Keep or Delete

Definitive Takes

After doing some editing research and making sure every clip was accounted for and sent to my editor for review, the next step was to create a rough draft of the film. To do this, my editor compiled all the clips from the film in the order they would go in if every take was used. This video was over four minutes long because it included most takes and was not trimmed tightly just yet, but brought the film to life for the first time. Watching this video as the director worried me. The plot we created for our film would take beyond a minute to portray and needed major revisions, but I put this concern aside and focused on simply choosing with my group what clips should be used if we did follow our original storyline, and go from there.

Screenshot of the duration of the film once all takes were put together, at a whopping 3 minutes over the maximum time allowed for this short film.

Breakdown of Bloopers and Choosing Takes

The genre we wanted our film to represent was comedy and during filming, we had so much fun — creating a lot of room for bloopers and many repeated takes. But some were actually left in the film, as many comedies do to produce a genuine comedic reaction from their actors. Besides reviewing bloopers when creating our rough cut, the decision to use a successful take over another one was based on our perception of how the cinematography looked, how our actors presented themselves, and most of all the contribution it had to the film itself. Takes that did not fulfill all three of these principles were cut out of the film.

An apparent blooper where we struggled to remain serious while shooting the film. This scene was meant to depict the meeting of the characters to introduce them as opponents, which we later decided could be implied from other scenes and discarded this exposition entirely.

Another failed take where our actors were unprepared. During the editing process, blooper takes were the first to be removed, but were still reviewed in the case of a possible trim resolving the point of error or if they created a comedic effect unintentionally, such as this one. The second take of this scene was used since we learned from the mistakes from the previous take.

However, some footage required discussion; here is take 1 of a specific gameplay move that we wanted the second opponent to portray as her "comeback" to winning.

We were not confident to use this take because of the chess piece hitting the camera. This was intentionally done to increase dramatic effects but was very quick and may not be perceived that way by the audience. The comedy genre utilizes unrealistic, dramatic actions and although this was an intense movement, we felt like we could do better to add more significance of the player's comeback.

Take 2 of the same gameplay but exhibited at a higher energy level, resulting in the surrounding game pieces to fall over from the hit.

This take was the one we decided to incorporate into the film because it creates more humor than the first take for its obvious gameplay dramatization. We also wanted to have slowed-down shots in the film and the fall of the chess pieces coincides with this effect.

Further Cut Outs

Choosing one take for every scene still left the film on overtime, so my group and I communicated what scenes we felt were unnecessary to convey the same narrative. My editor made several videos from this feedback, some versions without certain scenes and others with it to see how it comes together as a whole. This helped me as a director to have influence in the editing process, being able to add suggestions to what could be shortened more and see a variation of how the storyline can be presented instead of just one. He also expressed to me that the cuts looked choppy and the story did not flow at the beginning for this reason, so we pondered removing the introduction and adding fade transitions between the clips that contrasted heavily with one another to increase the cohesiveness of the film. Overall, these conversations as a group helped us create a rough draft we all approved of and were happy with as a midpoint for the post-production film progress.