Viewing a Rough Cut of "A Gift"

On Friday July 4th I viewed a rough cut of the short film "A Gift" with editor Vernon Mui. The short film "A Gift" is a co-production between CenterSeat Entertainment and Ondie Daniel/Keith Kelly's production company and was filmed just before summer. Mui has had several months to try and piece together the footage already filmed in order to get a better idea of what is missing from the film and where we need to make changes.

The film had many things going against it - it was a film from first time directors (Daniel & Kelly), it had a TON of children with no experience in front of the camera, and it had a very small crew in which to work with. What it did have going for it was a cast of kids with great energy, a great location, and a cats & crew that believed in the project regardless of the technical faults. This all leads to an interesting situation and one which I was happy to enter to. I've worked on many first time director films and even though the majority of them are amateurish the energy on display is unbelievable as people who have never made a film before get to experience it for the first time.

Viewing th erough cut of "A Gift" reminds you of the amatuer nature of filmmaking in general and how much work can go into a production from beginning to end. Although a rough cut, "A Gift" has many places where we will have to not only add scenes but also rearrange others to make it understandible. Everyone knew we were going to have to do this since we didn't film everything during principle photography and Kelly wasn't sure of exactly what we had filmed (even though he had a copy of all the dailies). I'm glad we had Mui do a rough cut of the film, now we know where the production stands and what will be needed to finish it.

We plan on finishing the film this summer in terms of the final edit, sound, and music and even though it won't be the greatest short film out there I hope that everyone had fun making the film and that the experience will be something that they will always remember.