It's not that simple | Short film

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The short-film “It’s not that simple” was made as a graduation project for the Media Studies program (Unicamp). I was invited by the director, Bárbara F. Santos, to be the editor on the film and to create the title sequence for the movie.

The film isn’t available online in its full length as it is being sent to cinema festivals. The title sequence, however, is available below.

TITLE SEQUENCE

It’s essential for a title sequence, of any narrative piece, to set the tone of what’s coming next in the story. With this in mind, I developed an opening that already kickstarts the narrative, revealing bit by bit of a ‘puzzle’ that is a newspaper cover fundamental to the plot. In the end, there’s a match cut to the first take of the movie. It’s the character of Guilherme holding a picture of his enemy. This complex narrative was only possible because of previous planning since pre-production.

I worked with After Effects camera’s blur and many textures - newspaper, half-tone, film grain, etc. All of it contributed to the final look of the piece.

EDITING

I first entered the project during production. I read the script and spoke a few times with the director about the characters’ motivations, the rhythm of the story and other creative points. I didn’t participate in any of the shoots, thus, when I received the footage I had fresh eyes to analyze objectively every take.

The rough cut

Assisted by the production reports I started watching and getting myself familiar with the footage. I worked on Premiere Pro. I cut a first pass based on my interpretation of the screenplay and my previous conversations with the director. This rough cut served a base for new meetings and discussions and helped us visualize the possible ways we could go with the story.

The challenges

As a big part of the short-film is different dialogues between the two main characters, Guilherme and Death, the matter of a good balance and rhythm when cutting was of the most importance. I spent most of my time nailing down the timing of these scenes, when they spoke and their reactions.

In general, the production was challenging. Problems with budget and locations were coming up hours before the shoot. For this reason, some scenes didn’t have the shot coverage originally planned and this had to be overcome in the editing room with creative solutions.

Guilherme and Death

I was also responsible for solving some small problems that came from production. For example, I had to hide lapel microphones that ended up being shown in some shots. I chose this approach for shots that had the best performances from actors but had this technical problem. I used After Effects and techniques of tracking, rotoscoping and cloning.