The rough cut

The post-production of ‘Yianni’ is entertaining and challenging, but most importantly the material we now have shows what we managed to capture of the portrait on Yianni.Fin. The rough cut presented yesterday was interesting and fun, as it engaged one group work to another with feedbacks and constructive criticism. Thinking about the claustrophobic issues we had earlier when filming has improved and we got more out of the filmmaker Yianni as we went filming and spending more time with him.

A joke of ‘more is more’ from yesterday actually worked in the rough-cut presentation and ‘the self’ and unconscious behavior of the character. However, the most noticeable about our character while working with and on him in the post-production, is his way of unfolding. We were moving there when he was talking, from generalization to the surface of a deep, controversial or paradoxical ‘thing’. But as soon it started to drop into a tiny deep conversation, our character cut the topic there. After a couple of consults with the teaching staff, we have realized that that was not a problem – it was simply the natural way of being of the character. The best thing about the material gathered is that we have the interviews and the information and the structure sorted out, so the editing for the final cut is inserting and refining cuts, together with inserting the credits. Yianni has material from his own production we are hoping to use and I think this will be the insight of the filmmaker we are aiming to portrait.

In terms of editing skills, we found it weird how the time-code were playing around with us. Then after reflecting on why this had happened to two out of our seven tapes, this was because we are not used to do this type of filming. In short films, the set up and the rule of ‘action’ being called out allowed the cameraperson to roll those extra 5-10 extra seconds before capturing. In documentary, capturing the essence of the moment is so important that the record buttons get flicked on and off without thinking about ‘action’ being called out. By batch capturing the tape a couple of extra seconds before or after a shot, this still saves the footage. Other things in editing are the funniness of clichés. Yes it can be awkward but still, if it fits in – it fits in only where it is appropriate, and it contributes to make something funny.