Persimmon Recipe #5: Baking in the Oven

3-29-11 The past few weeks have been long and hard. I've been sitting with the footage since the rough cut was done, tweaking, trimming, rearranging and more, slowly sculpting the story out of all the material. The rough cut made the story visible, but the story wasn't working. So I chopped and moved the material.

But more importantly than sitting in front of the computer screen, was letting the story sit in my mind. The rough cut gave some life to the screenplay, but there was more to gain by sitting with the story. My classmates have been working on this story since last Fall, and know it backwards and forwards. But I've only been participating in this story for 2 months! So I just needed to contemplate why these scenes were here. What emotions are being evoked? Can it be said better? What images are being juxtaposed? What does each imply?

In some ways, just sitting in thought with the story was more important than actually sitting at the computer clicking away at the footage. It gave me direction. More importantly, it redefined my idea of "productivity." I'm so used to thinking that to be productive, I need to be producing measurable results. But sometimes you are more productive if you think and plan. I can't measure what came from sitting for a while just thinking of the film. But I do know that my edit is better because of it, which is more important!

Story should be the goal in whatever capacity you work in film, and for me that meant letting it "bake in the oven." While food is baking, you can't do much, just wait. But that provides plenty of time to think, and then it comes out ready to go to the next step!

For more entries on what is happening on Persimmon, please check out this post.