FEATURE FILMS
"Lightmaker"
PICTURE EDITOR/SOUND EDITOR (RE-CUT), ADDITIONAL WRITER
"Lightmaker" was an unusual and unique editorial challenge.
A dark, Terry Gilliam/David Lynch-inspired with a story reminiscent of both "Alice in Wonderland" and "Yellow Submarine," "Lightmaker" 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 offbeat 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 on the film. I inherited the project (legendary in independent filmmaking circles for its extended post-production period -- around 15 years) from a talented editor named Adam Bernardi, who completely re-imagined the movie by painstakingly ewriting and 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 after an unsatisfying screening at the Berlin Film Festival, Dieter decided to go back to work on the film, whereupon I advanced from Optical Effects supervisor (coordinating and creating over 200 complex, mutiple-layer film opticals) to Picture Editor.
The film's basic premise: 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, thereby necessitating a new "Lightmaker." Complicating this concept: the king of this mythical world has somehow died, but his essence is kept alive inside a large statue of himself -- which is ocassionally split open, allowing his essence to escape and his be projected onto a curtain.
But even with the benefit of new footage of Rod Steiger as the king, and an opening narration, audiences were still perplexed by what they were seeing. Additional storytelling and clarification was needed... but how?
Fortunately, a writing background came in handy... but as far as re-voicing dialogue, my acting skills were no match for Adam Bernardi's: he expertly dubbed nearly every (male and female) part in the film. I instead recruited actors and friends, who read new dialogue I'd written directly into the Avid. I then "cheated" these new words into the mouths of the cast, often using reversed and step-framed (slowed-down) footage, plus audio compression and expansion to make the words match the lips. This was just as challenging as it sounds... but also quite fun. And since most of the bit players spoke Polish, I decided to subtitle their dialogue to additionally reveal certain story points.
The two sequences below rely on cheated dialogue for the English-speaking actors, newly-written subtitles for the Polish actors, and a rearranged Steiger monologue... plus flops, reverse-actions, superimpositions, speed-ups, slow-downs, split-screens, stock footage and much reprinted B-negative footage to help tell the story.You will also hear a temp mix of sound effects and music that went a long way towards helping clarify a very unique, but also quite complex, fantasy tale.
