Teenage Interview and Editing the Rough Cut

This weekend, our film crew FINALLY got to film our teenage interview. The subjects were not our first choice, but they were still everything we could have hoped for and more.

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the shoot because of a huge commitment I made many months ago to take a group of high school kids to Carolina Point, a Young Life Camp in Brevard, NC. I was not able to get out of this commitment. Thankfully, our crew recruited Alex Matthews to do sound for the shoot.

Upon returning to town Sunday night, I met with our group to sync interview dailies and edit our 1st rough cut of Circles. Right now, our rough cut consists of the pieces we've filmed so far. As the editor, my main question going forward is deciding how we are going to combine our 6 separate segments into one coherant piece, especially because they are all so different stylistically. Right now, it seems strange because we have our Narrative scenes wrapped, but still a fair amount of work to do on interviews. Once our interviews are finished, I believe the stylistic consistency of our film will be enhanced.

This Tuesday evening, we will be filming our grandma interview. We are really excited to shoot this, because we believe this will have a lot in common with the teenage and mom interviews. This time, however, the answers will come from a wiser source.

Narrative Scenes Wrapped

And thats a wrap on all of our narrative scenes! This weekend we shot our grandma cooking scene and now we can focus solely on the documentary aspects of our film. The shoot was very fun and we got to do some things that we've never done before as filmmakers. For example, our crew doubled as extras within the scene itself, since it takes place behind the scenes of a cooking show. The actresses were also outstanding and very fun to shoot with.

We were also supposed to shoot our teenage interview Sunday, but once again Antonia fell through. Now we're at the point where we are just going to move on and find some other subjects. Thankfully we already have some more girls lined up in Raleigh. We are supposed to shoot that interview next Friday.

From a sound standpoint, we are really satisfied with all of the audio so far, which is great because this film is my first time being an on-set sound mixer. My past experience comes from being a post-production sound designer.

From an editing standpoint, the puzzle pieces are coming in place. It will be interesting to see how our 6+ pieces come together as one coherent film. This is something that might be aided by animated transitions, an original score, or some narration.

Fall Break, Edits, & Re-Shoots

Our group did not have any shoots scheduled over Fall break, so thankfully the hurricane did not mess us up logistically. Over break, we narrowed down our mom documentary footage and polished our mom telephone scene.

Shooting and editing that scene was challenging as well as entertaining. This was my first time dealing with lip-syncing, keyframe animations, and multi-track recording to this extent. Some of the actresses really struggled with dubbing their lines, but all of them were eventually able to get through it without too much frustration. Most of the mistakes were followed by laughing at them self. The entire shoot was very lighthearted and the spirit of disappointment was never present.

Storyboarding the frame animations throughout the scene was very helpful. Our hope was that the animations would not only be fun, but that they'd also have a purpose of highlighting the tensions of friend circles in a visible way.

This past weekend we re-shot our teenage narrative scene. Unfortunately the actresses didn't seem as excited as the first shoot, but they still pulled of their performances well. After a camera change and re-storyboarding, our visuals look much better, which will make the performances look even better. We had less extras this time, but that shouldn't make a big difference.

This upcoming week I will be editing the re-shoot of the teenage scene and preparing the sound logistics of our upcoming shoots.

Productivity at its Finest

I'm writing this blog within hours of our shoot today, so my thoughts may be scattered. In one weekend, we as a film crew successfully did the following:

• Meet with our grandma actors
• Photoshoot for our film poster
• Launch our Indiegogo campaign
• Interview our mothers
• Shoot our narrative mother scene

When shot our film poster. The concept for the poster was to shoot the grandma actors in the same setting as our high school scene to go along with our, "High School Never Ends" subtitle. This was a fun time and was a fun way to spend time with our grandma actors.

In the early afternoon we interviewed our mother subjects. The verbal content that was spoken was incredible! The answers and discussion they provided was more than we could have ever wished for. This will surely be a challenge to cut down.

Artistically and Conceptually, our mom scene was a challenge. Because we were dealing with 4 separate continuous takes all in frame at the same time - we had to get our audio synced first. This means that we mic'd up all our actors, recorded the dialogue first, and then shot the scenes while the actors lip-synced their lines. This process was very time-consuming when it was time for the actors to lip-sync, but we hope the aesthetic and style of the scene will all be worth it!

Now we have shot half of our material! (not including the teenage scene reshoots). Now we are exhausted, but hey, fall break could not have come at a better time.