FEATURE FILMS
"Lightmaker"
PICTURE EDITOR, SOUND EDITOR (RE-CUT), ADDITIONAL WRITER
"Lightmaker" was my most unusual editing experience thus far.
A dark, Terry Gilliam/David Lynch-inspired with a story resembling "Alice in Wonderland" crossed with "Yellow Submarine," the film was written and directed by Dieter Meier of the European musical group Yello. Dieter is a unique singer/songwriter with a background in experimental filmmaking and music videos. But "Lightmaker" contained so many weird experimental elements that many editors over many years tried to sort them out and make Dieter's story understandable.
I was the seventh or eighth editor brought in. I inherited the project (legendary in independent filmmaking circles as havinbg one of the longest post-production periods in history -- 16 years at last count) from a talented editor named Adam Bernardi, who completely re-imagined the movie by painstakingly rewriting, recording new dialogue, then cutting in appropriate footage to match. Fortunately Adam was skilled at both editing and acting, and did an amazing job. But an unsatisfying screening at the Berlin Film Festival resulted in Dieter hiring me to do another cut, whereupon I emulated Adam's drastic re-cutting technique. I also tried to inject some objectivity and logic into the story, and reinforce a few key story points I felt were not clear.
The majority of the film was well-cut and visually effective. But the structure -- especially in the second and third acts -- was weak, and ultimately benefitted from major re-cutting. More problematic was that none of the earlier versions had clearly established the film's basic premise. Even fantasies rely on some sort of internal logic. So among other goals during my two-year stint on this picture were simplifying and clarifying Dieter's central concept: that a secret, medieval underground civilization, kept alive by a large, glowing crystal -- which feeds on music -- is threatened with extinction when their musical "fuel" dries up. A new "Lightmaker" -- a brilliant musician, gifted enough to power the crystal -- is their only hope for survival.
This complex story was not easily communicated, and a writing background came in handy. My acting skills, however, were no match for Adam Bernardi's: he expertly voiced nearly every (male and female) part in the film. I instead hired actors and friends for the temp voices, recording the new dialogue directly into the Avid, and fitting it into the mouths of mostly non English-speaking actors, twelve or so years after they'd been filmed on a soundstage in Poland. This was just as challenging as it sounds -- but also quite fun.
In additional effort to tell the (re-defined) story, the two sequences below (the first, one of several openings I cut; the second, an introduction to the new Lightmaker as he firdt plays in the underground world) rely on narration (which I wrote and recorded in the editing room), subtitles, flops, reverse-action opticals, superimpositions, speed-ups, slow-downs, split-screens and much reprinted B-negative footage to tell the story.Sequence One contains no original dialogue -- everything the characters say was written and recorded in the cutting room -- while Sequence Two relies on about 80% re-written dialogue, and makes extensive use of shots borrowed from other scenes in the film. You will also hear a temp mix of sound effects and music that went a long way towards establishing a mood and helping tell this very unique but somewhat complicated fantasy tale.
