All summer I’ve been editing beautiful super 8 and cine footage using my fledgling digital video editing skills. It sure is a steep learning curve. And don’t get me started on the audio…
But finally our baby is finished, and project Film Fan, a collaboration with artist filmmaker Katie Goodwin (considerably more skilled and experienced with the medium than I am) is ready to roll.
It’s beautiful, and we both agree that the collaborative process is perfect for film editing, although not always smooth sailing. We tele-cined (recorded to digital) approximately three hours of footage in a frustrating set of processes which involved much swearing, temperamental thirty year old equipment (and two temperamental artists) tears, tedium and lots of laughter.
Then we edited. We swapped cuts backward and forward, just locating and linking all that footage in our sequences had us scratching our heads. But in swapping the sequences back and forth we were able to edit further and further, and the distance created by the hand of the collaborator allowed a clarity and freedom of vision, to be ever more ruthless.
The final film is eight minutes long, and features babies, kids, a birthday party, the Muppet Show, a wedding, some amazing period fashion, poignancy and humour.
It really is amazing how these slice of life snippets build to create a picture of British life from the sixties to the eighties.
We installed at Bearspace last week in group show Odds Against Tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to hearing what other people think of the work.
