Diary of a first-time-film­mak­er: Part 4 – Post-production

So, you’ve shot your first fea­ture film. You mad bas­tard. After spend­ing sev­er­al days in a dark room with aching legs, unable to move, with just enough men­tal capac­i­ty to digest tele­vi­sion shows like episodes of 2007 Ramsay’s Kitchen Night­mares, the neur­al path­ways grad­u­al­ly, slow­ly begin to start fir­ing again. You regen­er­ate. Then, and only then, can you pro­ceed to the next – and I would argue the most fun – part of the process. Post-pro­duc­tion. That mag­i­cal land where every­thing can be fixed.

David Lynch says when he’s edit­ing, it’s like a man in the oth­er room has all the pieces of the film and they’re throw­ing them at him in an abstract way for him to make sense out of. It’s a cliché, but it’s true, that edit­ing is where much of the author­ing and sto­ry wiz­ardry is done. Count­less filmic turds have been pol­ished into gold in the hands of a tal­ent­ed editor.

I’m per­son­al­ly almost nev­er as excit­ed about a film as when I’m mess­ing around in the edit – except prob­a­bly dur­ing the idea ger­mi­na­tion stages months or years pre­vi­ous­ly. Feel­ing things out. Fuck­ing it all up in the safe con­fines of an edit suite. It’s a world away from the chaos and inten­si­ty of a set. Fig­ur­ing out what works, what doesn’t, what cool things you got that you nev­er antic­i­pat­ed. What seemed great on the page and in the room not quite fit­ting, but find­ing oth­er linearity.

Because our edi­tor Erline O’Donovan-Clarke start­ed a first edit dur­ing pro­duc­tion, as is com­mon, she had a com­plete rough cut fin­ished by the first day I sat in with her. To be hon­est, it almost felt too quick, as I was still pro­cess­ing the inten­si­ty of the shoot

The first draft wasn’t quite in line with the pace and shot choic­es I had imag­ined but gave me a good indi­ca­tion of Erline’s instincts as it was our first time work­ing togeth­er. It was a rev­e­la­tion – and a relief – to know that, what­ev­er hap­pened, the film actu­al­ly worked. As Erline explains, ​“Every direc­tor is dif­fer­ent, likes dif­fer­ent things, describes things dif­fer­ent­ly, and so there is always a peri­od at the start of each project when the direc­tor and I get to know each oth­er, when I get a feel for their taste, style and sensibilities.”

After dis­cussing and going back to ref­er­ences, and then start­ing the process of unpick­ing the film scene by scene and inter­ro­gat­ing every sin­gle choice, we got to a point where we shared a com­mon sense of what the lan­guage of the film was. This is a nec­es­sary part of estab­lish­ing the edi­tor-direc­tor relationship.

I took the rush­es home on a dri­ve with me and re-watched them. I found it help­ful to make rough scratch edits myself which we looked at togeth­er in the suite. Once an auto­di­dact, always an auto­di­dact. To me, in a sense, film edit­ing feels sim­i­lar to writ­ing – I love the soli­tude and qui­et of it.

After numer­ous feed­back rounds with Exec­u­tives from Film Lon­don, the BFI and BBC Films, who most­ly had real­ly insight­ful and help­ful notes but occa­sion­al­ly left us feel­ing like the quizzi­cal emo­ji, the team had an approved cut and could move on. I’ve been told much gin was con­sumed on that day. I do not recall.

Sound design was tak­en care of by Blue Fox Stu­dios’ Carine Koleilat and music was com­posed by Rory Attwell who worked togeth­er syn­chro­nous­ly on both parts of the process. As Carine points out, sound design, ​“Should be devel­oped and explored from the sec­ond the script is green lit. Explor­ing the son­ic world of a sto­ry will make a realm more vivid and impact­ful to the view­er. Under­stand­ing how sound can affect the sto­ry gives film­mak­ers anoth­er set of tools to make their sto­ries more effec­tive, stand out and have a wider reach.”

Carine need­ed to clean up the dia­logue, enhance the pre-record­ed lines, edit, record ADR and make sure we had a bal­anced mix between dia­logue, music and effects. In terms of music, as Rory says, ​“The brief wasn’t super strict and over­ly-spe­cif­ic, essen­tial­ly I was giv­en a rea­son­ably free reign to inter­pret the film through my com­po­si­tions, watch­ing the film numer­ous times, and writ­ing and adapt­ing to enrich the sto­ry­telling lay­ers and bring deep­er emo­tion­al resonance.”

Colourist Jodie David­son at Tech­ni­col­or took care of grade, and the sup­port from the Tech­ni­col­or Lon­don team was mon­u­men­tal­ly valu­able in push­ing the film through to its final stages (with spe­cial props due to Tech­ni­col­or Pro­duc­er, Abs MacKen­zie, for going above and beyond). After a look-set day with my DoP, Dar­ran, the three of us col­lab­o­rat­ed on every sin­gle shot of the film over a peri­od of five days.

Sit­ting back and watch­ing the com­plete iter­a­tion of the film, which I only did for the first time some weeks ago, was intense­ly mov­ing. Of course, you always have nig­gles. But part of the process is also let­ting go. And there is beau­ty in that.

Body of Water screens at this year’s Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val on Thurs­day 27 and Fri­day 28 Feb­ru­ary. For more info and to book tick­ets vis­it glas​gow​film​.org