The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2017)

#176 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Jan 18, 2018 1:34 pm

This was just a screening for "friends and family" after four (or possibly more) months of active post-production. I think it's unfair to pre-judge the competency of the edit until the public sees a finished version. Understandably, everything on this project has taken so long (four years of pre-production, six years of shooting, forty years of legal entanglements) that this active post-production phase seems to have, comparatively, whisked by.

albucat
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:06 am

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2017)

#177 Post by albucat » Thu Jan 18, 2018 1:49 pm

Let's go only from what the producer has said: There are "over 1000 rolls of 16mm and 35mm film," including "over 10,000 shots." Added to this, there are audio issues, considering that "In many cases, the shots are missing slates, so the sound has to be hand-synched." All of this makes for, "way more material than anyone thought."

Films back then may have shot less footage, but we're not talking about a hollywood picture here. "Second guessing Welles" - how is that even possible? We don't have his cut to second guess. So far as we're aware, Welles left no instructions for how to complete things, rather he was simply done shooting and knew that he could put things together himself. His working methods precluded the type of memo that might editing easier--remember, he LOVED editing and wanted to work on that himself. If they already knew which takes to use etc. then they wouldn't have scanned all 1000 rolls into 4k, they would've just taken what was needed.

Assuming that this film has more in common with F for Fake than his earlier pictures, judging from both the period of production and the footage we've seen of it thus far at the AFI ceremony, we're talking about an immense undertaking. Computers are much faster, but they're not magic--I used to work as an editor for television, I have pretty good knowledge of how long these things take. A lot of it depends on how much of a crap you give about a project. If they have a really solid rough cut, then working on fine tuning from now until Cannes makes sense. But going through that much material to find the best takes is a lengthy pain in the ass.

User avatar
Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2017)

#178 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Jan 18, 2018 4:09 pm

The Wellesnet article has been updated to note that "editing began less than three months ago" (which may be accurate or simply acknowledges the date when the producers announced that editing had begun). The article also includes this new paragraph:

One of the audience members was enthusiastic to Wellesnet about the two-hour movie, but tight-lipped on details. What was shown at the "friends & family screening" was far more advanced than a rough cut, but it was not a finished film.

Take that as you may. There will, undoubtedly, be plenty who will complain about the end results (hell, I might be one of them), but after waiting forty years to see the film (first read about it as an "in-progress feature" in 1978), I'm just happy the thing is close to being released and that some of the participants who worked on it are still alive to see it.

User avatar
movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2017)

#179 Post by movielocke » Thu Jan 18, 2018 7:44 pm

albucat wrote:So far as we're aware, Welles left no instructions for how to complete things, rather he was simply done shooting and knew that he could put things together himself.
A script supervisor would have the script marked up as shooting happens including the on-the-set preference (circle takes), creating an assembly from the script supervisor's script is where everyone starts edit from and they'd still have that resource. They might note have a touch of evil memo, but they have standard production documentation. Even lab orders are useful resources if you're lacking other information.

10,000 shots is not very much. the audio is an issue, but that is why films have assistant editors, the assistants probably had a huge amount of the syncing done before an editor arrived, simply because paying an editor to sit around doing nothing while waiting on the assistants to do their jobs is foolish. By the time an editor arrived, a lot of these problems would have been solved already.

Wellesnet
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2016 4:52 pm

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2017)

#180 Post by Wellesnet » Sat Jan 20, 2018 3:43 pm

The negative arrived in Los Angeles in March and it was 4K scanned, sorted, logged and studied over a period of several months. The actual editing began sometime in October. Bob Murawski, a pretty talented and well-regarded editor, likely had 12 weeks or more to put together a cut suitable for screening. It's not a rush job, especially since there are Welles edited scenes and notes to use as a guide. Cannes (if that is where it debuts) is still four months away, so there is plenty of time to have a polished edit ready for the premiere.

User avatar
whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#181 Post by whaleallright » Sun Jan 21, 2018 1:00 pm

I don't envy the editors on this project. Welles's editing—especially his percussive sound editing, and especially in his late films—is so distinctive and idiosyncratic, and goes against many of the reigning dicta about what constitutes "good editing." So they either have to try to emulate his style, a daunting task, or to make something more conventional out of his footage and sound recordings, which would probably be a travesty. (There seems to be little in the resumes of the assigned editors to suggest they'd be particularly suited to the former, but who knows?) I'm interested to see the results, and to what extent they feel like genuine and not ersatz Welles.


User avatar
Kirkinson
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 5:34 am
Location: Portland, OR

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#183 Post by Kirkinson » Mon Mar 19, 2018 5:04 pm

Best film news of the year.

User avatar
Big Ben
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2016 12:54 pm
Location: Great Falls, Montana

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#184 Post by Big Ben » Mon Mar 19, 2018 5:14 pm

The Welles.net account also confirmed in a reply that they're still on track for a Cannes premiere although it's not locked in yet.

