One Last Job: Post Production Notes

Sep 092010

So when we last left off, principal photography (and what would be all photography) had finished and things were moving on to the editing room. Just to keep everything in perspective, part of the editing process (approximately the first two minutes of One Last Job) took place after the first day of shooting. ¬†We then went out two weeks later and shot the remaining scenes as well as a couple pick up shots that hadn’t come out to our liking during that first day of production. ¬†I apologize for jumping around so if it gets confusing, feel free to flog me in the comments.

Now this is where I can admit to sort of knowing what I’m doing, given I would be using all of the same gear I had used in previous years. ¬†My editing suite of choice is Final Cut Pro (FCP) on a MacBook Pro and, with the exceptions of updating hardware and software, has remained relatively unchanged for the last eight years.¬† Editing is what I have the most experience with and, not coincidentally, enjoy more than anything in the film making process. For anyone reading that has edited a project, the whole process is just mountains of payoff interspersed by momentary lapses of continuity, debates over what goes where, and errors in judgment. ¬†Bottom line and as trite as I can make it- editing is when this thing you have in your head becomes a tangible object you can show off.

With that, I’ll explain how my process works. ¬†If you checked out my production site, you probably noticed that most of my portfolio is music videos or some variation thereof. ¬†When I started to sit down and edit the sizzle real I mentioned in last week’s article, I put down a few video tracks in FCP and was a little underwhelmed. ¬†With no dialog and knowing I would be dumping the on-camera audio, the whole thing seemed sort of lifeless. ¬†Enter Soundtrack Pro, which is part of the Final Cut Studio suite. ¬†I found a couple of tracks that fit together and created maybe one minute of usable music to score the opening scene. ¬†I then looped it once and pushed out a rough edit of the first two minutes. ¬†I showed that to a bunch of friends and co-workers to gauge reactions and the responses varied. ¬†Most were positive, which was awesome, but there were a few things people pointed out-

Look, I'm like totally right in your field of view!

The music fit very well but became repetitive (this I was aware of and I had let them know that the score wasn’t finished).

A couple of the shots were not good, particularly a wide establishing shot of Jesse as the main character driving down the street (This was reshot during the second day of filming).

Some folks had feedback, understandably, about how incognito a character could be while parked outside a woman’s home, twenty feet from the car she is entering (I could only respond that my intent was to frame an interesting scene and that this was just a test shoot. Lame but that is all I could come up with).

And as I mentioned, we took a lot of this feedback and reworked stuff. ¬†I knew the music would have to be expanded beyond the four bars that existed and we reshot what clearly were bad shots. ¬†As for the character not hiding well enough, the decision was made to stay with what we had but let me explain why.

I probably have two or three unfinished projects on my hard drive right now. ¬†The two that come to mind are my wedding video and a short web series Jesse had developed about four years ago. ¬†Why do these things stay on the hard drive and not out in the viewing world? ¬†Well, the wedding video is just about finished but needs one more viewing before I put it to DVD/Blu. ¬†I have just been lazy and am not partial to seeing myself in front of the camera. ¬†As for the other project, Smoke and Mirrors, it may never be finished. ¬†Why? ¬†I had an email transaction with Anthony, the guy that ended up doing the music for One Last Job (more on him in a moment) and he asked the very same question- “Why didn’t Smoke and Mirrors get completed? ¬†What happened with that?”

Something I have learned with age is that if a project does not have a clear beginning, middle, and ending schedule, the chances of completion are disproportionally slim. ¬†This does not apply only to film projects but can be extended to honey-do lists, projects for your work, or plans to visit family. ¬†I do not believe in having a regimented life but without a plan, your project will never finish. ¬†Unique to film projects though is the tendency to work and rework material as further ideas are introduced. ¬†Do I agree with the feedback given that the character would be made if he was actually parked right in front of the woman’s house? ¬†Absolutely. ¬†But if we were to go back and reshoot every little idea or mistake that exists in One Last Job, the film would never be finished. ¬†Of all the things I was taught in college or learned during shoots about the process for filmmaking, this paragraph houses the fundamental and best practice I have come to appreciate in relation to finishing your projects. ¬†I say that not to be a pious asshole but in the hope that it just makes sense. ¬†And to those of you that pointed this out during a rough cut viewing, please do not take this diatribe as some sort of justification. ¬†My point is just to show that details get overlooked all the time and as a filmmaker I had the choice to go back and fix it or leave it as-is to move closer to completion.

The final piece of feedback that needed work was the music. ¬†I tried working with more samples and loops from Soundtrack Pro to come up with something coherent but it just was not acceptable. ¬†I was just about to give up and go to bed one evening when, for whatever reason, I signed into Myspace. ¬†Amongst the dearth of updates from my friends, I found a rather amusing wall post from someone I had not spoken with in years. ¬†Specifically the second line-

I had worked with Anthony (gLypHix) shooting a rather experimental music video years ago. ¬†You can check it out here or on YouTube. ¬†At any rate, I messaged him in the hopes he remembered me and asked that he take a look at the rough cut and see if he could come up with anything. ¬†Literally five hours later, he sent me a clip that was outstanding. ¬†A couple week’s work and he had scored the entire cut. ¬†Who knew that Myspace was still good for anything?

So once a final edit was performed, the last thing left was to add sound effects. ¬†Given that the audio recorded on camera was filled with my fumbling all around the lens and not to mention my foot steps, the sound effects had to be created in post production via Foley. ¬†The majority of these were just car doors opening and closing or the automobiles themselves driving by. ¬†For those I just enlisted the help of the wife and we futzed around with the cars for about an our. The hardest part, believe it or not, was recreating foot step sounds and syncing them to the footage. ¬†Never did I realize how fast people walk until editing those segments. ¬†In the end, I took around 50 footsteps in my office and those ended up being the majority of step sounds throughout the film. ¬†I had mentioned that the jury was still out on the Tascam DR-07 but it was what we used to record all of our sound not taken from samples and loops in Soundtrack Pro. ¬†I also used a Redhead Windscreen to block out any wind noise. ¬†As you can see in the picture, it makes the thing look silly but damn if it didn’t help quiet everything down.

And that was it. ¬†As much as I want to show anyone reading this the final product, we have entered One Last Job into the Rockport Film Festival and are waiting to hear what comes of that. ¬†I do not expect to get picked, just the pessimist in me, but I do not want to get disqualified by releasing the video publicly on YouTube or Vimeo. ¬†I have plans to revisit the audio and create a 5.1 mix (as superfluous as that may be given this age of internet video) as right now it is only 2 channel, but otherwise this project is done. We have started moving on to the next projects (something Christmas related, a music video for Anthony, and a project that Jesse is writing). ¬†If I left out a detail you are interested in or just need a good talking to, feel free to comment below and give me what for. ¬†If you read to this point in the article, I applaud your stamina and thank you for your interest. ¬†Based on the reaction of the first article, I plan to keep writing these as we make more films so be on the lookout.