Holy Firecracker it's July!

Da Troll Camp

organized editing technique

Main mission of this blog post is to urge you to go buy the July issue of Woods-N-Water News. Inside is a well written article by Bill Zeidler Jr., leaseholder of Da Troll Camp located just off the Choate Road. He illustrates beautifully what it is like to go to camp and how much his camp means to him, his family and friends, and why it should be allowed to stay. Buy it. Read it. You can find it at the Co-op (and elsewhere).

Da Troll Camp was the last camp I interviewed. Really nice group of guys.

The camp photo in the article is actually Art Morrison’s shack on the West Branch of the Ontonagon River. I told him they could use any photos on my website.

I’m still editing. I know my last goal was to have it complete by July 1. That didn't happen. Editing is a long, muddy trail full of twists and turns and backing up and rethinking what route to take and how to go about making sure it's clear for everyone to follow.

Does this interview sound better here...or here? Or does this person say it better. But if I use him than I need to add him earlier in the film so everyone knows who he is...Do I cut this story down or leave full? I want to use this story but it's way too long. I'm not sure any of it's making sense anymore! - This is what I have been wrestling with.

I took most of the week off and primarily what I have been doing is editing. The rough cut of the film is now down to 110 minutes in length. My original thought was 90 minutes. It may end up somewhere around the 110 minute range. It was a lot of work to cut down from my last post of almost 3 hours in length! Unfortunately that means a lot of camps hit the cutting room floor. About a dozen out of the 28 camps I filmed do the speaking throughout the film. I do plan to use a few clips from every camp I filmed whether it’s the exterior or interior as b-roll over some of the narration or interviews.

B-roll (for my non film/broadcast friends) is footage that adds meaning to a sequence or disguises the elimination of unwanted content. As Wikipedia puts it: “The cutaway to B-roll footage can also be used to hide verbal or physical tics that the editor and/or director find distracting: Because the audio is separate from the video, the speaker's voice is heard as a voice-over while B-roll footage is shown. The filmmakers are thus free to excise "uh"s, sniffs, coughs, and so forth without the video showing the small skips associated with these minor excisions. Similarly, a contextually irrelevant part of a sentence or anecdote can be removed to construct a more effective, succinct delivery. In many cases these latter excisions are legitimate edits used to make a film more pleasing and coherent.” Simply put video of sauna thermometers, rivers, buck poles, camp exteriors, etc. is my B-roll. I have a rough sequence of clips in my project called “B-Roll to Use” and I have a lot of it!!

Once the film is complete I plan to edit short 5-10 minute videos of each camp to put on the DVD’s and on the website. Every camp had such great stories to tell I want to share them all! This way I can share most of them. So eventually (and I’m thinking months from now) look for the “UP a River Shorties” page on the website.