break through

The weekend was fine, sunny, cool and bright. I sat in my little office, off and on, editing, editing, moving scenes around, cutting audio into bright little clips and threading together a rough cut of part 1 of the the roadside pilot.

Editing goes something like this:
Aha, that's it!
cut a shot
put it back in
move this shot to the middle
move the middle shot to the end, next to the other one
(break while I check email)
find some more B-Roll
gosh, I love this, have to use it, have to use it, damn I don't know...maybe it's not so good.
cut that first shot out again
find some more B-Roll cause I gotta gotta use that one
(break while I check my horoscope and email)
Use a sequence
cut it into pieces
add B-Roll
smooth it out
do I need this?
I do
No, no, I don't
(check email again)
work it out, stay focused
watch it again
move the ending
cut a shot
put another one back in
create a sequence for all the shots I love most but may not be able to use
(for the DVD extras, ya know?)
(long break to go to the park for the Sunday afternoon soccer session)
watch it again
tweak and move
add something back in
cut something I love
render
watch it
(starving, take a break to eat)
resolve not to get out of chair until I'm done
I'm almost done
One more thing
Done: rough cut

Then comes the only terrible part of film making. As challenging as editing is, it's still fun. It's like a big puzzle. It's sorting and placing and testing.
The only terrible part of film making is building Quicktimes and posting them to the web to share with your producers.
I do this several times. I try to make the file small and smaller and smaller still.
I stare at the screen while the file builds, urging it to hurry, but it has no effect.

When my house guest arrived today, I was happily copying files to a server.

Tonight the dogs and I went for a walk in the park. I missed Saturday's eclipse, but the clear sky was full of stars. When I was a kid, my Dad would get my brother and I out in the backyard and we'd lie in the grass and stare up at the stars. Dad would tell us the names of the constellations, but my mind would wander too much to remember most of them. Tonight it was nice tonight to just remember those evenings.