Things are starting to get exciting in the world of Stay the Same. The film is now at final cut stages  (running at about 14 minutes with credits) and Fraya Thomsen is now working hard on the score which is already sounding great. (Fraya did the score for The Worm Inside with Gillian Fleetwod and the music for Mallaig in It’s Own Way and is now at the NFTS).  As we are recording the score with live musicians it’s going to be another few weeks at least before it is ready to put to the film.

By then post production on this film will have  taken nearly as long as the year  shoot! I am not entirely sure where all this time has gone, but editing the film has been much more work than shooting it. Watching the footage and editing clips from all the days was incredibly time consuming, but so was making the film work. In the end I had to think of it as a visual peice of music with a very strict rythym that had to be adhered to. Films and most other works of creativity have rules and I guess it makes sense that this film is ruled by timing. Moving home, my health and other  bigger projects have also sometimes got in the way of the process, but it is been fantastic to be able to take my time and get it as right as I can and I think I am pleased with the final film (even if it feels quite short given the amount of time I have spent on in). So with the sun has been shining on here on the West Coast of Scotland for many weeks now the end of the tunnel definitely feels  in sight.

Below is a snapshot of the editing process and the strict rythym of the film, which meant that like it or not, the length of most clips was already dictated regardless of whether I liked the shot or not.