Editing with the Steenbeck apparatus

So, now that I again do something that differs a bit from my everyday doings I might as well write about it here, cause I feel empty and out of ideas.

Today started the editing of Jalil- shortfilm, at Sputnik-production company. I am editing it the "old school way", I cut 35mm film, I roll the reels. I tried to talk my way out of this, I just wanted to edit it with my laptop or something, you know, the usual way, but the producer and director were quite strict about this and laughed at my worries about working with real film.
Many times I emphasized that I have no idea about how to work with film or with the Steenbeck apparatus. But everybody told me that it was going to be fun and I would learn it in a few days or something.

Well, last week I went to see the horrific apparatus and my teacher from school came to give me some advices about using the ghastly machine. The main thing now is that working with Steenbeck is soooo slow. But it is different than computer being slow. If computer is slow, you get mad and start to hit it and your blood veins start to pop from your eyes and temples, but steenbeck goes as fast as you can use it. You have to rewind the material all the time, you have to check the sync all the time, you have to do your little markings all the time and make sure they are correct. So it is kinda like more natural way of working, even tough you operate an infernal gizmo.

What I noticed right away is that it feels really good not having to work with computer all the time. You can not just click the screen and go to check your facebook site, see the status updates of your friends and you can not check your e-mail every 5 minutes. I find this really soothing. The one thing I hate in editing is the fact that you have to sit in front of a computer all day, and when you have free time at the evenings or weekend, and you have time to write or something, you always end up sitting in front of a computer. If you are not outside.

What bothers me a bit is the fact that picture and sound never really meet while working with film. They are always separate and that makes me feel uneasy. Working with computer you sync the sound and picture to the same file and they stay that way. With film you just make the film and sound the same length. So every time you load a reel you have to check the sync.

But quite quickly I got rid of the first weird feeling of handling the real film material. That you have to really pull and roll and touch and cut the film. This was something that I thought about before I started working with film, that it must feel weird, but that feeling went away fast. At first I didn´t even dear to touch the film, at the end of the day (I worked 11 hours at the first day) I grabbed it and pulled it and made some strange markings to it and cut it with no worries..
So, let´s see what tomorrow brings, I only have this month to cut this film. It should be 28 minutes long. Im not sure how much material I have cause I can not count from the reels given to me.

I got almost 3 scenes to sync on the first day. There were many delays and I worked slowly, I hope my tempo quickens.. but there are 22 scenes so a good start! :)