This past week has been one of the most fulfilling of my life.  I left ‘the new hometown’ to go to ‘the original hometown’ to finish the short.  As much as anything else, it was a major learning experience for me.  First thing we did was ‘picture lock.’  I reviewed a couple of cuts from Los Angeles (the beauty of the technology we have now), but for the final edit, which at that point meant mostly trimming half seconds here and there, yeah I had to do that in person. 

Next a few hours went into the sound mix.  Adding sound effects we didn’t have on set, picking the right music for the score (in this case a song composed by a good friend of mine), and making sure the music blended well into the story of the film.  That turned out to take a LOT longer than I was expecting.  I liked the music we had, but it kept overpowering what was happening visually.  I really love the solution we came up with, ideally that’s one of a number of things you (the audience) won’t even notice.

The next day we nailed down color correction (which is what it sounds like, getting the most out of what the camera captured).  Finally a little CGI work (which I personally guarantee you won’t notice unless you were on set and recognize what we changed), and you put all the pieces together.  As I think about it, it reminds me a lot of cooking.  Too much or too little of any single element, and you have a piece of trash.  When I saw the finished product for the first time, I’ll tell you, it was very, very gratifying. 

The last ‘test’ is how you, the audience, react to it.  In one regard, it doesn’t matter since I’ve made the film I set out to make.  I have tremendous faith that it will help in setting up ‘the next step.’  Maybe a little, maybe a lot, that I do not know just yet.  There’s also the purely business aspect of it all.  Can the project make back the money that’s been invested into it?  In a direct way (competition), I think it’s got a shot (which is the most anyone who’s a professional in this thing can ask for.)  In an indirect way (creating other opportunities),  I think the odds are even higher.  Maybe it’s pure optimism at this point; we’ll find out soon enough.

Next step for the project: distribution and getting it to the audience…