FIRST CUT: Fixing It In Post

"I AGREE, THAT'S HOW THE STORY SHOULD GO,

BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT WE SHOT."

    The assembly was about 23 minutes. Technically, that still counts as a "short film," but it felt way too long. I edited the movie myself, which was a great idea because I had complete control, didn't have to pay anyone, and had limitless time. It was also a bad idea because I had complete control and limitless time. I'm extremely happy with the final cut, but there's a saying about this aspect of filmmaking: "You don't finish editing, you stop." True. We locked about two months ago and I could still be trimming and tweaking now if we hadn't said "Done - we need to finish this at some point!" 

    We shot a mostly silent film and a lot of information came in close-ups of things on computer screens and iPhones. Some of these things we didn't get, so we wound up doing three or four pickups. I have no idea whether this is common or insane, but we did most of them for free in slightly different locations which I hope doubled well.  (No one has complained so far.)

    Jonny and I had some screaming arguments about the cut and storytelling, all of which made for a better movie. We had two in-jokes from this experience that were huge lessons: Jonny would patiently explain to me how this story had to go and why and what it meant, then I would agree with him, but then explain that "we didn't shoot that." We have to go with what we have (insert pick-ups aside). And MY immediate reaction to many editing suggestions was "Nope - can't do it. Impossible." Then I'd try it and many times it would work.

    We got a number of people to watch it. I was lucky to work at a job where I was surrounded by editors who gave me their advice, plus we showed a select number of professional friends a "near-final" cut to see if the story was understandable. These conversations were wildly helpful and I highly suggest them. Remember: editing is the last step in storytelling and it helps to know that it's being told well.

    Final cut clocked in at 12 minutes. All the while, we were working with a composer to bring our mostly-silent film to life. But then, close to when the film was locked, we thought about having the whole film include sound effects and foley. So we tried it. That's after tracking down somebody who could do a sound mix in Logic, which was harder than you'd think. But when you're putting your best foot forward on your first project and time isn't technically a factor, you do as much as you can to get the best product possible. After all that, we reverted back to the original plan for a silent film, only we went even more extreme and cut some previously-used dialogue. It was a very striking specific choice and brought the movie up a few notches - and it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't tried to add foley.

    We found a great color correctionist who was able to take some of my original ideas of telling the story through extreme and desaturated color and it completely changed the way the film felt. It really is incredible what can happen in Post.

    That being said, every time we thought "We'll be done in two weeks," it was two months. It was around March when I stopped calling it "the movie" and I started adding the adjective "Goddamn" to it.

    One year from principal photography, we were done and I submitted to our first festival.