We have been editing, testing, editing, testing… and getting great results and feedback in these screenings. In some ways we are now slipping into analysis paralysis on some points, but on others, we are really having to fine tune the edit. For me, great movies stretch the credible right to the very edge. You take the viewer right to the very limit of plausibility, but never past that point. Hollywood movies tend to do this very well.

We are having such a plausibility debate right now with Gone Fishing, with specific regard to how big viewers thought the enormous killer pike in the story actually was. In previous edits we didn’t have the new footage we shot last week (of Brucey, our big rubber pike), but now we have it in place, we are getting all sorts of sizes quoted. These shots, no matter how impressive, scale the fish. And here is a great one! One test viewer said of our big rubber pike, ‘It was clearly a real fish the you filmed, and so it can’t have been bigger than a couple of feet!’ Blimey. Our effects are so good they are working against us.

The solution is of course to be minimal in what we reveal. So it’s back to the edit to modify once more. This is one of the reasons I love editing so much. We really get the chance to craft the story to perform like a sports car. These tiny tweaks, cummulatively, make such a difference.   

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com