HTN - update

I've been working on it. Really I have. When I strung all the clips together the movie was 180 minutes. That is twice what it needs to be. So now the goal is efficiency. How can I best get the main points of the scene, or the story, into this scene as quickly as possible without it feeling rushed or awkward. It's fun. I'm enjoying it. But this means going through every take and even cutting down several takes.

Part of the "hard part" is the actors were so good, it's hard to decide what to use. Actors Holly Walker and Chris day gave me 3 takes that were great. And each take was about 5 and a half minutes as they described what they were doing to the basement of the funeral parlor. The scene could be told in about 2 minutes. So what gags to leave in and what has to come out. In some ways it's like making a new performance. It's best when I pretty much have all the takes memorized so I can string together something that looks or at least feels natural.

In some cases it's pretty easy. Megan Whyte might do 3 takes and one of them is absolutely perfect. Mike Betette who played Dean Livey also did an awesome job. (He also posted a blog about his experience about improvising on camera.) He did some exploration with the character on the first day of shooting. One was happy, the other more angry. You have to watch them all and decide where the character is going to go and how he or she is going to develop.

So, we're working on it. Like Joe said on Facebook, we're going to be "showing it to some people". I've learned that distribution of anything is a full-time job all by itself.