I almost never got to this post... which is probably pretty symbolic considering a lot of indie filmmakers don't reach their post production point.
Okay, so, post.
Not too long after principle photography we were contacted by a former teacher who advised us to speak to someone about our RED footage. He introduced us to Bobby Maruvada who does color correction, transfers, you name it, over in Santa Monica. Bobby attempted to step us through the challenges of RED footage. I still don't think I remember most of it, but luckily he's a great guy and will repeat it upon request.
While we had planned for the costs of post you can never really plan for the costs of post. Editing, onlining, color correction, transfers, la di da, you get it. There's a lot and by this stage you're just a little burned out from pre-production and actual production. KEEP GOING.
Bobby guided us towards his friend and editor Michael Darrow. We love Mike Darrow. After the first meeting it was pretty clear Mike was our guy. Our crew kicked ass but in our fast 15 day shoot we did miss coverage here or there (but rarely did we have any continuity problems thanks to our awesome script supervisor Elena!). Mike never seemed to freak out over an absence of a shot, he simply got clever and worked around it. It took Mike just around 6 weeks to give us our final cut. We did several tiny and private work-in-progress screenings to get some opinions of people not deeply connected to the movie.
You need to test your movie on people before you call it finished. Just because you've filled in various holes in the plot (not that we had any) doesn't mean the rest of the world has your creative imagination. It's arrogant not to allow others to voice their opinions. Don't be a prick.
We were told not to hesitate at this stage of the game. Waiting around, re-thinking things, would bring about some sort of potentially fatal, expensive loss of momentum. By this time we've seen the film maybe over 60 times. Are we sick of it...
Eh. Not too much. ;)
But regardless of whether or not we felt we could deal with hearing Fernando yell out "It's not small!" we soldiered on.
Our crew may be small but we are not.
Next up... MUSIC AND SOUND. :)
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