Despite all of my previous worries and reservations about this project and my involvement with it, we have reached a point where we are able to showcase a coherent film. Though at the same time, it is maybe not the film we collectively hoped to make. From the initial emergence of the project, it was clear that it was to be a 10 minute film. We were all quite happy with this, as it meant that it wasn't a wildly ambitious project, and with projects like this you can harness the energy of a would be 20 minute film and focus more on your micro elements - camerawork, sound, editing etc. It gives everyone that extra leg room. The first few months were extremely slow and confusing for everyone. There was a lack of communication, motivation, and willingness to make the film succeed based on the aforementioned issues. We were indecisive on the main piece of the puzzle with this film, which was the central location. As it is almost all set in a cave, we played around with the idea of how to shoot it for too long. We initially had a real cave location, then a set, then ended up bouncing somewhere between the two shooting stuff that hopefully matched. This week, we had to make a final decision which was to shoot inside of the cave, which is located at Blackhall rocks, a 20 minute drive away from the uni.
Much like Echoes of Silence, Trick of the Dark has slowly progressed giving the editors time to consume the footage that was coming in and work on it right away. The issue with Trick of the Dark on the other hand, was that there wasn't enough being shot, and this was inevitably going to mount up on our editors right next to deadline. We were forced to reshuffle the crew and bring in a new editor, to free up space for another editor due to double booking which would cause immense stress around hand-in. Once we made that head on decision to shoot in the cave, things have vastly improved. The large volume of footage which we shot in the cave, which I also mentioned in a previous post, has been worked on over the past few days. The editor has instantly shaped that stuff into a coherent film, which is all thanks to the directors preparation prior to the shoot, which enabled them to see exactly what was needed to achieve that coherent film. Though a film now exists for Trick of the Dark, it is less than half of what we wanted it to be at the start. It is around 4 minutes in length, and excludes much of what was originally planned in pre-production. At present their seems to be a divide in what we should do from here on out. There is a feeling of 'this is as good as it can get' which is definitely the case prior to hand in. The film we have crafted over the course of this week is an acceptable submission of our efforts, which is somewhat annoying as we all know we could have done better, but it is what it is. I'm one of the crew members whose stance on it is that we should continue after hand in to make the film that was planned all along. Theres no reason for us not to meet the next deadline which is the 1st June for the Vue show on the 11th with a much better, fully completed and polished film. I will be pushing for this in the near future, in the hopes of convincing the director and the crew that we can achieve great things with it.
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