Editing High Heels and Hoodoo was a team effort – Brian did the actual editing in Final Cut, while Jocelyn hovered over him offering her pearls of wisdom. We were lucky that because we had a fantastic cast and crew, we got so much great footage, but it actually makes it really tough to decide what to use. Our DP John Reynolds got a variety of interesting angles, so we wanted to use them all. And then our actresses (Johanna Jowett, Joy Vandervort-Cobb, and Sandra Lafferty) made it even tougher to decide: one would deliver the line in an especially snazzy way, but then one of the others would have a priceless reaction shot – which to choose, which to choose?!?
But we muddled through and got our rough cut put together. Then it was time to turn it over to our expert advisors. As part of the Indie Grants program, short film expert Roberta Munroe is helping at all stages of the process. Brad Jayne, the coordinator of the program, has also been offering his sage advice along the way. They both had some great suggestions for tightening the cut and using different shots to tell the story.
So we made some changes and delivered a new cut to them. At that point we also brought in another past Saying Goodbye helper – editing consultant Ann Collins. Like Roberta, Ann helped so much with the Saying Goodbye edit that we also wanted her practiced eye on High Heels and Hoodoo. She had really great things to say about High Heels and Hoodoo and suggested some ways to further fine-tune the edit.
After more tweaking and a few more back-and-forth rounds with our team of experts, we now have picture lock – yay! Time to pass it off to Fred Story and the Concentrix sound team to truly make the film sing.