Jeremy LaLonde's Blog
February 15th 2007

Post Begins

So here we are in what is my favorite part of making a film: the edit. There’s a good chance that it isn’t a coincidence that I make my living as an editor most of the time. I’m a firm believer that the editing of a film is like writing the final version of the screenplay. The script you write is not the script you film, and it’s not the script you’re editing. Things happen. To quote Woody Allen, “A fresh truck of compromises shows up every day.” And that’s true, you don’t always get everything you want for your film. Actors, locations, crew, don’t always work out. I’ve yet to be truly disappointed by a film I’ve made. Generally I’m lucky in that they tend out how I’d planned. Maybe this means I’m not pushing myself enough. Tough call.

So I managed to do a pretty sharp assemble edit of the film, and it’s clocking in around seven minutes and change. Not bad, however it has to be five minutes or less before we hand it into Bravo. Already there’s probably a minute I can lose just with tightening, and then there’s some lines that I don’t feel are necessary either. I was tempted, in the days leading up to editing, to swap the order of two scenes, but now that they’re in there I think it works.

I hit a few bumps with doing an output from Avid with the HD XD-CAM footage. Two days, and many community support forums later I still couldn’t find a solution. Everything I tried and the damn thing just didn’t want to export into a quicktime so I could make a screening disc. I had a bit of a breakthrough this afternoon, but it’s yet to be seen. I left it at work to output over night, so hopefully I’ll be greeted with a surprise in the morning…

Jeremy, the editor

I’ve been asked if I’ve ever considered letting someone else edit a film of mine. I’ve thought about how, one day down the line, that might have to happen just for logistics. I’m big on other people’s contributions, and I respect the art of editing for that reason. I know that I’ve made significant changes to other people’s films, things that they might have never thought of on their own. So the thought is there, in the back of my mind: what am I missing by editing myself? I guess I’ll never know. The truth is that I love to edit, I love to play with the footage. That, and I don’t play well with others. I couldn’t sit in an edit suite with another editor going through my footage. I’d just want to steal the mouse away from them. Maybe I’m not mature enough yet to give up that control. Either way, I think I’m able to separate myself enough from the footage to use things that are good, and not just because I know they took forever to plan/shoot. Plus when I’m directing on set, I’m cutting the film in my head already, so that affects the way I shoot. I already know where I’m going to be for each part of each scene. Does that change? Sure it does, and I make sure that I don’t paint myself into a corner. That’s the other thing about being an editor, as a director you make sure to cover yourself with proper cut-aways, etc… Especially since this film is a mockumentary, a lot of scenes are literally one take. So because this film has to come in under a certain length, there’s a danger in the pacing, so I was aware of that while shooting and gave myself lots of get-out-of-jail free cards. So I've finished two versions of the film. One is seven minutes, the other is right at five. Now I need to try and find a compromise...

Jeremy, the writer

I try and write as much as I can. Of course whenever I actually find time to write I never do, I always find something to occupy my time, this is nothing new to the writer's plight. I find that I actually get more done when I have no time to do it. I get slightly annoyed when I read or hear people talking about their 'page counts'. You know the "I write 5 pages a day", or 20 pages, whatever, the number is irrelevant. I'm a creature of habit, so I should empathize with this, however really it just kind of annoys me. It becomes a bit of a quantity over quality thing. Some days the best I get is one great line, or a small piece of the puzzle, but it'll stick, it'll be great, and that always helps. I write very slowly, and then very quickly. By this I mean that I'll noodle with an idea for a long time. I have a giant box full of dozens of notebooks, all for different potential projects, and as I get new ideas for them I throw them in. Every now and then I rummage through them to see if any of the ideas have enough meat to it to start actually seriously working through it. Sometimes I find that two stories are missing something and that merging two ideas or more together is the trick. Either way, my process is somewhat messy. But once I get all my ideas arranged, the writing process for me is quite quick. The script I'm working on the most right now is probably the quickest I've gone from idea to draft, mostly because it was a commissioned project. I'm meeting up with the producer this weekend, from who the initial idea originated. We've had a change of heart from the original premise and want to move the story in a new direction. What was great about working through the first draft is we finally nailed the main character, but the story was no longer big enough to support her, so we've got to give her a story worthy of her. We're applying for Greenburg funding so we're working towards a treatment. Ah the joys of writing.

It's going to be a busy month as I'm also working with Mr. Anthony Grani on re-submitting "The Untitled Work of Paul Shepard" to Canada Council for the Arts, and Ontario Arts Council. All that and I really want to seriously catch up on my movie watching. Starting next week I'll start listing all of what I watch in a week, perhaps giving a mini review. I've been keeping a film journal for about four years now, writing something about everything I watch: features, shorts, tv, etc... I find it forces me to really think about the work. So there's that. This weekend I'm going to try and see a few of those "oscar" movies, just so I have some kind of opinion when watching the telecast next week. I'm somewhat torn about going to see "Letters From Iwo Jima" because I really kind of want to save it and do it as a double bill with "Flags of our Fathers". We'll see.

Until next time...

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