Reshoots

I started re-editing bits of Cormorant Close yesterday. There's one weak bit early in the scene which just has too much waffle. So I cut out a few lines, but now the conversation doesn't flow right. For the first time, I've hit one of the limitations of RealFilm, and it's come as quite a shock after being used to the luxury of machinima and endless reshoots. I need to re-record one line of dialogue. Just one. But David, the actor, is away for the rest of the summer, so I'm stuck with what I've got.

I can rebuild and reshoot every other damn thing in the movie: I've already replaced the original characters, redesigned the set, reblocked the whole scene (twice), added in whole new shots and tried several different edit patterns to give different emphasis to the scene. I've switched lines around, I've cut lines, and I've experimented with various different takes of each line. But the one thing I absolutely cannot do is change "I grabbed a pie and chips on the way home" to "I have." It's a tiny change, but the new line neatly segues into the next sequence and hides the fact that there's about half minute of dialogue missing. (Incidentally, the original dialogue worked fine when we did the piece in the style of a stage play, and when we did it as a radio play, just doesn't work on film. It's too much of a digression, and we need to get to the meat of the scene quicker.)

Hmm. Some creative editing will be needed.