Production Review

Production Review

The initial idea for Orange Blues (Orange Blues, 2014) came (relatively) very late in the process. I had come up with no less than four ideas that had to be dumped for one reason or another, and the fifth one only came about when I considered my limitations. The animation program I use is far better suited for dialogue and small gestures, attempt something like an action scene with it and you’ll struggle to make it look convincing. That and my desire to not just spend the entire production process locked away from everyone else inspired the decision to go down the Creature Comforts (Creature Comforts, 1989) route.

However, this caused issues. Obviously, being based upon unscripted interviews, little to no planning could take place before the interviews were shot, and with said interviews taking place little more than a month before the deadline meant there was a very tense period when the deadline loomed and I had little to nothing to show for it.

My plan for the interviewing process itself seemed simple, but in the end made the actual interviews somewhat awkward in places. The plan was to start with discussing the film course, since the call went out on the Film Arts Facebook group and thus it was the one thing we all had in common, and then spin off into other topics based on the conversation. In practice, this worked in places, Dan, Billy and George in particular worked well with this style, but not with others. While in the final film I was able to make something with it, Jamie’s interview was disastrous as shot, only giving short half-answers with no thread that I could grab to continue the conversation, and ended up being less than half the length of most of the other interviews.

In the edit, making something completely new with the footage was something of a recurring theme. As I listened through the audio in order to whittle down what was usable, I was convinced that I wasn’t going to get anything remotely engaging out of it, resigned to making something competent but utterly dull. To this day I’m not sure how I managed to pull together ~13 minutes of audio that was as entertaining as it was. Largely it was down to George’s very frank commentary on the social implications of the course, both in general and more specific gossip-type banter (the latter largely ending up on the metaphorical cutting room floor), Dan’s combination of forthright honesty and comedic delivery, and the use I found for the tiny amount of usable footage I got out of Jamie’s interview. The more ‘normal’ contributions from Leah, Ciaran and Jared help contrast against the others, so the film is not throwing gags out at too relentless a pace.

However, the interview which really was saved in editing was Billy. Just as an interview it wasn’t bad; it was just as ‘normal’ and ‘down to earth’ as Leah and Jared. What elevated it was taking the elements out of context. Removing the visuals from the “I don’t regret the chance” speech changes it totally, what was originally a very simple, honest account of having no regrets is turned into a melancholic, tacit admission that he’s lying, when he clearly wasn’t if you watch the original visuals. Similarly, his monologue that makes up the grand finale was likewise ‘created in editing’. In the interview, it’s a simple moment no more ‘epic’ than a lot of other contributors making their statements on why their art is important to them or if they regret the choices they made, but when cut out, isolated and scored appropriately, it gave the film a big emotional climax I was not expecting to get out of the material.

What cemented the film as a success was the work-in-progress screening, in which a very incomplete cut got strong reactions in satisfactory quantity, a film with next to no completed visuals receiving as warm a reception as that has to be something special. Discussing it with others has yielded practically universal praise, several comments suggesting it to be the highlight of the class. While I think that last idea is somewhat overstating it, it is heartening to see that, even though it is almost the end, I’ve finally produced something that feels like a part of the class community, rather than being the weirdo on the outside of it.

Bibliography

Orange Blues. 2014. Directed by Ashley Watts. UK: ReddiShadow Entertainment. [film].

Creature Comforts. 1989. Directed by Nick Park. UK: Aardman Animations. [film].