So, Just Do It the film is currently in post-production. But what does that actually mean? Read on to detangle the jargon and find out why the film still isn’t finished!
We’ve come a long long way in the last year. Here’s where we started, where we’ve been, where we’re at now, where we’re headed…and what it all means!
PRODUCTION (or filming)
The bit where we hit the streets, cameras in hand and did our darndest to capture the action as it unfolded. Emily spent more than a year following several groups of environmental civil disobedience activists as they travelled the country standing up against climate injustice. But Emily wasn’t alone. This project has seen a whole host of wonderful people invest their time. During filming a grand total of 30 camera people were involved!
POST-PRODUCTION (this is where we are NOW)
This is the bit where we gather all the footage together and start to assemble it into a film. Simple, huh? Not if you’ve got 300 hours of footage and a darn good story to tell! So, where to begin? Erm…chuck the bad bits and keep the good bits?
Just Do It’s step-by-step guide to transforming 300 hours of footage into a 75-minute film:
- ✔Get all the footage off the tapes and into the computer (this is called ‘capturing’). We captured footage solidly from February through to the end of the March and there’s still more to go – that’s 9 weeks of full-time work! (each tape holds an hour of footage and takes an hour to capture)
- ✔Divide your footage into storylines/events/narratives
- ✔Recruit a team of fantastic editors to take away individual storylines, organise the footage and mine for gold.
- ✔Spend many an hour in a basement pulling all the narratives together into a rough cut. Nearly there…We expect to have a very very long 6-hour rough cut (like a sketch before an oil painting) by the end of August.
ROUGH CUT:
- ✔Have a minor breakdown/pull your hair out/cry a little. Then take a deep breath, sharpen your nails and get ready to mould and ply that footage from 6 hours down to just 2. Breathe.
- ✔Smile. Almost there. Now you’ve got a 2-hour version. Because Just Do It is special (but you already knew that, didn’t you) and because we have the utmost respect for the people who have allowed us to film with them, this is the bit where we ask those people to come in to Just Do It HQ for a cup of tea, possibly a garibaldi biscuit, and a good look at what we’ve made of their participation. Feedback from the people in the film is really really important to us – both for security reasons and because we want to make a film which respects and involves the individuals who have contributed.
FINE CUT:
- ✔Now comes the really tricky bit. Take 2 hours down to 75 minutes. We call this the fine cut. And it’s a veritable creative tightrope!
- ✔Done! We’ve finished, right? Wrong. Now the team work with musicians, laying in music, deciding where the crescendos and diminuendos go.
- ✔Then we get on to the graphics. Animation animation animation. It just wouldn’t be an Emily James film without a bit of animation!
FINAL POST-PRODUCTION:
- Phewf. So close. At this point we have to send the film off to final post-production. That’s where it’ll get the finishing polish and come out looking twice as good as when it went in. Highly skilled people use highly specialist equipment to get our film looking highly professional. That’s why this bit is highly expensive.
DISTRIBUTION
Right. After all the blood, sweat and tears you’ve finally got your film. Now what? Ordinarily, you’d work really hard to get someone else to do this bit for you – namely, a distributor. We’ll be doing things differently when we get to this stage.
It’ll be in the cinema and you’ll be able to organise your own screenings. We’ll have lots of lovely DVDs, there’ll be guerilla screenings, pop-up screenings, festival screenings, a UK and US tour. We’ll also be putting the film up online so you can download it.
