What do you think of this rough cut of my short film so far?

[Grinner Hester]

can’t wait to hear it with score…

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, but what do you think of it besides the score?

[Simon Ubsdell]

My one major suggestion would be: pace yourself.

You don’t need to tell us everything your film is about within the first few seconds.

Slow down and think about how you want to deliver your key points.

Think about how to make those key points stand out from the rest of your film.

Try not to have the same kind of visual texture and pace of delivery the whole time.

Don’t make your film “busy” just to fill out the time. Think about whether the “busy-ness” is actually helping and if not cut it back.

Use the space between words, don’t just cram everything together. The space between words is where we digest what we are hearing and where the meaning is allowed to resonate.

I hope that helps.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, but I’m not sure what you mean. How am I delivering too much at once exactly?

What do you mean when you say I don’t have enough pacing in between words? The actor pauses a lot when he talks so isn’t that enough natural pacing?

[Ryan Elder]

How am I making the film ‘busy’ just to fill out time exactly?

[Simon Ubsdell]

[ryan elder] “The actor pauses a lot when he talks so isn’t that enough natural pacing?”

I think you’ve been watching too much “YouTube editing” where every pause is brutally excised. That won’t work for your film.

The right pacing is the pacing that works for what you are trying to say. So work out what you are trying to say and then fit the pacing to that. Your script is very, very dense and not easily absorbed. If you want your audience to follow, help them follow by whatever means you can muster.

Slow down!!!!!!

And try to imagine what a first-time viewer is experiencing. That’s the trick to editing and you need to keep working at it, because it’s the hardest part of the whole job.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks! I had pauses in the pacing before, but I felt that they felt awkward. I mean a pause here and there is okay, like what I have, but watching an actor just sitting there paused, over and over again, in between sections, just feels awkard to me. Is there any trick to having actors pause for longer amounts of time, and more frequently without it being awkward?

[Simon Ubsdell]

Here’s my suggestion.

a) Ditch all the found footage. It’s doing nothing for your film. Worse than that it’s actually a distraction that makes it very hard to take in what the script is saying.

b) Lose all the text graphics, especially the ones that say something different to what the voice is saying, which is something you want to avoid at all costs. It should be obvious why that’s unhelpful and confusing.

c) Go out with your camera (or your phone if that’s all you have) and shoot for a whole day around your neighbourhood. Look for shots that help tell your story, or at least complement it and don’t fight it. Make them as clean and simple and unfussy as you can manage. Whether it’s a government building, or a derelict housing tenement, a busy road, a skyline – create images that read easily and have meaning for your story.

d) Now come back to your edit and strip out everything except the core video of your actor. Pace it out so that every important point has a significant beat after it. Use black as spacing for now. Listen to the pace, even disable your video track to get a better feel for how it sounds and what rhythms work best. Ask yourself at this point if there are words that you don’t need. The fewer words, you have the greater the impact of your film. Avoid overload at all costs. “Kill your babies”, as the saying goes. Be ruthless with the material.

e) Make a selects reel of the new footage you have shot. Duplicate it and review it, cutting out shots that don’t work as you go. Keep duplicating and refining until you have a manageable amount of material that’s going to work for your edit.

f) Add this new footage to your edit in the spaces you have created. At this point you might want to increase the length of the spaces. Find a great shot (or sequence of shots) to open your film so that the voice doesn’t start straight away – take your time.

g) If you going to be adding music, do that now. And again review the pacing so it works with the music, but don’t let your music take total control. Make sure it’s underscoring what is important in your film, not overwhelming it.

h) Review your pictures. Are you cutting too often in the video of your actor? If you are cutting, why are you cutting? Interrogate every cut and simplify it.

i) Now you can think about adding B-roll from your new footage over the top of your actor. But only do it where it helps the sense and lets you focus on the words. If it’s distracting, stick with your actor.

j) Keep it simple. And then make it simpler.

Hope that helps. At the end of the day it’s your film and your voice, so good luck with finding it.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks. However, I am not the producer and writer though. The producer also wrote the script, and in the script the found footage is actually in there. For example, the wheel of fortune with the religions on it, is actually in the script.

The stock footage of the guillotine execution is in the script. So I don’t know if it’s my place as the director and editor, to step on the writer/producer’s script and take out what’s written in it.

