Whew…what a hectic two weeks. The two weeks I talked about two posts ago. But now, that pressure is off. Well, not off, but lessened by QUITE a bit.

Met with the director, the lead actor (also a producer) and the main producer on Saturday to look at a rough cut of the first half of the show and talk things over. Overall they liked it. Wondered why a few things were missing, and it was due to it not being in the script and me not knowing where it went. So I took notes and we talked things over and…well…the Producer…the person who recommended and hired me…got into asking a lot of questions about the show…questions and concerns that I had but didn’t feel like I could voice. She voiced ALL of them. And got a few of them cleared up, and…well…just did everything I wanted to do. And I didn’t have to ask her to do it…she just had the same feelings I did.

It was amazing.

And the pressure of getting a cut in soon…gone. I have more time to do it. The reason they were so anxious and pressuring me…to which I was going to say “hey stop…I am doing this as a favor, I am being paid VERY little, and said from the start that I couldn’t devote a lot of time to”…was because they hadn’t seen the dailies. They didn’t know what takes they had and what they had to work with. They wanted to see it. The Producer cleared things up. I was going to provide all the dailies to them on DVD (TEN HOURS worth) and they were going to look at the footage. And they were going to give me SELECTED TAKES TO CHOOSE FROM!

This is huge.

Normally you have a script supervisor on set who takes notes and draws lines on the script. One of the BIG notes that they take…that is really important to the editor…is noting what takes the director liked. For this to happen, the director needs to indicate what takes are good, and which ones are NOT good. This way you eliminate the bad stuff…cut down the amount of footage you have to look thru. Now, I might “mine” that footage later for looks or reactions or snippits of something, but I won’t look at them for performance. That saves a LOT of time. This being an inexperienced crew, there were no indications of what the good takes were because the director didn’t say so, so the script supervisor didn’t write them down.

People don’t realize the importance a lot of factors are to post…it seems that the script supervisor is a “throw away” position. But they have LOTS of jobs. Paying attention to continuity of action (“uh, on that line he is supposed to be taking a sip of wine”) so that I can intercut takes. Noting on the script what character is on camera for what take. This is done by drawing lines on the script…down the page vertically…a straight line if they are on camera, squiggly if they aren’t. So I can, at a glance, note what angles have a certain character on camera. They also make notes about the take…like the director liked the first half of the take, but not the second half. Or that there was discontinuity of action at one point.

ANYWAY…I am straying from topic. I just wanted to say that the pressure is off…I can edit at a more leisurely pace, and I will be getting notes from the producer and director as to what takes to pay attention to, and which ones to ignore.

Ahhh….my old friend SLEEP…how I missed thee.

And time off…I got to put in a post for a clothes line, and play chess with my kids. Just what I need to relax the mind.

OH..and I watched BIONIC WOMAN. GAH…what a mistake. Stupidest new show of the year….