Director

Editing

The first draft of the edit was roughly seven minutes and at that point it was unclear what structure the film needed. It was close to what we first envisioned but the pace didn’t feel right. Also Patrick’s clothes showed through the costume at certain points in the shots so we had to work the edit around this. After a number drafts we started to find points to edit on that personally I don’t think there would be a better place to make the edit. From the footage that we got, I’m entirely satisfied with the finished product. We placed phrases from the score over the transitional shots from hiker to Neolithic man but kept the soundscape as organic as possible. The whole process from start to finish was hugely beneficial to me. It gave me the confidence to direct and not to be afraid to make decisions and deal with the consequences. 

Sound

Given that the sound equipment failed during the shoot, we had to figure out what way we would go about recreating the sounds. It would be difficult to find somewhere that would sound authentic. I remembered that there was a forest with a stream running through it near my house in Cavan. I felt it would be better to bring the equipment to Cavan as there would be less background noise. I enlisted the help of my brother as he knew the area better than I did. I watched a version of the film I exported and noted every single sound that may be heard. I made sure to record even the most minute detail even if I thought it wouldn't be used. 

Initially we decided that we would not use a score and really let the film rely on a rich soundscape but just to be safe I got in contact with someone from Belfast who agreed to make the score. I sent him some rough cuts and he responded with some rough cuts he had done. Initially they were too epic and sounded more like battle music so I gave him notes and he eventually sent us something closer to what we wanted but I feel like he never really grasped the theme. I told him to make it so that if we needed to we could chop it up and use it in parts by fading in and out. This turned out to be useful in the end as it worked only in parts. 

Shoot Day 2

The second day would require more effort than the first due getting the costume looking right. We met Patrick at half ten and immediately began getting him into costume. I brought some strips of cloth I tore of a t shirt and ran them into soil so that I could tie the hessian to his legs. Patrick was very comfortable on camera and look direction well. He was also easy to get along with and was funny so it made the long day shooting easier. Towards the top there were quite a few people hiking. It got to the stage we were lucky to get a shot every twenty minutes so we had to make sure we got it right. Towards the end I could see Patrick was getting a bit restless so I tried to keep him entertained with humour. Marcos came up for the last hour and that wrapped up the shoot. 

Shoot day 1

Initially we were going to shoot the film over three days. All of Marcos’s scenes would be shot on Friday, all of Patricks on the Saturday and then we would get both of them up on the Sunday for the last scene which had both actors in it simultaneously. After reviewing our schedule we decided it would be better fitting if we shot all of Marcos’s scenes on Saturday, Patricks on Sunday and then have Marcos come out on Sunday for the last scene. Our lift for the first day of shooting became unavailable so we arranged that we would get a lift with Marcos. The shoot went without a hitch besides the sound gear not working but that was fine because it gave us the opportunity to put more focus on the Foley later. Marcos was easy to direct and seemed happy to do each shot in a number of takes.