With only two months left to go, post production on the three films I'm cutting have ramped up as our screenings are just around the corner.
My latest film, Jacob, a quiet drama, has had the fastest turn around. Being that a week of work was going to be lost due to the university's Spring Break, I had to have a first cut completed within a few days of our shoot's wrap. As such, I chose to act as DIT on set so that I would be able to transcode, ingest, sync dailies, and begin cutting within AVID immediately. What definitely helped speed wise were the hot keys I had mapped out for myself on my keyboard. Thanks to working on Prism and Doppelganger prior to Jacob, I had a strong set of shortcuts to work with. I now know why my mentors at Pixar had such involved mapping on their keyboards! When you need to work fast, efficiency is key.
Over these past few weeks my director and I have been working hard at finessing the cut of Jacob. Following our initial screening, we received a handful of notes regarding issues of performance, lines to be cut, and questions of character motivation. When we sat down to create our new cut, my director and I immediately began to discuss which material we could remove. Before I knew it, we had cut out 3 minutes, and re-shaped the performances through the looping of lines and selecting of alternate takes. This past week, we presented the updated cut to our thesis classes, as well as one Graduate class. The response has been positive and I'm excited to see what these next few days have in store as we lock picture.
Yesterday, I was able to cut in the final pick ups for Doppelganger, as well as see a few of the rendered VFX shots for Prism. It's surreal to reflect on where each of these films began at the script stage, and how they've matured and evolved through production and post. Doppelganger is the first film out, premiering on April 17th, with Jacob on May 8th, and finally Prism on May 14th. Soon, I will be QC-ing each one of these shorts in Dodge's Folino Theater, diving head first into the film school's new onlining workflow. Here's to almost reaching the finish line!