editing Acquiescence

I spent Friday and Saturday locked up with the Governor of the world's most infamous women's prison. Well, not actually locked up. In fact it was almost like a holiday, what with the good food, good wine and extremely pleasant company, except for the fact that we were working late every night. But it was fun work - well, it must have been, since we were both choosing to do it in our spare time after a busy working week. Strange people as we are.

We were editing the film I shot with Tom and Stephen Lewis for Michael's forthcoming second site, Control and Reform. It's a D/s-focussed video-on-demand site, releasing full-length films for download, streaming or DVD purchase. I can't wait for it to go live, which will hopefully be soooooon (but is unlikely to be soon enough for my chronic impatience).

Our film is called Acquiescence, and is a re-imagining of psychological interrogation narratives such as Closetland or V for Vendetta, only with less forced head-shaving and anal torture, and more thrashings.



We shot it nearly two years ago, just before Tom and I separated for a few months, so watching the footage held a bittersweet edge for me. I liked it more than I thought I would.

The story I'd had in mind when we were filming was ridiculously over-ambitious, with a layered, non-linear structure. Last time I asked him how the editing was coming, Michael told me bluntly that there was no way he was going to be able to piece it together without my input, so I dutifully hopped on a train and spent a couple of days explaining my bizarre imaginings to the poor bloke.

However, he is a technical genius, and proved more than adept at turning my garbled ideas into something approaching a watchable film. I learned an awful lot about film editing, while remaining well aware that I was barely scratching the surface. I also reassured myself that I am audible on camera most of the time, so that's alright. And I had lots of fun, and hopefully helped more than I hindered.

Michael has been an absolute star, persisting in the face of numerous technological disasters, and I really hope the results are worth it. Maybe we'll end up with a cool, psychologically interesting CP film. And maybe it'll just be a spanking movie with interrogations and blindfolds and handcuffs and me naked and shivering in a cell. Either way, it should be good.