Reflecting on my editing process since being back in Glasgow
Since I got back from Germany I have largely been focusing on two sections of the film; firstly I have been working on finetuning the section of the film I had already got into pretty reasonable shape, this section mostly comprised of the footage I filmed at Portadown Way on my first trip to Germany and a small section of archive footage I had used as an interlude, this section I have now decided will be a good start to the film as it nicely sets the tone. The work on this section was mostly small tweaks like getting the voiceover recorded slightly smoother, reworking and remastering the score I had made so it flowed with the footage more, and just working on the pacing of the whole section so things worked better together.
While working on these smaller details I also began work on what I think will be the next section of the film, this being the footage I filmed at Wrexham Way and Bodmin Walk. For the section at Wrexham Way I worked on slowing down certain sections of the shot to allow the audience to take certain moments in at a more manageable pace – a lot of the stuff I filmed on this latest trip is quite a lot faster than I wanted it too be so coming up with a way of slowing down the footage in post without it looking too obvious and cliché is something I think will be useful down the line. I also have been working on a score for this house, I have decided that as I don’t have any specific memories from this location I won’t record a voiceover for it and will instead try and make a score that has space for the house to talk for itself. For the other house in this section, Bodmin Walk, I have also been focusing on getting it down to a slightly more digestible pace by slowing certain moments down, and working on a score and voiceover. I think that this scene will be quite similar to the Portadown Way section at the start of the film, as like the Portadown Way house this is a location I do have some specific memories from, it also being the house of a friend of mine from JHQ. By a happy coincidence the Portadown Way house and the Bodmin Walk house are near identical in layout (there are only really three different house types on JHQ so quite a lot of them are identical to each other), so I think that having a slightly similar edit will bring out some of these uncanny elements between the two houses.
This whole process has taken quite a bit longer than I would have liked, but I feel that I have the first 7 minutes or so of the film pretty much ready, the next section – Wrexham Way and Bodmin Walk – is starting to take shape, and I have an idea of what will follow.
The latest draft of the Bodmin Walk section:
After the Bodmin Walk section I will have another short interlude in the style of the ‘dream interlude‘ from the first 7 minutes, I think this will again feature some appropriated archive materials but I am unsure of what exactly this will be. After this I will have another 2 houses – Buckingham Way and Pembroke Drive – the second of these 2 houses is identical in layout to my old house, 2 Forfar Way, which I was unable to get too, so I plan on using this house as a stand in for Forfar Way, dumping all of my memories and thoughts onto it, before revealing that this is not my childhood home, and that I was unable to get back to 2 Forfar Way. This reveal will take the film into it final stage, where I will have some home video footage from 2 Forfar Way and then I will close the film out with a shot I recorded walking around a clearing in the forest that surrounds JHQ in the same sweeping and drifting way I filmed the houses of JHQ, over this section I will talk about the uncertain future for JHQ and my desires for it to be destroyed and for there to be nothing left of it, I envision the woodland clearing to be a look into this possible future where there is nothing left of JHQ.
Conor McBride 