Friends and Foes

The phrase “this turned out to be more difficult than it seemed at first” seems to be a LoadingReadyRun chestnut at this point, but I feel prompted to haul it out again to describe the production process behind this video. The actual shooting went super, duper fast on account of Paul, Matt and myself being consummate professionals … with a teleprompter …

The editing however, proved to be quite difficult. Although Graham did have Paul and myself read our lines across from each other while filming in order to help the timing, things invariably went out of sync at some points. Graham’s editing solution was to appropriately speed up and slow down the video in specific sections in order to keep Paul and I responding to each other at the proper times. Graham took a screenshot of his editing screen in order to better illustrate this. Sections of blue video have been sped up and orange clips have been slowed down. While most of the adjustments were minor (in order to keep them unnoticed by you, the viewer), the biggest adjustment down was 71%, and the largest speed boost was an increase 120%.

This video also marks the first time in weeks (possibly months) that we were able to move from the Moonbase to a location shoot without forgetting some vital sort of equipment. Although we did realize once we actually got to Matt’s basement that we probably should have brought the dolly to spice up the establishing shot, because we didn’t actually know we wanted the dolly until after we left I have retroactively decided we didn’t forget it.

This week’s trivia:

• The most grueling part of the shoot was dealing with Matt’s dog Abby, who was extremely interested in providing us with love and attention. When the hardest part of your shoot is dealing with adorable dogs, it’s a good day.
• The original draft of the script did not have Paul’s character trying to make such a dramatic turnaround, but it was decided later that the pinnacle of being a good friend is knowing someone’s middle name. It’s actually surprisingly hard. How many of your friends middle names can you come up with?
• Total time spent on this video (including packing up, transit and lunch) was about two and a half hours.