Edit. Day One.

While I wait the 22 minutes for my poor little macbook pro to render I thought I'd catch up here. It's been about 6 weeks since my last entry.

In that time I've been writing, re-writing, and re-re-writing the script for the doco. This has been a 6 month process. 6 months! Worth the time though because now I feel like I've done the hard work, laid the path and it's just a matter of assembling it. Just like a piece of IKEA furniture; well designed, looks good but underneath is particle board timber. So hand me my allen key ...

So I recorded a draft of the voiceover on the weekend. I've never included a voiceover in any of my productions before. I've always used text in its place but as a viewer, text is laborious, exhausting to read. This doco is looking like it is going to be around 30 mins long, too long to be constantly reading!!

And I've certainly never recorded a voiceover before. As I was doing it I found myself wondering how it should sound. There's the traditional 'voice of god' style which I couldn't do if I tried. I also don't like the stiffness of the traditional journalistic approach, it's too cold and detached. Then there's the more contemporary style that sounds is more relaxed, monotone and conversational. That's more how I talk anyway so I think this voiceover probably fits into that category. I'll probably have to end up doing most of it again but it is acting as a good track to guide the doco as I begin editing.

I'm right on schedule in beginning the edit today. I wanted the script done by end of July. The next milestone is to have the documentary, or a complete draft of it, done by end of September.

So first thing was to lay down the voiceover which has filled the timeline up to 32 minutes! Man, that's a seriously long production. I'm a bit concerned that it's too long. As I go I'm going to be looking for parts of the VO that I can replace with more succinct visuals to shorten things a bit.

The beginning of the doco contains lots of little bits from all over the place so I've been sourcing them and putting them on the timeline. Sound effects of tones, projectors, wind whistling. All very easy to source on the www. I visited youtube to source the old film and kodak ads ....

... wait ... rendering is done so back to the editing.