audio not being paired to video/ect)