I’ll just go ahead and say it. No, I didn’t accomplish anything interesting this week. Three weeks in and already you have discovered the fraud that I am. I apologize but I have been sick all week with an unidentified illness. Currently, my eyelids hurt which I didn’t know was possible.
I have been editing a lot this week. Cutting someone else’s film was really difficult for me because I couldn’t help questioning all of the director’s choices. But this did allow me to reevaluate the decisions I make when it comes to getting coverage. I have always had tight schedules for my shorts. I try to do the most I can during pre-production with my shot lists. And I try to figure exactly where the cuts are going to be in the final product. What this has lead to is me yelling cut in the middle of a line of dialogue because I knew I’d cut to a different shot and time on set was running out. Although this worked out for me in the past when I was the only one writing, directing, and editing my films, recently I worked with other editors on O’ Speak of Your Fleeting, Prolonged Decay! My editors mostly trimmed clips or moved them around because I had already assembled the film. Part of me holds that neither of them looked for additional clips to implement because I had already made a strong edit, but the other part believes that this level of confidence is naive. Anyways, I believed that getting lots of coverage was wasteful. I tried to be more of a Hitchcock than a Fincher in this regard. I think I should start getting more coverage when I can or at least allowing the actors to finish their scenes.
Another reason I may not get the most coverage is because I like wide shots. Once I get a master I’m usually happy. I think if you’ve got good actors than you should allow them to act with their entire bodies. For me, closeups are used too often. A lot of conversation sequences appear to be nothing more than attempts to slowly move from a wide to a closeup and after seeing these over and over again it loses value. But when we can see how a character is hunched over or what their hands are doing, a lot is revealed to us.
Besides all that, I’m trying to write a new short screenplay. At the moment, I have bupkis. All my best ideas have come to me in the delightful medium of fever dreams. Perhaps I should write a western or a heist film. I really have no idea what I want to do at the moment given that I have no budget and a diminishing amount of time to film it. Which I do suppose does mean I oughta put a feather in it.
Welp, you made it. This is the part of the sitcom where the main character has a beautiful voiceover that wraps up all we learned. “Don’t get sick, kids. Or your eyelids will bleed and you’ll go blind.” Well, that was probably the first and last time I’ll ever be able to pay for an actor to do some v.o. work on my blog. I’ll try to do something remarkable to inform you all of next week. To apologize, here’s an article about the sound design process of my favorite director.
See ya later,
Austin
A Bigger Boat 