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WEEK THREE AT THE EDIT CENTER
On Monday, each of us sits down to address the notes that we received from Rodney Evans, the director of The Happy Sad, on Friday. We are all tapping away with our headphones on, filling a common room, but simultaneously lost in our personal space bubbles. We do this for the better part of the day. Tuesday we have scene analysis. This is, of course, my favorite because… we are watching movies. Watching movies has been my hands-down favorite pastime since, well, forever. We watch Monique’s award-winning performance in Precious. If you have seen Precious (sorry, I’m not going to refer to it as Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire) then you know which scene we watched. If you haven’t seen Precious, trust me, Monique earned her Oscar. Then we watch the scene(s) in Silence of The Lambs where Clarice shows up at the home of the serial killer, and we (the audience) mistakenly think that the house is surrounded by the SWAT team, only to find that the SWAT team is at a house miles away. We talk about the films and learn that that decision to intercut the two Silence of The Lamb scenes was a decision that was made in the edit room.
I start editing a second scene from The Happy Sad. My friend Maria Dizzia is in this one, which is super fun for me, and also, I am not flailing quite as much as I was the week before, and am able to assemble my own scene with fewer questions for the teachers. Periodically we break for tech lectures on subjects ranging from markers, to three-point editing to sound short cuts.
On Wednesday Sabine Hoffman, the editor for The Happy Sad, visits to look at our scenes. It is interesting to hear her different perspective. A third scene is put on my hard drive for me to work on. On Friday Evans visits the class again to see what kind of progress we have made. He watches the changes I made to the scene that I showed him a week ago, as well as two new ones that I have cut since then. He has read this blog, which puts me at a disadvantage in the bluffing department. However, I am genuinely more confident and relaxed than I was a week ago, so bluffing is less necessary. And that feels like an accomplishment.
Three weeks down. Three to go.
