On Editing

Ian’s rough cut of the film was not inspiring stuff, and he eventually had so much on his plate that he was unable to continue with the project, leaving us rather high and dry.

Finally, with Day Three in the can at last, we placed an advert online – ‘Does anyone want to help edit a 15 minute film?’ – among the very kind replies we received was one from Forum writer, Sarah Berry, recommending us to a young man, who had all the computerised kit to edit a film, but wanted some practice. Sarah assured us that Kieron would be ‘meticulous’.

Christmas, inevitably, got in the way, but in early January, I went to see Kieron at his Brixton flat, and over three or four hours we viewed all the footage, and Kieron took reams of notes.

Some weeks later Kieron emailed, saying that his first 14 scenes were on You Tube. These all looked great; all but one of the gang scenes was done, and the opening scene starting with the river and ending with Prescott in his car was a lovely surprise, because I’d no idea that it would look that good.

The process that ensued was one of my posting excited emails to Kieron, suggesting what to do next, and him assembling, adjusting and posting the results to You Tube. Quite quickly we hit a hurdle; there simply wasn’t quite enough footage!

The areas of greatest concern were Scene 8, in which Miss MacKay’s eyeline was constantly drifting to her cue card, and Scene 16, in which there simply weren’t any close ups of either Zoe or Biggles talking, except for Biggles’ first line; in the first case we came up with the ‘restored footage’ gambit, while in the second close ups of the modem, and shots of both actors waiting for cues paper over the void.

A greater concern was the Third Cockney in Scene 4; both the people filmed – druggy-looking bloke and old crone – were both so bad to be unusable. For a while we pondered ways to dub the crone, but finding an appropriate voice was even more of a problem, and eventually we decided to re-shoot it. Thus was Kieron able to return the favour to Sarah Berry, by inviting her to take on the two-second role.

The locating shot of the LCPS exterior with its zoom to high window had come out very dark, and while we thought we could brighten the footage, it eventually proved simpler to used the original picture taken on the location hunt and darken it in Photoshop; the editing software accomplished the zoom. In the same way, the opening shot over the dome has been slowed down in order to accommodate the sound effect.

On the other hand, both corridor fight scenes were, if anything, over-long, Scene 2 starting with Tony coming in through the double doors, and Scene 18 with Bubblegum rolling a fag.

Now we had all the pictures in the right order, we started adding little tricks like ‘Whipps Cross Town Hall’ (which actually covers a dropped line) and ‘Mary Schofield MP – Not previously transmitted’ – I love the way they flash in and out – and some ‘static’ over the foyer scene to imply that hidden cameras really are in use (even though they palpably are not), the monochrome ‘mobile phone footage’ together with the tagline chaepfonepix.com, and the degradation of the ‘1986’ footage. Of course, most mobiles take perfectly good short films, and most 198os TV footage is perfectly watchable.

Next came sound, including raising the volume on some lines that needed it, and reducing the traffic noise over the Bow Road shot, and adding sound effects like the boxing ring bell (there was no bell on the day) and the silenced pistol. For these, the Internet was a great boon, as there are a number of sites, run by true philanthropists, containing free sound effects; Big Ben was also added in this way, as were the Old School and Sharp Set music tracks, and the dripping water for the cellar. The shot of moving feet, just before the camera is switched off in the last shot was added by Kieron quite late in the process, but improves the ending considerably.

As mentioned on the page for Day 1, the first spat between Rosalee and Jo, never arrived in the rushes, and so we did it by sampling Jo’s line ‘pikey’ from Scene 25, and re-recording Rosalee saying ‘Fucking  bitch’. 

The boxing match looks far fiercer than it was, because both Josie and Ginny were trying very hard not to hit each other, though the camera does get hit more than once; a mix of careful cutting and improved sound effects give the impression that both girls really are out to hurt each other. Watching the film on the big screen at Purple turtle, I was quite surprised at how violent the fight looks, and suddenly felt quite protective of Ginny!

Don’t forget, if you want to edit a movie of your own, we strongly recommend Mr Kieron O’Sullivan kieronmosullivan@yahoo.co.uk