Building the Story...

The editing process offers a new way to tell the story.

Once the production is complete and the post production is set in motion, a new process for telling the story begins...

Carefully looking at all the footage, considering all the takes for each shot, the task of putting the story together was laid before me. I started out by assembling the shots according to the screenplay. This would build a foundation for the final edit.

The rough cut that I assembled during the production did not include careful consideration of every take.  I had several takes for each shot, which warranted further review. I completely scrapped my original "rough cut", deleted it, then started from scratch. I then embarked on to the process of reviewing each take as I put the scenes together again, one scene at a time. The movie began to take a crude shape...

Based on feedback from my original "rough cut" and my own reactions to seeing the story played out, I was inspired to take a different approach to the timeline from the original script.  I started out by presenting the story in a non-linear fashion, mixing up the scenes and shortening them, distinguishing them with "title" screens.  I ended up with a somewhat disjointed story in the beginning, which I considered as a puzzle taking shape through the course of the movie. Eventually, during the editing process, I began to unravel this puzzle, rearranging the disjointed scenes back to a more linear presentation.

Eventually, I focussed on refining the edit, going through each scene to make timing decisions about how each shot would lead to the next shot.  I had to ask myself which character I would show at which moment during the dialogue, when to cut, when to use transitions, and how to set the pacing for each scene.  While the pacing for each scene was originally dictated by the script, then by the performances, the editing process provided the opportunity to refine the timing of each moment in the story.

With most of the scenes polished enough to represent a general mood for the movie, I began to reconcile my original vision with the movie that was taking shape.  The overall presentation was slowly coming into focus.

While many wrinkles in the overall flow still exist, they are gradually beginning to smooth out as I refine, massage, and polish each of the edits.

This process is still ongoing at this time, on its way to completion.....

Post Production - "Asshole Robot and the Benefits of an Artificial Mind"

This post production process involves close to 9 hours of raw footage....

Capturing the video into the computer was the first step.  That was easy.  I began capturing while I was still shooting, at the end of each shooting day.

Next came the process of viewing and logging the clips.  I would need to log and organize each clip, assigning clips to scenes, and building an editing project in Final Cut Pro.  I separated all the scenes into "bins", labeling each "shot" and every "take".  I ended up with 25 bins, one for each scene from the movie screenplay.  There were 696 separate shots total.  I captured the movie in HD video, which amounts to over 330 gigabytes of data.

I began this extensive process while I was still in production.

During the production, I began to assemble some of the scenes into 'rough cuts'.  I picked 'takes' arbitrarily, putting scenes together according to the script, in order to show the story.  This was a useful tool while shooting, because during some later shoots, I could show the actors and the crew what we had done while we were still working on the scenes.

Once the final day of production had ended, I began the post production process.....