The Really Rough Cuts

Today was the grand unveiling of the classes Rough Cuts of our documentary - or as we coined it ‘The Really Rough Cuts’!

After completing our final interview with Mike, we dove straight into the editing, and began trudging through the hours of footage which we had to cut down. As we expected the editing did take some time, but we never expected the Rough Cut screening to creep up on us so quickly! I think it is fair to say that the rest of the class felt this too, and so not everyone was really to present what they had. In an ideal world I don’t think we would have like to have shown what we had, but on reflection I reckon it was a very valuable experience.

In all fairness, what we had was nowhere near the final product - i’d go as far as to say that it won’t resemble the final video. It was however important to let the class, and Catriona, see where we were. Caleb, JJ, and I have been looking at this really intensively recently, and getting a fresh, some cutting, opinion has really opened our eyes. We heard interesting points from different people, which has lead us to slightly restructure our film, so that the relevance between the different sections is as clear as possible. To us, the structure which we were following probably made more sense because of the initial conversations and ideas about the film in the early days. It has changed a lot up to this point, and we clearly haven’t nailed the right formula now. As a result of this we have scheduled a little more footage to hopefully help up build up the continuity a little better, and really connect everything together.

We also found watching the other groups videos really inspiring. Not only for some ideas here and there, but for the enthusiasm and passion that some people people have put into their films. I was expecting everyone to be in a similar position to use with their films needing a lot of work, but I was surprised with the quality of what people had already managed to get together. Clearly, everyone has taken this brief very seriously, and I now can’t wait to see all the films once they are finished.

There has been a lot to take away from today. We’ve got more direction about where we need to go, but time is running out. We are very aware are tight on time, and have a lot on the go at once. It’s usually at these times when I seem to pull out my best work. I think I hit a fly or die state of mind, give it everything I have.

Fin.