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March 22, 2008
Roughly Speaking
From e-mails sent to friends this week:
"I'm not quite sure what it is yet. It's feeling a lot more like a documentary than I thought it would, but it also has this strange, slightly unreal storybook vibe."
"I don't necessarily want to keep a massively close lid on this project, but I also don't want to let the cat out of the bag quite yet. I don't even know if it's a cat yet. It might be a puppy. Or a grizzly."
"I'm twenty-one minutes into the cut. So far I don't hate it."
And I don't. I also am not quite so worried that, through smart and judicious cutting, I'd end up with yet another short film. I'm letting things play a little long right now, but even so, these twenty-one minutes constitute about five and a half pages of the script, which itself was thirty pages long. And I haven't even made it to the first scene with dialogue yet. As long as the film is at least 65 minutes, I'll be happy and content that my instincts did not lead me astray.
Time for an anecdote! Yesterday, I found myself facing a quandary somewhat related to my post below. I found that, in a particular scene, if I lined up two unsuccessful takes directly prior to a successful one, the result was something close to an interminably drawn-out comic set piece. I actually cracked myself up watching it! The problem, though, is that if a.) the hallmark of successful physical comedy is sustenance (of both the subject and the camera) and b.) the manufactured humor of this sequence necessitates two edits whose sole purpose are to join three shots that ideally would be one, is the comic structure of the scene worth the poor form with which it's been assembled? Especially when it's the sort of comedy that's so deconstructed that it will put most audiences to sleep? It's like Jacques Tati in molasses, played back at a quarter speed.
Well, that's what second cuts are for. Right now it's staying in.
Posted by David Lowery at March 22, 2008 12:36 AM