“The Sprinter” Part Five: Editing
So we developed the story, filmed all of our footage, recorded and produced the soundtrack and were ready to start editing the film.
The first step was digitizing all of the 8mm footage, which was an expensive and time-consuming process. Basically, as far as we knew, there was only one place in America that would process the film and it was in Kansas City, so we sent it there to be processed. They sent us the processed reels and we mailed some of them to a place in Minneapolis to have them digitized. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the names of those places. All told, I think it cost us around $300 to process and digitize all the footage.
Once we had all of the footage digitized we burned a rough arrangement of clips to DVD to watch and contemplate. We got a copy of Final Cut Pro and sat in my downtown Lincoln apartment putting it all together.
Sketchy Editing Setup
We worked on it every Thursday night, and whenever else we could find time. It was tedious and tiring, but exciting as well. Justin’s attention to detail has always impressed me and he really took the lead on the editing. I was easily distracted but Justin was focused and hell-bent on making this film. It was a privilege to work with him.
Justin Kemerling, October 20th, 2003 at 9:23 PM. Steady editing all the live-long day.
Because we were new to editing film and we were learning Final Cut Pro as we went, we decided to keep things really simple. We used simple, quick cuts and experimented with multiplying layers of video on top of each other. We also flipped some of the footage, ran some of it in reverse as well as repeating some clips a number of times. As a designer, I think that sometimes knowing a lot of techniques can cloud your focus with too many options. So in a way, it was nice for us to come at this process unencumbered by too much experience. It kept the focus on the story itself and not the techniques we were using to tell it.
We got pretty far along and decided that we just needed one solid day to work it all out. So we both called in sick on the same day and hunkered down in my apartment to put the finishing touches on the film. It was winter and the day was cold and grey. We ate soup, drank coffee, laughed and hoped all the live-long day. It was great and by that night we had finished “The Sprinter.”
Justin Kemerling, November 6th, 2003, 11:49 PM after just completing “The Sprinter.”
We celebrated over a couple beers and the next day we went back to work.
