The Spy Who Wasn't Post-Production

For the post-production, all responsibilities went to me as sole editor, mixer, and colourist. As with all my projects, the editing was what I was looking forward to. In my mind, you've done all the planning, all the stressful and time-sensitive work on the shoot days, and now you're essentially left with a pile of puzzle pieces that you can neatly organise into Bins on Premiere Pro and take your time putting together. The only real stress is if you find you're missing a piece - a problem that can't simply be solved by calling the manufacturer.

After casually going through the rushes and pulling out some choice funny bits to chuckle over and send to the cast, the hard work began. My process was to work by scene first. I would go through my shot list (paying dividends even after the shoot) and simply lay down the appropriate clips, taking a moment to choose the best take of each shot if we had done multiple. It was a fairly simple process, and thankfully the couple of times that the cuts didn't work on screen as they had been initially written, I had shot enough extra angles to make it work. It seemed I had been quite efficient with my shooting as well - in the editing process almost every single shot was used in some shape or form.

Unfortunately I had actually missed what could have been quite a funny shot in the first scene (the Russian disappearing into a hedge) due to the stress of time constraints causing me to skip over that shot when checking the list at the end of the scene. Thankfully it was not integral to the plot - as long as you get all your key beats, you can still edit you film. Without them, you've got a problem.

During this process I was quickly distracted by choosing music. One of my favourite parts of editing is putting picture to music, and I probably spent far too long trawling through Audio Network to find the perfect track. In fairness, the music choice has been one of the main compliments of the film, so it was obviously worth it. I also find that editing to music, even a rough track, really helps me to get into the right vibe and make other creative decisions on how my cuts will effect tone, for instance. This is not necessarily the correct way to edit a film, but I find it works best for me.

The major challenge I encountered after getting the rough cut together was that large parts of the film were silent, as we couldn't shoot with a sound recordist for all the scenes. This meant that I had to learn foley. It was actually a fun learning experience, especially as I had the luxury of time and the flexibility that comes with doing it on your own (admittedly with the restrictions that comes with that as well). After initially buying a cheap footsteps pack online, I found that there were limits with pre-made foley sounds. For example, this short film has a long foot-chase sequence that had no sound. Fortunately we shot it in my apartment block, so I set out with my recorder and mic and ran around the block wearing the shoes that my characters wore. This direct method was definitely the right way to go, and I would recommend it to low-budget filmmakers who also find themselves in my predicament. The result was surprisingly accurate, and I had given myself various speeds of running and walking to work with. Footstep foley is also quite forgiving if you have more than one person running, so overall it wasn't too difficult.

What was difficult was doing the foley for a close up interior scene at the end of the film. This had subtle elements that I struggled to recreate on my own, such as the sound of someone shuffling on a sofa. I got the best results when I simply watched the scene and tried to recreate it as accurately as possible, doing multiple takes with the mic in different positions. The result was adequate in the end, and most people who see the film for the first time don't notice that it was me doing the 'breathing' noises and not the actor... little bit creepy.

After adding the music I had chosen and adjusting the cuts to fit as closely to the beats as possible (I'm a sucker for cuts on the beat) and adding a few comedy crash zooms in post (can't recommend crash zooms enough if you're going for an 'arch' vibe), I exported the first rough cut and sent it off to a few close friends. Feedback was mostly positive, but there was a consistent criticism regarding the 'maguffin' in the film, in that it was not clear that it was a 'maguffin' at all! Obviously I couldn't afford to do reshoots, but worried that this criticism would be a sticking point, I decided to rectify it with an context-clarifying opening sequence, something that had been vaguely planned in pre-production. Although I had had brief discussions with the DoP about filming a sequence, my impatience to finish the film overtook me and I decided to tackle it myself. I kept it simple - four stylised, enigmatic stills of the maguffin (a pound coin) that heavily implied some sort of connection with secret codes. After some subtle movements over the photos in Premiere and a nice font for the opening credits, the result was a satisfactory and relatively good looking fix on a budget.

