Post

Post production is gruelling. When you are editing you see all of the shots you should have got, you watch all of the bad performances that you did not notice on the day and you find little mistakes everywhere. The painful part is that you don’t see all of this just once. You watch it over and over again until you want to scream, then you take a break and then start watching it over and over again. Our writing teacher, Michael Showalter, says you can rewrite your movie in the cutting room and you often have to. You cut shots together in a way that you would have never dreamt of during production.

During our post production period we reviewed each others films in class a number of times. It was very helpful. The first time I showed “First Kiss” one of my classmates said she did not understand the motivations of the Ashley character. She thought Ashley wanted to buy a kiss from Jessica because she had a crush on her. I have done all I can to clarify this in my film. However, a film about teenager girls discovering their homosexuality may be more interesting than the movie I initially set out to make.

Our teachers also gave us advice and guidance. Often they told us things that we were already painfully aware of, like missing shots and faulty performances. But it was good to have those messages reinforced. I learnt so much from the mistakes I made on this project. I realise now that I did not give the actors enough direction so their intentions are at times unclear, I did not get the shots I needed to establish the personality of the central character, I did not get passing of time shots so the transitions in the film are clunky and I did not get enough coverage, especially close-ups. Also, the shot of Ashley looking at the other kids laughing at Jessica looks like it’s from another movie. There is nothing to tie the shot to the rest of the film.

I hope to correct these mistakes in my next film!