Monday night was spent drinking celebratory cocktails with my two favourite film-cutters: Vania Flaccomio (editor at Pink Banana) and Ashley Hughes (whose new portfolio showcases the best of his analogue film talents). Among other things, we were celebrating the fantastic news that The Beachcomber is ready for screening.

The final cut came after a long notes session several weeks ago, and several reviews of the shot list and paper edit over recent days as Ashley and I tried to marry competing themes, tensions and ideas in an order which was perfect. Cutting Super 8 stock is a delicate process: the negatives contained on 3-minute rolls are developed and printed positive onto a spool, which is then sliced into scenes and takes. Those raw slips of film are hung on a frame ready for the assembly process – you can see The Beachcomber uncut in the photo above. Ashley’s 5-hour task was then to identify the best of the shots and assemble them into order, shaving the transitions as he went, using a splicing machine which incorporates a light-box, rollers and a cutting tool. Special tape with sprockets is used to join the pieces together, making the final cut.

Running in tandem with the visual cutting process, I revisited the shoreline of Budleigh Salterton in making the soundscape. One evening after our day of shooting had wrapped, I had headed down to the edge of the waves with a DSLR and recorded seven minutes of rolling waves, which made a captivating sound: a peeling roar as they came in at an angle along the shingle towards where I was sat, and a sucking, rolling grind as they pulled back out to sea against the steep bank of pebbles. Pumped loud through a speaker amidst the audience, this soundscape literally immerses the viewer in the story of the film. The majesty of a Woolf soundtrack was really solidified on Friday night when I had the pleasure of joining Lily at Blenheim Palace to watch Max Richter, Ray Chen and the breathtaking Aurora Orchestra premiere Three Worlds, the soundtrack to ballet Woolf Works. That perfect summer night reminded me of the real power that a soundscape can have; collaborating with Max Richter now tops the list of dream projects.

We are excited to be hosting a preview screening of The Beachcomber at Canary Wharf on Saturday, following which the official premiere – as part of an evening of spoken word, rehearsed readings, excerpts of Woolf’s work, art and cocktails – will be taking place at Turl Street Kitchen in Oxford next Wednesday. This venue, which has relaxed leather-furniture scattered across warped wooden floorboards and beautiful views across historic Oxford, fits our Woolf/Bloomsbury theme well, and I hope The Beachcomber is the first of many screenings we can host there.

In the longer run, following these screenings the film reel will make its way back to the lab in Germany for a high-definition scan, and we look forward to being able to re-open the story with the use of digital editing techniques before launching the film online at the end of the summer. I can’t wait to share it.

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