What do you think, is it my call, or does the producer have say?

As for going out and getting footage of my own, I tried that already and couldn’t really find a lot, but I can try more. I don’t think buildings simply will cut it though… maybe statues or something… not sure. This is why I used found footage.

Also, the DP is done and we are in post production. I don’t know if I could ask the producer to get the DP back. We could try, but if not, we will have to get a new DP. Will the old DP be okay with that do you think, if we got someone new to take over for new footage, since this wasn’t in the original plan? Is it our place to get a new DP after production was suppose to be wrapped?

How do other documentary filmmakers use found footage and make it work though? What are they doing differently?

As for the opening, what if I just let the title play out, before the voice starts, would that be better?

[Simon Ubsdell]

[ryan elder] “The producer also wrote the script, and in the script the found footage is actually in there.”

This is unfortunate.

Here’s a universal truth: a script is a truly terrible blueprint for any kind of film. For drama it’s a necessary evil, but for documentary it can be poisonously problematic.

I’m guessing your producer/writer is not hugely experienced, and that makes it doubly hard. Documentaries need to be made in the cutting room not on paper before shooting begins. Preconceived ideas, especially about the specific mechanics of the edit, will almost certainly not work exactly as envisioned. And I’m afraid to say this particular idea (to use found footage) was not a good one. But that said, I very much doubt you will be able to persuade your producer/writer to change their mind – because again the ability to be flexible about the plan is something that comes with experience and is not easy to come by.

[ryan elder] “I don’t know if it’s my place as the director and editor”

It is absolutely your place in those roles to come up with suggestions and to demonstrate the possibilities presented by alternative routes. Your producer/writer might not go with your recommendations but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put them forward, even to the extent of coming up with a version that works for you and presenting that.

[ryan elder] “I tried that already and couldn’t really find a lot”

You’re kidding, right? There’s an entire world of imagery out there. I can’t believe you can’t find thousands of images that will enhance your film.

[ryan elder] ” Will the old DP be okay with that do you think, if we got someone new to take over for new footage,”

It is very rare that documentaries manage to shoot everything that the film requires before moving into the cutting room. It is absolutely standard practice to go out and shoot additional material as the need arises and the film demands. As for what to say to the DoP, you ask if s/he is available to shoot the additional material, and if s/he is not, then you as the film-makers are perfectly at liberty to engage someone else. The DoP can still get the main credit and you can credit the additional stuff as Second Unit.

In this case, though, because it’s an experiment that you don’t know whether your producer/writer will go for and you don’t necessarily have a budget for it, I’d recommend you shoot it yourself as a rough temp, using your phone if you don’t have a camera handy. The idea at this point is simply to test the viability of this alternative route. If that’s what you are interested in trying.

If you don’t want to try it, then ignore that part of my recommendation, and simply work with your found footage, but better. Use it to create spaces between the words, as I suggested for the additional shoot option. Go through the edit and try to avoid the problem you have right now where the B-roll clashes with what’s being said. Unless the visuals are fully enhancing the words, don’t put them over the words – make space for them between the words.

[ryan elder] “How do other documentary filmmakers use found footage and make it work though?”

They don’t have a dodgy fixed plan, based on a poorly conceived script, going into the edit. They find what they need that enhances the story once they know what the film needs from having started to cut it – and if they can’t find it they shoot it.

[ryan elder] “As for the opening, what if I just let the title play out, before the voice starts, would that be better?”

This is the bit that made me lose confidence in the film before the first five seconds were over. The graphic style is very cheesy, but worse than that I simply didn’t understand what I was seeing/hearing. Was this the title of the piece? Or the start of the following sentence? Or something else?

When did you last see the title of the film as the first thing in the film? It’s just not helpful and in this case it’s hugely confusing, because the viewer doesn’t understand the grammar – you haven’t given us even a ghost of chance to understand that this is a title.

And it means you’re starting too fast. Never start too fast. Your opening moments are the bit where you grab the audience and make sure they are both settled and engaged. You’ve managed to achieve the opposite. Before we even reach the first cut we’re struggling to make sense of something – and not in a good way.

Start slow. And not with graphics. It’s a movie not a Power Point presentation. Grab the audience with visuals and with sound, not with text.

And don’t hurl a hurricane of spoken words at us, before you’ve given us a chance to settle and have confidence in your film-making.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki