So let's start with that last shot. This shot was my original idea for the ending going back over 1 1/2 years.
Here are three shots that illustrate the sequence.
The shot opens with Claire in the foreground, her back to the camera, standing still. She turns her to the right, as if she was looking at something or was going in that direction.
Instead she walks forward, to the middle ground, but to her left, goes behind some shrubs, and then goes under the large tree trunk that bisects the shot, then appears on the other side.
On the other side of the tree trunk she begins to climb the rock face.
At points she pauses in her climb, finding her way, or turning to look from where she came. 
Eventually the climbs to the top of the ridge, and makes her way into the forest at the top. She is gone, and the shot is held there for some time. In the final take on our final day there were scattered clouds, so the sun would come and go. During the long hold after Claire has disappeared the sun came through some slight cloud, so the light seemed to pour on. It was probably my imagination but it also felt as if the bird song suddenly rose in volume and filled the air. In fact it was probably filled with the rackets of the speedboats in the fjord, but such is the power the moment.
Claire moves from being an oddity, an aberration to having a part in the landscape and eventually disappearing into it.
In the early edits the power of this shot, if there was any, was not apparent. It seemed weak, an unsatisfactory ending. I wondered if the gap between inspiration and execution was just too great. A good idea, but we hadn't found the shot or the location or the action or all three to support the idea.
I met up with David an expressed my misgivings about the shot. We were planning to return to Norway and should we consider another ending entirely?
He thought back and gave his verdict: is the problem with shot is that is some ways a literal reiteration of the story of Claire and the film? It's weakness then is that it is a repetition but not a development of the theme. Perhaps if the idea of the shot were expressed instead of the shot itself it could be stronger? This might be a simple as cutting the shot just after Claire turns her head to the left. Then going to black and the sound scape of the ridge, the wind in the trees, and the bird song rising in volume.
All this made sense, but David was referring back to an edit he had seen six months previously. He was coming later that week to see the new edit. What would he make of it?
So as it turned out, another example of the power of editing, for when David saw the shot, complete, in the new edit he changed his mind. As it stood the shot was strong and its power now seemed clear. The problem lay not with that shot, but with shots around it. It was a lack of material, and this needed to be remedied on the new trip to Norway.
We then went to discuss some new ideas and later David emailed some new thoughts as well. More about this in the next post, but to be certain about the final shot I created a different ending, one in which I cut the shot short. I showed this to a number of people but all of them agreed. The final shot, complete, is the strongest.
Now more about what happens to lead to that shot, for the next post.
