By Nick Smith
Over the past two years writing about film production for Conexion, I’ve covered planning, making and even watching films but there’s another side to creating movies – the arduous and often solitary task of editing.
After filming her first feature-length movie, ZomBeez, this spring, writer/director/actress Elesia Marie took it upon herself to edit the project as well. That meant she had to look through all her footage, choose her favorite shots and put them together in an order that would make sense. Elesia, who lives in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, decided to personally edit the film because she knew the story so well and had a vision of how ZomBeez should turn out. She wanted to tell a simple tale of mutant flesh-eating bees menacing a small town, with a love story and a theme of forgiveness at its core – imagine a Hallmark horror movie abuzz with bee puns.
‘I thought I could do it in four weeks,’ says Elesia. ‘It took eight. You have to go through so many clips – some shots had six different takes.’ Although she enjoyed editing the footage, ‘the pre-edit was not fun.’ Yet that first stage of post-production, which included naming her scenes, organizing audio files and setting up a workflow, was essential. Without that, it would have been impossible for her to find all the clips she needed.
‘It was a little overwhelming,’ Elesia admits, ‘but I never thought “oh my gosh I can’t do this.” I did wonder how filmmakers do this without wiping out?’ The answer is that on a big feature they have lots of help. Since ZomBeez has a modest budget and Elesia was on a learning curve, the rough cut took a lot more time than she expected.
ZomBeez is the kind of sci-fi comedy movie you might see alongside Sharknado. The running time will be an hour and a half; Elesia’s first rough cut ran 2 hours and 45 minutes (including a few gaps in between footage). There was a lot of good content that she wanted to use. So how could she choose what to keep, and what to delete?
Using Adobe Premiere software, Elesia picked the very best takes, performances and images she could find. She worked around shots with technical issues, such as unwanted reflections in windows and mirrors. The next step was to plan a day of reshoots and pickups, where we filmed all kinds of useful footage ranging from empty skies (for our zombie bees to fly in), to important character close-ups and a baseball bat splatting an imaginary bee. The B-movie bugs will be added digitally – a whole other step in the post-production process.
With so much still to do, including a clean-up of the audio and correcting the colors, Elesia has learned some tips for future filmmakers. ‘Once you’ve wrapped filming,’ she says, ‘step back for a week or so and take a break to recuperate. If you try to push yourself, you’re going to burn out, doing a scene over and over then watching it over and over.’ She suggests limiting the number of hours or scenes per day. ‘If there’s not a specific deadline, edit one or two scenes per day, don’t try to do five. And take weekends off. I did it seven days a week and I was about ready to throw my computer!’
Fortunately, Elesia will have help with the rest of post-production as the movie is prepared for its premiere. By putting the film together, she’s found out the hard way how laborious the editing process can be, which camera angles and performances are most effective and how it’s not easy to “fix it in post.”
‘I hope the audience loves the movie,’ says Elesia, ‘I hope it makes them laugh, because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. I hope they learn something from it about forgiveness, what it means to forgive people and whether or not I’m obligated to have a person in my life because I forgive them.’ More than anything she hopes ZomBeez provides an escape from reality for a fast-paced hour and a half. ‘That way, they’ll bee happy when they leave the movie.’
For more information about Elesia’s film, check out @ZomBeezTheMovie.
