Wednesday and I think we have a cut. Number 42. I still liked it in the morning so I showed it to the other two and we soon agreed that with a few tweaks here and there this was the cut we were testing on Monday. So that will be cut 43 In the end it came down to a big cut I had made at the end of the film. One of our favorite scenes and something I never dreamed of cutting. But in the end it had to go it was in the way of the actual ending and with the finishing tape in sight it’s no time to take a detour. Once you cut something it’s gone and you must move on with no regret. Tim firth took some convincing and then became a passionate convert.

It’s midnight and I’m on my way home feeling like we made a breakthrough.

That gives us tomorrow to record some extra voice over from Rufus to fix some joins and the rest of the day for fine tuning and then I will leave Laura to finish a mix and play out on Friday. 

I’m cautious though. Theres a pattern when you get into testing, you get a score for your movie and you want to improve it. You’ve learnt a lot from the screening so go back and fix all the problems and become convinced you have a much better film. You know it's better, maybe 20% better, so if we scored 70% before we‘ll score 84% now, that must be true. Right?

Then you get the new test scores and they haven’t changed at all. 

What’s going on that in broads terms the audience at a test screening isn’t telling you how well you have shot or cut the movie. It;s telling you how much it likes this kind of movie, with this kind of cast, written in this kind of way. That doesn’t change much from one cut to another. 

But this time we really have made a difference. Honestly.