Rough Cuts

Rough cuts officially began today, and the first thing we realized was just how much raw material we had to work through. We originally started with about seven minutes of footage we thought we might use, but a lot of that came from moments when I accidentally hit record instead of stop while filming. That meant we ended up with long, unnecessary clips that looked usable at first glance but did not actually contribute to the final sequence. During class, we went through the very first pass of trimming all of that down, focusing on identifying the strongest takes and clearing out the accidental extra footage.

As we cut, we intentionally left extra space at the beginning because we still don’t know exactly how long the opening credits will take. Within the hour, we managed to reduce everything to 4:29:17, with the goal of eventually getting as close to a two‑minute final runtime as possible. We relied heavily on Premiere Pro’s cutting tool to remove unwanted sections and then used the slide tool to pull the remaining clips back together cleanly. Even though there is still a lot of tightening left to do, today gave us a clear sense of direction for the next editing session.