The Orange FilmFour Prize For Short Film

This week: More Extracts From The Finalists' Diaries

	KEY DATES
	April 2002-
	finalists' films in production
	Aug 2002-
	six films screened at Edinburgh Film Festival
	Aug 2002-
	six films screened on Channel 4

Shorts
Click here for inspiration

The six Orange FilmFour Prize For Short Film finalists are now in post-production with their films. Over the past weeks we have brought you extracts from the finalists' personal diaries of their experiences making the films, giving a fascinating insight into the film-making process (check out the site content archive to read past extracts). In this last instalment we delve into four of the finalists' thoughts on editing and post-production, with images from their completed films.

Iain Riddick, director of A Container
"The film hadn't been paced yet [when editing began], which is always disconcerting, but even so it was a confused race from start to end. And the story lost. The answer was obvious. Up to this point there had been an interior scene at the start of the film that always felt wrong because the film was about a skip and yet immediately we left it to go inside. Whilst in a longer film this scene would have worked, in the time we had - 4:45 overall - it put the rest of the film completely off balance. With this sorted the main structure suddenly came into focus - and consequently, brought up a whole load of other details."

Jeff Povey, writer/director of Blowing It
"In two days we shot enough material to make a ten minute movie. Which is no mean feat. But it means a lot of hard work and imagination to mould that into the perfect five minutes."

"What an editor can do is assemble all of the shots, and then piece together exactly what you want from all of the coverage you shot. It's not unlike writing a script, a constant refining of a rough piece of material until it tells the story exactly how you imagined it. He can cut in and out of the same scene, locate the right expression or moment and then suddenly you've got the scene you wanted in the first place. You can even change the actor's emotions or intentions just by isolating the moments you want. It was the first time that I thought I had gained complete control over my film and I enjoyed every second of the edit."

Faye Gilbert, writer and director of Hard Little Man
"I approached the edit feeling confident about the three and half-hours of rushes we had shot albeit slightly nervous about the five-minute time frame we had to fit it into! The editor was brilliant. We immediately started to work on identifying the most significant moments of Ben's day and concentrated on these for the first rough-cut."

"Ultimately I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to make Hard Little Man. Not only do I feel very passionate about the issues and the little boy's life that is explored in the film but I have had the chance to work with really lovely, creative and generous people. It has been very demanding but extremely rewarding."

Jonathan Soper, director of The Fishmonger
"The minute I began editing I worried, "have we got everything, can we tell the story, and can we get it in five minutes". Sitting there with the editor, again is a scary and exciting prospect but one I enjoy."

"Having the final cut meant work could begin on the animated fish that had to be included in the underwater shots. I would love to have animated the fish myself but time constraints prevented me from doing so."

"Other elements such as sound and music offered a different challenge. I love dark sounding effects with dark composed scores, but as our film was a light hearted tale the complete opposite was needed, so much time was spent with the sound people and a composer going over different options that again proved invaluable."

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