In the Edit

 
Editing on Follow The Crows has been a somewhat traumatic experience. As we've worked so tirelessly on the production side of things we've been somewhat mistreating the post-production side. That's not say we've been beating it black and blue with a sack of oranges or something, we've just not focused on it as much as one would like.

That being said, now that post-production is well and truly underway we can start to see the film taking shape. A completed rough cut is almost ready, and it's nice to see that things are actually coming together. It looks like a movie!

It's always fun to watch as you strip away what works and what doesn't, the film takes a flow and a life of its own in the edit, the pacing often changes from what you imagined when shooting or even when writing the script, and you realize that you probably didn't need as much as you got. But hey, more is better in the shooting and less is more in the edit, right?

That less is more approach is pretty key to Follow The Crows, and as I've been going through the different scenes and sequences, piecing them each together with the previous and following ones, it becomes more and more apparent that things need to be held back.

In fact, almost everything needs to be held back.

This does two things, it gives the film a nice, slow pace, that builds on tension without ever reaching the "boiling point", but it also add weight and effect to the moments when we don't hold back.

Throughout the film are several scenes where, for want of a better phrase, "all hell breaks loose", and being able to slow things down until you reach those points has allowed them to become all the more shocking and effective when they do come.

I'm excited now to show the final product to people, but we've got a lot of work to do before we get to that point. Not only do we have to finish the final cut of the movie (we've only just completed our rough cut), we also have to do a lot of ADR and we have to have our music composed and layered over.

But as it stands now, rubbish sound and temp music, it's a decent little thriller, and I'm quite proud of it. More or less. There's always going to be some parts I hate, but that's the price of being a perfectionist.