Director's Weekly Post Production Blog WEEK 21 Thursday March 27th...

On bank holiday Monday I bumped into Grace on the tube. We were both surprised. Myself because I see her as a South Londoner and she was firmly north of the river! We stopped and talked for a while about Film festivals and the financial situation etc. Then she asked me “Are you sad?”
I said “No.”
“Are you stoned?”
“No.”
“Are you unhappy about something?”
Again “No.”
“Something’s wrong.”

The funny thing, of course, is that she was right but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s that now I have seen the footage, I know that I have not been a hundred percent successful in everything I tried to achieve. In some things I have failed. Of course that is inevitable but when I start a film I become possessed with a kind of immortality, a belief that everything is achievable, that I am infallible. This possibly comes from achieving the impossible before. Many times I have been told such and such is impossible only to do achieve it perfectly. On The Poet despite the fundamental problem I still thought that it was possible to make a master piece.

It wasn’t!

The stage that the film is going through now is like a second creation process and thus necessarily a film will arise from the debris of the shoot, the raw footage. At times I have seen it fly already but other times it has failed to soar for me. These things need to be addressed. Maybe that’s what Grace picked up on? Anyway, that’s the process and is no different from my three previous films.

Today I saw Caroline’s first cut which is the result of the last 10 days work. She has eliminated more than 30 minutes and the amazing thing, of course, is the fact that I didn’t miss many things that were excluded. Others I did. The first scene as well as the travel and tripping scenes, which were in disarray, now have a form and actually a pretty good one. The first part of the tripping scene stands out especially like the wine scene. The end of the first day in the forest took a step backwards but that’s part of the process.

I am back in the cutting room on Monday morning. The plan is to get a director’s cut of the film by the 10th when I have set a date to show it to Jonnie and get his feedback. As my partner on this project, it is only fair that he sees it first. On another positive note, Caroline also came up with a little idea to improve the ending which is still not there a hundred percent yet. She’s doing a great job so far.

Apart from waiting for the new sim card to arrive so I can be back on line with the world, I have been busily working on other things this week. I was back on line Thursday. Not that I feel I’ve achieved much except pissing off an idiot accountant by complaining that he is late filing the accounts! Not Richard Juneman though, I must add, who has done a sterling job on all my companies. Yesterday, also, I met with Jonnie to go over things. We haven’t talked production for a couple of weeks as he has been away. We finally got back Max’s contract, the last one outstanding. HM customs and excise sent me a letter asking for more information. It’s information they already have so I sent it to them again. Streuth!

After reading acres (forested) of 17th and 18th century European history since getting back from Cape Verde, I am glad to be back reading some literature now. Being encyclopaedic by nature, my present target of conquest is French literature. I started at the beginning last year but got sidetracked for one reason or another. Now, though, I am ready to start on Diderot. When I edited The Poet, I lead a monastic existence, just going to the cutting room, to eat, to my hotel room and during that solitary time I read all of Proust. It worked perfectly. So reading Diderot while editing DEP does have a certain symmetry.

My Father’s tests are inconclusive thus far.

What joy!

Monday was a revelation. Secretly I had not been looking forward to the edit. I was unmotivated probably because of the five month lapse waiting to start something that should have started a week or two after the shoot. But all was forgotten on Monday. It was the most creative day I’ve had since the shoot wrapped. From the first 14 minutes of Caroline’s first edit of the film we cut 4 minutes and moulded the rest. The film was shortened to two hours twenty one. It really worked. The beginning I was quite unhappy with when watching the assembly. Now I have an overpowering feeling of its success.

On Tuesday we cut another 6 minutes from the film. I was tired as I couldn’t sleep much the night before with things whizzing about in my head. We got to the Ferry for France which is about 40 minutes in to the film so net we cut a fifth of that footage. Film length two hours fifteen minutes.

On Wednesday we tackled the driving through France montage. It was a lot of ground to cover. Instead of the word games improvisation we decided to use all the other conversation snippets and reduced the film from two hours fifteen to two hours fourteen. Not much gain but a lot of work done.

