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Degawdawns recording rhyming couplet in the piano room

The teams all seem quite calm and relaxed. The house is very quiet today, with no performance artists, drama students, experts or documentary crews. Everyone is good natured, industrious and friendly. They've bedded in, and become friends over the week.

In contrast, the production team is quite hectic, on the edge of stressed. We might not have a 5pm deadline to finish a film, but there's lots of work going on preparing for tonight. Moving equipment, writing lines for comperes, creating strange dresses, organising transport, making sure things will work technically to be able to show the teams films. And planning to clear out of the house on Sunday.

It's struck me today how different the editing styles are of the four teams, in terms of how many people they have next to the computer.

Fruitcake only ever have one person operating the computer alone, and that is either Sandra or Luise. They take it in turns. Sometimes the others come to visit, but I haven't seen them staying for a long time.

Have Wings most experienced editor is Luke. He does most of the editing alone, because then he can make decisions his experience knows are correct without the others doubting them. Elaine, Bethan and Sara sometimes mess with it when he's asleep. At the moment he's editing and they're watching him.

Degawdawns edit two at a time. Julie with Ffion, or Matthew with Eliir. So, just before lunch the two girls had finished an assembly edit (that's an early stage, with a framework of the film). While they were eating, the two boys were busily working on the rough cut (a version you could watch as a film and it would make sense, but that needs lots of polish). I hope they finish on time...

Octopus are the most surprising. They all edit together, the four in front of the screen. And all of them have taken turns operating the computer during these sessions, although Geoff doesn't like to do so and hasn't much.

I asked them how they manage to all edit together. Paul explained that this was for two reasons. They're all equally inexperienced, so they wouldn't have the same problem Luke has when editing with his teammates. And they all like the same thing - they all have the same creative vision. Paul said that if they were in a different team, they'd do the editing differently.

Degawdawns editing

Octopus Apocalypse editing

Fruitcake choosing music in the hall

Ben and I just went and had a quick chat with all the teams to see what's happening. The teams have a sharp 5pm deadline to hand over the tapes of their final cut.

Luke from Have Wings was up until 7:30am. He got the rough cut done, that he wanted to finish before sleeping. The girls then woke up and fiddled with what he did, which he had to put back when he woke up at 11am (actually, he kept some improvements). Now they're polishing and polishing. They've got lots of changes they want to make, so have had to prioritise to do the important ones first.

Fruitcake have a rough cut, and Sandra was busy editing away. They seem happy with how things are going. But very busy, and I didn't have a long chat with them. Chris says they've got little blocks of edits very well done, but the whole thing doesn't link up yet.

Degawdawns think they will have their rough cut at lunchtime. They woke up fresh from a nights sleep with new ideas, but have been limited by their iMovie editing software. They have to be quite final and direct about their edits because of this, but think that that feel will fit in well with the gritty mood of the film.

Octopus Apocalypse have their editing suite in the Trefor Hall's owner's office slightly down the hill. They can't edit late at night, so instead were just watching the film Jackie Brown until 1:15am this morning. Very relaxed! They've basically got a final cut of the video. But the sound is rubbish, so today they're recording and editing in lots of sounds.

We're all really excited about seeing the films tonight!

Francis

Have Wings editing

Fruitcake Editing

I was kept up really late last night by Have Wings, who won the most special of special restrictions today. I'll tell you about it in a moment.

After the big zombie game yesterday, I gave the teams a really generous set of restrictions. A big softy, I am. First off, they all got a efw music CDs, but the catch is they have to use some of the music from one of the CDs in their film.

Fruitcakes have Joel making drum noises today, which they have to put in their film. Expect whistling in Degawdawns film, they've got whistling expert Mark to help out.

Octopus won Iwan to give bird noise impressions. I thought this was the hardest restriction, as to be honest, Iwan isn't the most avian of twitterers. But no, Octopus just take new restrictions in their stride these days "That'll go for our night scene".

The teams also won something else really really important. It's for the Really Restrictive Shorts' Cabaret Finale tonight! The game has decided who has top billing, and gets their film played as the climax of the evening! I'm not going to tell you who it is, though.

Finally, the bestest bestest restriction is the one that's given me bags under my eyes this morning. Have Wings won the last audience with me in my diary room at 11:30pm. They had to record my voice and use it in their film. I've never been a film star before!

So make sure you come along tonight, and see my special performance.

Gemima

Octopus Apocalypse here, we've got a bit of time before unit call so we figured we'd come and babble about Finale night. People are actually going to see the film we've made tonight which should be interesting. As a result of the big zombie game last night we'll be showing our film second tonight, which we're quite happy about. We've still got a bit of work ahead of us to be ready for tonight,need to make sure we've got a cut that makes sense and we still have to come up with a name! We should really be on our way to unit call. See you tonight.

I'm at home and it feels a bit weird not being at the house this morning.

I've just been surfing the net (the internet connection here is actually fast enough to do that, the one at the house makes it feel like wading through really really gloopy thick mud) and I found this on the bbc news site http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_west/6245127.stm

It sounds like it was a late one last night, not just for the teams editing but also for the production team who are also editing some of te documentary footage for the Finale this eve.

I've got a bit of running around to do this morning before heading down to the Hall to pick up a few video bits and bobs that I need at the Pavilion. My job changed today, I'm now helping prepare at the Pavilion for the Finale, really really cant wait to see the films now.

Ian

Follow the link to the Webcams (left hand side of every page) to see how late people are up editing. The bottom right camera shows the main editing room. You can see fruitcake in the bottom left, have wings on the right (just - I think Luke is off screen to the right) and degawdawn straight ahead.

Also, here at Real HQ we've decided to turn our Internet spying medicine onto ourselves. The top right camera is in the heart of our top secret headquarters. You'll be able to see Dom, Chris and Iwan (well his hand) working away on plans for tomorrow evening's grand finale.