Finishing a film one year later: The Visitor

My apologies that it has been a while since I've been on here, needless to say the last few weeks have been busy. First the good news, the project of re filming The Visitor is done, and has been accepted to it's first film festival! Now, I mentioned in the last few posts I'd talk more about the work done to remake The Visitor, and the truth is, not too much. I know i've talked in length about making the film the first time, and here's a link to the original version so you can take a look:

The Visitor original version

Although I was proud of what we made in a short time span, because of some problems I decided to fix up 'The Visitor' and shoot some footage to submit it to the local film festivals. Since the submission dates for the film festivals were in August and early September, unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to re shoot two out of focus shots of the film that were in the forest. As the film is set on Halloween, the lack of the fall setting and leaves changing color would destroy the continuity. However we could reshoot the inside footage as there were some problems with the effects. Since the house has been painted in the last year, nearly all the footage done inside the house had to be redone. Now, to replicate something that you thought worked really well the first time is next to impossible, it just seems like a imitation, not a carbon copy of the original footage, so I reworked some moments of tension, seen when my character walks in the kitchen (actually that was done on the second day of reshoots, after we reshot it the first time I edited everything, but the downside is that it still didn't work, so we had to reshoot it AGAIN).

The ghost effects allowed me to have some fun with since I've learned a lot in the last few months. There was a shot I wanted that I couldn't do in the original version where my character actually is in the same shot, looking at the ghost of his brother as he sits down. In the original version it was cut around, this time I actually wanted to show it. So in editing I decided to lock off the camera, shoot a clean plate of the living room, a plate of Will as the ghost sitting down on the right side of the frame, and a separate plate of me staring at him as he sits down. In editing, I was able to crop the left side of the frame when Will sits down, as well as the clean plate so he looks like a ghost; and in my plate, I cropped the right side of the frame until they matched in the middle, and so it looked like I was staring at his ghost sit down. I tried the effect for 'In Memoriam' and that didn't work well, but when I did it in this film, I was able to make the seam between the shots invisible.

Once the first day of reshoots was done I decided to edit the footage in. However it seemed in the last year I deleted the Final Cut file, which meant I had to completely re edit the film from scratch using the original version and match it as close as I could with the new footage. In doing this I could also cut little frames out for pacing reasons. Some of the dialogue is also taken from the original version, and matched it to the reshot footage.

And here is the final cut I submitted to the film festivals (well, for now. When it becomes fall and it's the one year mark, I'll be reshoot the two out of focus shots). I hope you enjoy, and please provide feedback.

The Visitor Final Cut