Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/05/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 5/26/01 8:09 PM, Mark Rabiner at mark@rabiner.cncoffice.com wrote: > Well I've gone out with a 16mm Bolex and shot black and white footage. > I got to shoot what ever i wanted and it was not THAT different walking up to > people and hitting the shutter button. > And I've made some 3 to 9 minute super 8 films. Shooting isn't moviemaking. Moviemaking is this huge collaborative process. It's all but impossible to do alone. But the biggest difference is editing. Editing hundreds of hours of footage shot over maybe four to six weeks on the road into a 60 or 75 minute film takes me eight weeks with an editor sitting next to me the whole time. Maybe 800 edits, each of which we do frame perfect. Distilling three hour interviews into 5 or 10 minutes. A narrative which has to be created, paced, honed, step by tiny step. Anyone who thinks a movie is a bit like putting together a slide show or even a book of photos, and I've done all of these, just hasn't grasped the scale of the undertaking in moviemaking. Worse, the complexity rises with the square or cube of the length of the film. I can shoot and cut a 5 minute film in a day. 10 minutes, four days. 30 minutes, two to six weeks. 60 minutes, three to six months. It once took me a year to do a single 60 minute film. It's like shooting a story for Nat Geo and writing a novel at the same time. - -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com