Phase 4- The Edit
The post-production phase was hard of that there was no doubt: a long, difficult and sometimes demoralising journey, but also one included many joyous milestones and personal high points.
Post-production began with the writing of the final script and exhaustive logging of the 24hrs+ of footage that was filmed. The selected footage was then whittled down through various script rewrites until we were happy with the final version. This process was particularly upsetting as we saw large chunks of excellent interview footage including personal favourite clips consigned to the bin (something we hope to correct at a later date) in order to produce a program that was TV length.
There were problems: delays both intentional and accidental followed one after another in a torturous process involvoing an extra three days filming in Guernsey for some pick-up shots, an extra day filming Hitler youth memorabilia from a private WW2 collector in Yorkshire, two periods of editing, numerous script revisions, extended bouts of fund-raising and finally an exhaustive music process that paid dividends in the form of a score containing the work of the Guernsey Concert Band, a full brass marching band conducted by composer Simon Applegate!
Back in London, voiceover actors were brought in to give life to the various “soundscape” sections and certainly add a lot of impact in the final film. Half a day was spent with them in a small recording studio taking on roles ranging from German soldiers to army nurses, doctors, dock workers and Nazi officers, even one screaming patient. This was certainly a lot of fun to be a part of and the final results, mixed by sound man Christian, were well worth it.
One of the final steps was to enlist the talents of professional voiceover artist Peter Mair to lend some gravitas to the narration and apply the right tone and respect to the story unfolding on screen.
A multiple step process, one of the biggest problems was been language barriers as a fair amount of footage was in German from our interviews. Managing to get this transcribed, translated and edited was a particularly complicated process as was arranging subtitles. In hindsight we may have be better off getting a bilingual language editor but Tanya, our faithful and harding working editor, did a fantastic job of nailing the pace and tone of the film.