The penultimate process was sound mixing. I was initially intimidated by this, having never attempted 'proper' sound mixing before apart from balancing out the levels of dialogue to music. However, after some research, I concluded that for my purposes at least, all I need to do was just that, albeit with a few extra tracks. For anyone who doesn't know, there are a few simple rules for sound mixing (beyond trusting your ear on what sounds right) that makes the process fairly straightforward:

1) Don't let anything peak above -6db

2) Dialogue should hover around -12db

3) Music should hover around -20db

4) Sound effects can be anywhere between -8db to -20db, depending on the nature and source of the sound

5) Overall the mix should be peaking averaging out around -12dB

Those rules are essentially paraphrased from already simplified articles that I read, but they worked for me so hopefully it can work for other newbie filmmakers too.

The final process was the colour grade. We shot in S-Log 2, so naturally our raw footage looked a little washed out. I experimented using the LUTs available in Premiere Pro, but found that none quite worked how I wanted, even with tweaking the intensity settings. I decided to grade the footage from scratch using Lumetri in Premiere. I am by no means an expert in colour correction though. I think I know what looks good when I see it, but often I don't know how to get there. A simple place to start is by boosting the contrast of your S-Log footage so that you're getting more of those deep blacks and bright whites. Check your Lumetri Scopes histogram and make sure nothing is 'peaking' at the bottom or top but that your highs and lows are pretty close to that edge (colourists - please forgive me for this simplified and possibly incorrect explanation). Now you should hopefully have something with a good dynamic range for which to start with. From there it's mostly creative tweaking.

I tried to make motivated decisions when it came to colouring. The opening scene of the film is supposed to be stereotypically mysterious and clandestine, so I went for a darker, colder look. However, I took care to make sure Dave stood out like a sore thumb, so I bumped my reds and yellows slightly to highlight his conspicuous clothing. I continued this trend whenever Dave was in shot. In scenes that only star Dave, I coloured the scene warmly to reflect his happy-go-lucky (read "oblivious") nature. In scenes that only starred the real spies, I reverted to the colder grade. This way each character had a distinct look when on screen, and the grade acted as a tonal shorthand for what I was trying to convey - how out of place Dave is in this covert world. I'm not saying I was necessarily 100% successful in doing this mind you, just explaining the rationale behind my decisions.

After I had showed the 'final' film to a few more people and made tweaks accordingly, I exported the master and celebrated by making a poster for the film. Nothing too complicated, but it gave the project a neat bow on top and subconsciously stopped me from making any more adjustments. I would highly recommend it.

All that was left was to show the film to family and friends, and submit it to festivals. I used Film Freeway for this, which I found quite straightforward. Simply make a project submission (link to film, credits, basic details etc) and then look through the list of festivals you would like to submit to. The site is laid out clearly and it's easy to keep track of the different festivals you've submitted to and what their notification dates are. I would recommend paying for their premium subscription service as it will soon pay for itself if you submit to more than 5 or so festivals as it will discount their submission price. Then you can cancel the subscription if you want to.

Although rejected from quite a few festivals (one of which was the London Short Film Festival, who was I kidding?), I am pleased to say that The Spy Who Wasn't was selected for the UK Monthly Film Festival and got a special mention from the UK Seasonal Short Film Festival. Neither of which come with a screening, but a laurel is a laurel and I'm pleased with what we managed to achieve!

In review, I'm well aware that the film has flaws. The characters and story are a little arch, the story is a bit wonky and doesn't really go anywhere, and the scenes and transitions could have been more dynamic. BUT, I am pleased with how it actually came together, with how the team and the cast really pulled out the stops, that almost everyone has complimented the music and the grading, and that there are at least a few chuckles in there. I learnt a lot, both about technical process and crafting a story and characters. And to be honest, it was never going to be opening the LSFF was it? The only films I had made before were short comedy sketches and corporate films about bankers. I'm not a prodigy. But I've done it now, I've made my first "proper" film, and I want to make more. I've learnt, more than anything, that I can do it.