Our production phase went very smoothly. As she knew both subjects well, Amy was able to conduct in-depth interviews where the participants felt at-ease. This gave us a good selection of interview material which was valuable in the edit. As the cinematographer, I chose to film the start of each interview as an extreme close-up, focusing on the subject’s mouth. This meant that, at the start of the film we have less of an individual sense of Ian and Eddie’s personalities, reinforcing the differences between them when they are later revealed.
Aside from the interviews, the film contains reconstructions, short animations and still photos to illustrate what Ian and Eddie are saying. I chose to frame these symmetrically in a similar style to Fish Story. This acknowledges the artificial nature of these scenes, creating a clear division between them and the observational and interview footage. Although I’m happy with how the animations and inserts turned out, I do feel that they seem a little rushed and I’m considering reshooting them before we release the film publicly.
I was less involved in the edit phase but I still viewed rough-cuts to give feedback and adapted some of the animations to fit the pacing of the edit better. I also colour graded the film – although this wasn’t entirely new to me, there were some challenges as it was my first time grading footage from the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. I think I successfully graded this footage to blend in with the animations which were shot on my DSLR.
Overall, I think the shoot and edit went very successfully, although there could be some improvements to the pacing at the start of the film. I’m glad that we managed to capture both brothers’ very different perspectives, yet also the sense of love and family connection between them.
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