Reviewing Production Progress

Input as Editor and Sound Designer on Set

When studying sound design, I learned how obvious it is to the audience the direction in which the sound comes from – even if you do not see the someone or thing making the sound. During filming, I thought about if I were placed in any other area besides close behind the camera myself, my dialogue with Abby would sound unnatural and diminish the point of it seemingly being a home video taken by Pam herself (diegetic sound).

The position my cinematographer and I, playing Pam, were in while filming scene 1.

Still from a practice shot my cinematographer took of the mirror area where our character Abby would be zoomed into. We tested angles to ensure it was not apparent in filming that it was recorded by any other person besides Pam and it was not.

The audio sounded much more realistic and clear in the takes, preventing an audio issue I would have experienced if this we addressed ahead of time. We continued to film takes this way and eventually narrowed it down to two versions we would like to include in an upcoming draft.

Day 1 Filming Concerns & How I Plan to Address Them

After the first day of filming wrapped up, I transferred the takes to my computer using an SD card reader and uploaded them to Adobe Premiere Rush to begin reviewing the film. The audio was good for its purpose of being a home video between friends, as there is no heavy pressure nor expectation on the sound quality other than being able to simply hear the dialogue between the friends. 

However, when watching the full version of the takes back, I noticed that there was an issue visually with using the takes; how dark the lighting was. My cinematographer did not notice exactly how dark because the preview screen on the Nikon Coolpix S3700 does not show its full quality until the content is transferred to another device. The intention was to film in low warm lighting to convey a sense of comfortability and liveliness, but not as dark as it turned out, as the transition to the following scene would be abrupt and peculiar.

So I sifted through takes and tried to apply the filter templates within Adobe that I explored before production. These filters did not help the level of darkness in the film, especially the ending of the scene where Abby looks at herself in the mirror, so other editing measures had to be looked at,

An unedited ending of one of the takes of scene 1, where the lighting is extremely dark to where you cannot see the girl's face.

My cinematographer and I realized this would potentially be one of our pickups; a scene to reshoot or cut before the girl turns into the mirror, where the darkness gets heightened. The darkness around her face could convey that the girl has gone down a dark path or lost hope in herself, hence, suffering from drug addiction. But, this is a far-reached narrative point to draw and not one I'd find easy to convey to audiences through editing or sound.

All the while, it is important to note that the narrative of Abby being addicted to drugs is not meant to be shown directly as the core representation issue, but rather implied as something that the film would go more in detail with if it was more than the first two minutes, so a shortened version shown of her character has the potential to work even better so that emphasis on Pam's grief experience can shine through. 

Being the editor, before deleting any takes or deciding to do any pickups, I now am choosing final takes from what we already have from both scene 1 and the filming day that followed it to create a draft that could possibly work with this scene even with its faults (editing flaws out as much as possible). This draft will allow us to move forward in knowing what needs to be reshot, if any, and have enough time to revise the film itself to perfection!