Reverse engineering from the Rosetta Stone of filmmaking

Last night was the second and hopefully last of my 6 day weeks on this shoot. I did afterall come down here to work and i am actually grateful for it, but working days as long as this do tend to take their toll. Mornings are harder to struggle through when there is barely enough time to relax and turn around for the next day. As i understand it, we even have it easy because all the locations are nearby and relatively centralized. In other locations (LA for example) you could easily be driving several hours to your destination. This would cut your turn-around down again considerably, but then again, if i were in this situation loading vans, i could fesably sleep on the ride over. But enough complaining about hours.

This week, filmwise, we shot a pretty impressive two and a half minute shot which was handed off between 7 operators of which two of them were on rising and falling cranes and one which ends the shot on a rickshaw. The shot itself was a very cool feat, so much so that the producer bought a case of champagne for the crew to drink at wrap. I wonder however, in the shooting of the rest of the scene, how the shot will gel when its placed directly up along a scene which will be cut between shots that will probably last only a few seconds each. Of course this is the film student in me over analyzing things a little too much. I should be less critical so as to dismiss the power of really good editing. Most people don't even detect cuts between shots in movies, least of all action scenes, i know that. I'm not sure why i am questioning that power now, but it might have something to do with the fact that i have no opportunity to observe any aspect of the editing process on this film.

I guess the editing process of these major motion pictures remains somewhat mysterious to me, because it remains one of the few aspects of the industry that I consider somewhat mysterious. The key techniques i of course learned about in film school, and earlier on my own, but the true secrets will remain elusive to me until I meet, let alone talk to a real life film editor. As far as i can tell, they have not been on set at all, and while i am sure they are working to log and capture, and perhaps even to begin editing in a preliminary state, that aspect of this project will be an unknown to me until I see the film on the big screen.

Regardless of my opinion of the film once i've seen it all shot, i will definetely be among the first in line at the theater to put the final piece of the puzzle together. I can watch all the monitor VTR replays I can bear on set, but will never get a sense how it truly comes together until I see it with mixed sound design (dialog and music and sound effects all put together) and proper editing and color correction (to see just how effective the stunts will be in the picture and other unknowns like that). Editing is after all where most of the magic happens. It's also going to be fun to be able to spot all the places i was hiding during each shot (assuming I can manage to remember that stuff by the time this picture comes out) but really, the final film will serve as the Rosetta Stone of this whole experience to translate what exactly the outcome is of this whole shoot.

Thankfully the end of this week also means the end of our parking lot location, so the rest of the week will be able to stay lively. I think there's a new location every day next week so that may make it go even faster.