User avatar
Dylan
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:28 pm

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#185 Post by Dylan » Mon Mar 19, 2018 5:33 pm

The announcement that Michel Legrand is scoring The Other Side of the Wind makes me feel like I'm in a dream. But here we are. This is obviously great and exciting news, but I'll go a step further and say that I don't believe there's another composer in the history of cinema who is better suited to this project.

User avatar
Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#186 Post by Persona » Mon Mar 19, 2018 5:40 pm

yeah, that is just amazing. to be honest I didn't even realize Legrand was even still scoring projects until this news. I think back on some of his work with Godard, a personal favorite being My Life to Live, and you couldn't have asked for a better composer for this project.

albucat
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:06 am

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#187 Post by albucat » Mon Mar 19, 2018 10:41 pm

I know I'm usually the voice of skepticism here, but this is just flat-out great news. A perfect choice, and one that gives me a lot more faith in the overall production.

User avatar
Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#188 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Mar 20, 2018 8:38 am

In addition to the Legrand news, an Indiegogo update over the weekend stated that the final edit is "locked" with just color correction and some sound work to be completed (Legrand began composing and scoring the film in December). A photo showing color correction being done on a scene from the "film-within-the-film" shows that the footage appears to be cropped to 1.85:1 which may indicate a mix of aspect ratios to help differentiate the "film-within-the-film" from the documentary-style footage of Hannaford's birthday party.

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#189 Post by Calvin » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:11 pm

An Indiegogo update weighing in on Netflix's decision to withdraw it from Cannes:
As news of Netflix’s decision to withdraw all of its films from the Cannes Film Festival spreads throughout the film community, I’d like to let you know that we fought long and hard to persuade Netflix to keep The Other Side of the Wind in the festival. Our film was selected to screen Out of Competition, as an Official Selection in the Grand Théâtre Lumière, so it was not directly effected by the ban.

What’s sad and most difficult to come to terms with is that everyone loses in this decision — Cannes, Netflix, film lovers and all of us who worked so hard on this historic endeavor.

The film is a marvel. Cannes Festival Director Thierry Frémaux deemed it “an extraordinary film, much more than a historical film… a message from [Orson Welles] to the world of cinema today.” No other festival premiere will rival what Cannes intended for the films. Their placement and reception will live only in our collective imagination.

Granted, I’m conflicted in my emotions. There would be no The Other Side of the Wind without Netflix, but that doesn’t lessen my disappointment and heartbreak.

Sincerely,

Filip
Beatrice Welles made a personal appeal to both Ted Sarandos and Thierry Frémaux

User avatar
FrauBlucher
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:28 pm
Location: Greenwich Village

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#190 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat May 05, 2018 8:19 am


User avatar
diamonds
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2016 2:35 pm

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#191 Post by diamonds » Sat May 05, 2018 11:58 am

The full article it's pulled from is worth the read as well, with insight into the completion process. Based on Johnson's comments it sounds like they did try to maintain Welles's unorthodox editing style. Bogdanovich sounds pretty pleased too. Between that and the earlier news about Legrand, it's hard not to be incredibly excited for this.


User avatar
Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#193 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Jul 25, 2018 8:46 am

The Other Side of the Wind will premiere at the Venice Film Festival along with Morgan Neville's documentary about the making of the film.

Also, Netflix announced both films with begin streaming on its service November 2nd.

User avatar
diamonds
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2016 2:35 pm

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#194 Post by diamonds » Wed Aug 29, 2018 10:30 am


User avatar
Big Ben
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2016 12:54 pm
Location: Great Falls, Montana

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#195 Post by Big Ben » Wed Aug 29, 2018 10:46 am

Hard to not see Huston as a stand in for Welles in that trailer but I've fairly certain that info has been divulged well before I said anything. Regardless the Welles fanatic in me in eager to see this. The handful of people who have seen it have raved about it.

User avatar
Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#196 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:06 am

After seeing ragged workprint footage for years, it's a real treat to see this material straight from the camera negative - those colors are extraordinary. A truly great trailer as well that captures the inherent dramatic conflict and the rapid-edit style of the film while only teasing the major set-pieces.

User avatar
pzadvance
Joined: Mon Nov 21, 2011 7:24 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#197 Post by pzadvance » Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:17 am

It’s so insane that this will just be on Netflix in two months

User avatar
FrauBlucher
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:28 pm
Location: Greenwich Village

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#198 Post by FrauBlucher » Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:30 am

All I can say is wow. This is going to be a cinematic treat.

User avatar
Drucker
Your Future our Drucker
Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 9:37 am

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#199 Post by Drucker » Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:43 am

Amazing. I've seen a few sequences projected, including the
SpoilerShow
sex in the back of a car
but this looks to be the real deal.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

#200 Post by domino harvey » Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:46 am

Anyone know who the final credited editors are for the film? I think Welles winning a posthumous Best Director Oscar is a stretch, but Editing may well be in reach

Post Reply