I’ve been working with Simon now for 3 days on the pilot – a bit tiring so this entry will be a bit short, but wanted to just make sure I’ve noted things to remember.
Mike Bradsell gave us a template of five boxes so that we could try the multi-screen edit, and this has proved very useful, Simon being really quick. We can already start to see how the different screens have different grammars – you can cut out of sync (staggered) across the screens, and also multiply. We haven’t gone too far down this line yet as are still getting used to stuff. Had a first go at the Narcissus and Amenias love scene, which was an easy starter. Generally the problem is as I expected when sync is kept over two screens, but they have been filmed in different worlds. It’s very difficult to keep both screens parallel to each other. The problem is with Tiresias in this scene, and I did plan this OK by planning to have male and female Tiresias, but because the technical idea of this is not necessarily working, we’ve been trying with female Tiresias but with no proper cutaways – duh!
The other scene we’re cutting is where Hera cries and Echo writes in the sand, and the same thing is happening. We’re finding it very easy to multi-screen the storm, and it looks better than when we shot it even if the rain effects aren’t too good because we can throw it around the screens, and also not worry too much about continuity. However, the timing is very odd as in Hera’s v good performance she doesn’t cry until the end and we’d need to stretch her out over the montage of the rain. We haven’t got nearly enough material and this is an imaginative problem, because shots of Zeus looking or cutting between angles still doesn’t give us enough time. We need something generic so that Hera can appear and dissapear without feeling that we need a strong motivation. Something like appearing over clouds. However if we do that once, we have to establish a convention earlier…
The pilot is a very difficult thing to do as a) we’re not quite telling the story so we’re not cutting entirely for that, and also it’s evolving and we need to experiment but still get a result! Nevertheless, at the moment it’s a very pleasurable process and both of us are learning heaps.