On Thursday we started on the forest scenes and progressed to the campsite and along the way cut another four minutes reducing the film to two hours ten. The end of this day was a sequence I wasn’t satisfied with in Caroline’s first cut as I didn’t feel the journey and the progressions were there. Now I think they are.

So we are now over half way through our first pass together on the film. Until we watch it all, though, it’s impossible to have a total appreciation of the shape and flow. Already I’m thinking about further excisions. No matter what, the film is greatly improved from the first assembly I saw three weeks ago. Greatly! Some times it flies!

At the start of the week the film was 2 hours and 25 minutes long. Now it is 2 hours 10 minutes. So that’s 15 minutes gone in the first week. I’m sure this rate of reduction will slow down dramatically and eventually we’ll be glad of a few seconds here or there! But for now it’s satisfying. We’ve only cut two whole scenes, though. Many others have been reduced. But only two have totally gone. I’m certain also that those two will not be the last.

Today I can’t go to the cutting room as I have to attend a wedding in Paris tomorrow. It’s an unwelcome distraction from the work in hand but I’m sure I won’t be able to switch of my brain from it. All week my head has been swirling with cutting points, choices, cross cuts, cutaways, eliminations, possibilities.

I feel great. Alive. Postive. Happy.

Also now the contract with the Cornish writer is signed so that is progressing at last. When one things works, everything works…

Back at it this week. Last weekend was a total break and I even got some good nights sleep over it. The wedding was a French civil municipal affair conducted by the Mayor of Paris! I thought I might get a chance to hook up with Julie while there but in the end I didn’t get the time to even text her.

Monday was a hard slog. For 4 hours we were editing, re-editing and tweaking a 30 second sequence that eventually we got to work. It was real hard graft. By the end of the day we got to the end of the campsite sequence and the beginning of the second day in the forest. We cut a couple more small scenes and trimmed many others. Our net gain over the day was two and a half minutes excised. The ideas I’d been having of having the first pass shorten the film to two hours became discernibly unachievable.
 
At the start of the Tuesday the film was two hours seven and a half minutes long. We continued to cut until we got to the lake. The choices were quite straightforward and thus we had a real sense of progress. We excised another two minutes from the film.

On Wednesday we got to the end of the film. The final office scene was very tricky with all the tracks in and choices on who to be on when. The real big effort, though, was the tripping sequence. I am sure we will revisit that sequence many times. It really shows how something can mushroom and transform through the cinematic process! In the script it was two paragraphs, about a quarter of a page. You would normally expect that to translate into a sequence of 15 seconds or so. Currently it is 5 minutes 40 seconds!! I’m certain it cannot stay at that length EVEN if it is the best scene in the film…

Right near the end of Wednesday, Pete Stevenson turned up very jolly. I’d told him we were commencing the real work and that he could catch some of it for the documentary. I’d been expecting him since last Monday. He arrived an hour before we finished the first pass, filmed for half an hour and then disappeared. I had to leave before he returned. Caroline told me that an hour later she heard singing in the street, looked out the window and saw him merrily sitting on a wall singing to himself!

On Thursday we showed the film to Jonnie as promised. It was 2 hours 3 minutes 45 seconds long including a final shot that end titles will go over. I wanted him to see it before we got into the bigger and harder choices of cuts. I have many ideas of other things to eliminate or shorten but wanted Jonnie to see it before I did that. During the showing many things jumped out to me and Caroline and Jonnie came up with some good ideas for trims from scenes also.

I am glad Jonnie was pleased with the progress so far and wasn’t perturbed by any of the scenes we’ve already cut. As a writer he must be one of the least precious I have ever worked with. Probably a lot less precious than I can be sometimes as a director. As a case in point I felt my first painful twinge when he suggested the elimination of something that I love. Luckily, though, it wasn’t practical nor necessary. It won’t be the last time I have that twinge!

As of today the film is just under 2 hours and I have left Caroline alone over the weekend to tidy up things and try out some ideas on her own before we commence on a second pass on Monday if I get in that day. My father has just been taken to hospital