Editing

We threw ourselves whole-heartedly into the gatehouse editing suite, and there we threw ourselves whole-heartedly into editing.

Logging and capturing an entire feature film is not a task I envy of feature film makers, as our footage took a good week to log and capture.

Tensions ran high on occassions, but this was usually solved by a little tea related trip to the Union or a head massage.

Final Cut Pro, although tricky to master at first, quickly became second nature to Annabel who worked like a trooper making sure the whole film was fluid and as stunning as it could be.

We even missed the university's winter ball in our dedication to perfecting Booty Call.

The soundtrack proved to be incredibly awkward as well. We were led on a wild goose chase by various members of the music department's administrative team, and in the end we bit the bullet and gatecrashed the main auditorium in the hope of not being discovered for as long as it would take to record the concerto movement.

Alas, we were discovered, by a man who I shall simply refer to as Mr D. Now, Mr D appeared at first to be extremely helpful by finding us some state of the art recording equipment. He did, however, snap at me at a later point, and I am ashamed to say that I was a big girl about it and cried a little bit. It was nearing the end of a long and tiring process, and, frankly, I wanted my bed. We managed to get the piece recorded, although being in Mozzilla mode I was very unhappy with the result, and it was only after a LOT of reassurance from Annabel that I was just being a perfectionist, did I eventually resign myself to the reality that the recording we had was the one we would have to use.

I borrowed a miniature copy of the score for the Emperor Concerto from the library, and pulled an all-nighter (fuelled by tea and chocolate) where I entered the entire orchestral part into GarageBand, alongside the piano recording, instrument by instrument.

I was very nervous about showing it to the rest of the group the following day, but we played it alongside the edited footage of Booty Call, and by some miracle, the music fitted the images almost perfectly. The scenes changed at the precise moments the mood of the music changed, complimenting each other perfectly.

So, with a little further work, our film was finished. We test ran it on some friends who had not seen the script and it was well received.

So without further ado, here it is.

Booty Call.

Be nice about it.

We went through a lot.

A LOT.

Production Weekend!

The time was upon us!

The time to film.

It was terrifying, and exhilarating, and also rather hilarious.

We had finally decided on the name Booty Call for our film, after lots of sniggering about bottoms.

Unfortunately, it rained for the majority of the weekend. This caused a lot of swearing; Adam, Josh and Annabel were concerned that the equipment may get ruined, I was concerned that my hair might get ruined (at least one of us has our priorities right). Despite our annoyance at the weather, it actually proved to be an asset in gaining some rather arty shots involving an umbrella and some swans. The swans concerned me. I have never known birds to be so perverted. They took a great interest in looking up my skirt as I put my leg up on a bench to clean my boot.

We also managed to successfully get all our shots we needed in the pharmacy, despite the torrent of customers who would inadvertently get in the way, the manager who would 'watch' us apparently oblivious that he was not helping proceedings by doing this in front of the camera lens, and the inevitable giggling fits at the incontinence pants.

Back at the Harris Palace, we managed to create a rather impressive tracking shot. This was the brainchild of Adam Tyler, who recognised that a skateboard and a pile of heavy books plus camera and tripod equals professionalism. So we piled the books onto the base of the tripod to anchor it to the skateboard, which Josh crawled along the floor with.

You don't get much more professional than that.

The following day, we soldiered on.

The scene that perhaps stood out most in my mind, which is also the scene I most wish to erase from my mind, was the saucy bedroom scene. As if getting dressed up in hold-ups and silky bedroom attire wasn't enough, it wasn't until AFTER the shot of me crawling across the bed towards the boots had been filmed that I was informed by my grinning crew that the footage was X-rated. The things we do for the sake of education!

Towards the end of the day, we were all exhausted and ready for some serious sleep. There was one more scene to shoot. The sliding down the door in floods of tears scene. Of course, as we so desperately wanted to do this shot quickly so we could go to bed, it took the longest of all. We corpsed. Enormously so. To the extent that we had to banish Josh to an upstairs bathroom in order to save our sanity.

But we did it.

Fuelled by vast quantities of chips, we had survived the weekend without resorting to violence.