When I started a blog on this site I knew I probably wouldn’t update it enough to make it a real blog. And here I am a year after shooting my film and just a handful of posts, the majority of which are bizarrely about Die Hard.
I have plenty of excuses. I don't read other peoples' blogs, why should they read mine? And for a while after the shoot, I just had to sort of hole up.
The shoot was pretty hard. I mean any time you try to make a feature film for just barely six figures, you can expect hiccups. But my shoot did not have hiccups. It had coronary events. It never lost a pulse but the patient was at times in pretty grave danger. It was rescued only through the help of some incredibly hard-working and patient people who I’ll always be grateful to.
By comparison, post-production has been smooth sailing. Okay, overstatement. It’s been a sailing trip where the Skipper is unavailable and Gilligan is trying to figure the shit out on his own. It took me a while to just find the sails, let alone get the thing in motion. But eventually I did.
Now everyone tells you you shouldn’t edit your own movie. These people are correct. Especially when you’re a first time writer/director, and especially especially when the subject is something crazy personal like parents raising a child with autism when you’re a parent raising a child with autism.
But we have no money for a real editor so I took the job. And I’m so glad I did. I’ve never thought of myself as a control freak, but when you’re editing your own movie you can really play God. You might think a director plays God on a film set, and maybe that’s true for the Welles’, Truffauts’ and Hitchcocks’, but it was not my experience (see: near mortal wounds for shoot referenced in 2nd paragraph).
When you’re editing, the only limitations you have are the mistakes of the first time director (who didn’t get e
nough coverage or didn’t hold a shot long enough or called “cut” when there was still usable stuff happening). But while editor me is often frustrated with director me, I’m also grateful. Grateful for the acting in this movie, which in my thoroughly biased opinion, is very fucking good. And grateful for the people who worked like hell to see us through a tough shoot.
So there’s my post-thanksgiving gratitude from post-production. I just finished a rougher than rough cut that I have thus far shown zero people. My wife has agreed to watch it with me this weekend. Keep fingers crossed for me because that bitch is HONEST (don't worry, no chance she made it this far).
We have a long way to go to get this cut in shape (then visual effects, then color correction, sound/music mix). But I believe we’ll get there and, increasingly, I think I’ll be happy with the result. Hopefully, others will agree. If not I’m still glad I took this ride.
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