Oh the Editing.

I thought we were pretty far into the editing stages of our documentary - how wrong I was.

Sitting here in the front of an array of screens at 0.45 on a Saturday night, has brought home the the sheer scale of the task that we have set for ourselves. There are so many places that we could have cut back on, but we’ve have been extremely harsh with each other - only settling when we find a solution that suits all of our tastes.

At screening of our Rough Cuts, it was clear that we needed more footage. Fortunately we managed to do this, but we are really struggling on where to fit it in. Since we have had issues with our White Balance, we are trying to cover up as many of the problem areas with our ‘filler’ footage - but we don’t have very much of it! Finding the right balance with distributing the most appropriate footage has been very difficult, as the majority of the focus is on the sound. What is being said within our interviews and observation periods is so powerful, that is is becoming increasingly more difficult to find the appropriate images. The last thing we want to do is decrease from what Mike is saying. We really feel what he is saying deserves to come across as true as when he said it. His messages are important, and people deserve to hear them the way that he said them.

Another issue which the editing has brought to life is the need for the observations that we conducted. The original idea had always been to see how Mike reacted to objects that he had never seen before, and to carefully catalog this process to communicate his thought process. After reviewing, reviewing, and reviewing some more, we have come to the difficult decision that this part of the documentary maybe isn’t very relevant/necessary. With the time constraints that we have we are unable to fully communicate what we were trying to say, and we are not prepared give that part of the documentary only a half effort. It either all has to be in, or not at all. So we made the decision to cut it, and regain the focus on the interviews and to do those as much justice as possible.

Having made that decision we made a lot of progress. It felt almost like a burden had been lifted. It could arguably be said that we had given ourselves an easier job, but I think it gives us more direction. Our message was confused and misleading. What we have now may not be as diverse, but it still carries and important message about the significance of Interaction Design, and how it is going to be effect the world around us, in every single way.

We now have a fairly accurate Rough Cut. We have slightly over shot our personal deadline, but we are so close to the finishing line that this isn’t much of an issue. The bulk of the tasks that we face at the moment are finely tuning some of the cuts/transitions, coloring the film, and sorting out some of the levels and background noise. Our final night of work hopefully won’t be that much of a late one, but it takes as long as it takes.

F