At this point, the precious raw footage of “Arrangements” has been digitized and sits, cataloged and ready to go, on the editorial platform. There were apparently some delays in delivering continuity notes and footage logs to editorial, but at this point all has been handed over and the editorial process has begun.

I took this moment of calm before the storm to submit a few pertinent questions to Chip Street, the director of “Arrangements.”

SC [Skot C]: How much raw footage did you end up with?

CS [Chip Street]: We ended up with over five hours of footage – though in some cases, we admittedly forgot to shut off the camera, or simply let it run for B roll footage, as in the big party scene. It’s a high ratio, but I’m not concerned. The way we shot, I’d run the actors through the whole scene multiple times, not just a line and shot here, a line and shot there. Plus, I tend to roll a lot of leader and tail on each take… wait and let the actors settle before ‘action’, then let them sit after the last line while the look lingers, till they’re uncomfortable, before calling ‘cut’. Sometimes great stuff happens there… and it gives editing lots of options. I’ll even start calling things out, in an attempt to grab options for cutaways or whatnot… “Look up, look at the wall, smile, roll your eyes, sip your coffee.” On one day, Gina (our lead) asked “how long do I have to keep going?” and my answer was “Till I tell you to stop.” Everyone laughed (I run a light set ) but I was serious, too.

SC: Did you end up getting additional coverage after the official wrap day?

CS: We may have one or two pickups to do, small insert shots of one kind or another, but so far I don’t believe anything critical is missing. Those will be “nice to haves” not “must haves”.

SC: How confident are you in meeting the deadline?

CS: We’re so dependent on the good graces of a number of people who all have other jobs and responsibilities. If we can all get together in a timely manner, in the same place and the same time, we’ve got a good shot. We’re very excited about our soundtrack options… but we can’t reveal the details on that yet.

SC: Stylistically/Artistically, what do you think your biggest editorial challenges will be?

CS: Firstly, the same challenge I had while shooting… stylistically, the intention is to have many long takes with few cutaways or inserts (Miike and Leone come to mind). While shooting, Matthew (our DP) had to keep reminding me that we often only needed one good long take from one setup. In editing, I may find myself looking habitually for the cutaway. The challenge is, it better work… we’ve got fewer cutaways to go to as a result. Secondly, the show includes ‘reality’ segments, and ‘fantasy’ segments. We want to clearly differentiate those two things. We shot specifically with a mind to editing them differently, but we may also want to treat the images visually in post… filter them or something. We’ll be making that call on the day.

–Skot C.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under General, Hosts, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.