Final cut is complete

A day ahead of schedule, I think I can safely say that the final cut is complete. The final running time clocks in at exactly 23:57, over a minute shorter than the rough cut. Essentially I trimmed a few scenes that needed some trimming and reduced the length of the into montage which I feel makes the whole thing seem much tighter. I reordered a few things, and re-recorded the voiceovers. I felt the original ones seemed a little bit too much like they were being read off a script (which they were.) The new ones are a bit more conversational and flow better.

I feel like I could keep tweaking and tweaking a million things and regardless of how many times I did it I would still think of things that could maybe be tweaked a little more. I'm very proud of what I have produced, and I think the work I put into this definitely shows through in the final product. I realize it is not a perfect documentary, but I think for my first time through without having any prior experience in the process it is pretty darn impressive. There are many things I wish I could change or go back and do differently, but like I've said in previous entries, this was a learning experience for me. On the same note, while I wish I could change some things, I wouldn't trade my final outcome for anything. It is almost exactly as I had envisioned it from the very beginning, and it fills me with a sense of satisfaction to finally be able to say it's complete. I won't be able to fully put it to rest and reflect until after the showing on campus, and after the private showing with Adele. But for now, I am throwing caution to the wind and letting the chips fall where they may, and come Wednesday I will be turning in the final cut.

Keep an eye out for the latest issue of The Slate. There should be an article about the showing somewhere in there.

Focus group

The rough cut has been viewed by my supervisor and has passed the test in my book. The only comments I received on it were minor tweaks, such as audio levels and such which will most certainly be ironed out by the time I am done the final cut. Speaking of the final cut, I have secured a date for the showing of the film on-campus. Here is the flier I made:



So that's the date. May 4th, 2010. 3:30 p.m. Be there or be square. Now that I have a final date confirmed, it seems like the light at the end of the tunnel really has appeared, which I made note of on the Facebook group. Twice. If you can make it out to this showing it would really mean a lot to me. I think the theatre holds like 150 people, and if more people than that show up there's plenty of room to sit or stand up front. I'm totally not expecting that many people to show up. It would definitely be awesome, but I would be absolutely satisfied with around 30 or so people. I think I'll be able to muster that. I invited literally every Facebook friend I have, which is close to 400, so we'll see what happens.

Focus group tomorrow in Grove 006. I've got a few survey questions for them to answer to hopefully allow me to make this a better movie, then I've got under two weeks to tweak things for the final cut. I think they want it before the end of next week because grades need to be submitted early, or something. I am starting to get very excited.

Rough cut complete

The rough cut is finally complete. Or incomplete? Since it is a rough cut... Whatever. I budgeted my time, stuck to the schedule and came out with a pretty damn good (incomplete) product. There's really not too much that can be changed as far as I can tell, so I would say that this rough cut will probably end up being at least 90% of the final outcome of the film. So now I await comments from my supervisor, and begin working on promotional material for the on-campus showing. I hope to have that all done fairly soon, as the showing will be the first week of may. I submitted the form this week, but haven't heard back as far as confirmation or anything. I'm not too worried, as I doubt Orndorff Theatre will be being used much during Finals Week, but in the off chance that something goes wrong with that, I'd be fine with any old room in the CUB with seats that I can drag a screen and projector into. The date I marked off on the form was Tuesday, May 4th. That seems as good a day as any, so here's hoping the date sticks.

Interviewing with Kristen and Tyrone Wiser was interesting to say the least. They both seemed pretty nervous being interviewed, but they put up with me and gave me some decent answers to my questions. The more I thought about it while I was interviewing them, there really wasn't too much they could say. Obviously, it was a sad and tragic situation that they were very unhappy about. It was a sudden and unexpected loss, so there was really no "backstory" to their child's death. Obviously, talking to someone who had gone through the same ordeal as they had made them feel better. Since the other two interviews went so well, I was pretty much expecting to once again just point my camera at someone and expect them to know exactly what to say. It didn't quite happen like that for this interview, so the whole thing was really a learning experience for me.

What I had envisioned as a major part of the film became secondary to something I hadn't even originally planned on, in this case being the interview Dr. Raschid. The further along I got in the editing process, the more I began to realize how incredible the answers were that he gave me. He really became sort of the centerpiece to the movie, which is amazing because he was such a last minute addition to the film. I have expressed many times how silly I felt to not think of interviewing him earlier on in the process, but in this case the ends certainly justify the means. The whole process of creating a documentary is becoming more and more fascinating to me the deeper into this project I get.

So I now get to take a few days to recollect my thoughts. I am conducting a focus group after one of Dr. Garris' classes next Tuesday at 3:15 in Grove 006. By that time I will have a survey to give out, and I should get a lot of good feedback from people. At some point next week the rough cut will also be viewed by a committee, and feedback will be received from them as well. From there I will have about a week or so to polish up the rough cut and get it ready for grading and the on-campus showing. Wish me luck!