Post Production, or, The Lost Summer

Since the last post, things have gotten very quiet, but I am busier than ever with work on the film. We have entered the phase known as post-production, and since I am now pretty much down to a team of one here in Regina, with the excitement of the big shoots over, I basically missed summer. And fall. And, maybe not as bad, it looks like winter might pass too with my barely noticing it. I have spent months losing track of time in the edit suite, cutting and recutting and tweaking and finessing the film. Of course, Gerald is always there, and Raul too, and my other supervisors Mary and Leesa are incredibly supportive, but still, post production is lonely. Editing itself is a bittersweet experience: the time that passes as long hours vanish in moving clips around and waiting for renders is marked primarily by shining gem-like moments of sheer exuberance and voids of black despair. Since May there have been five major edits and unnumerable tweaks on a scene-by-scene process that included tightening, cutting, some pick-up shots, and eventually, rewriting the first 12 minutes of the script with the footage that we had.

I have decided that there are only four kinds of footage in editing:

1. footage you got as planned
2. footage you planned for but turned out completely wrong and is unusable
   
3. footage you wish you got but didn't
4. footage you didn't even mean to get but ends up being crucial (like the gems from between takes, or when Andrew went leaping across a pitch black night field to catch a clear shot of the lemon-yellow full moon and the dwindling tangerine sunset lighting it up)
   

There aren't even any pictures to share of me sitting in my editing suite working away, so you'll have to use your imagination! Anyway, I finally have the live action sections of the film very close to how I want them, which took many months longer than I had anticipated. Getting to the end of the film is a rush, and each pass I have taken on the edit over the past six months has made it better and better. Now it's on to animation, effects, and post audio.

But first I did a little more shooting. At the end of the summer I actually got outside and for several evenings in a row I was out trying to capture just the right sunset for the end of the film. Every prairie sunset is completely unique and most of them are stunningly beautiful, but I never did get quite the one I wanted. Still, I have some pretty nice sunsets to choose from. This was a lonely series of shoots; sometimes it was just me and the dogs and sometimes Raul came along. Once Charlie was there, too. This is on a farm road just west of our house by 6 miles.

I'll watch for cars, Mama.

One, one beautiful sunset.

Two, two beautiful sunsets. How do you choose???

Shooting sunsets takes patience. There's just no rushing the actors.

Since I last posted I have also been doing some 2D animating. A lot of this is still in the experimenting stages, but I think I am getting closer all the time to what I want. The question is, will I have time to complete it? From completely digital processes to entirely traditional techniques, I have been searching for just the right 'look.' I don't know what it is, but I still think I'll know it when I see it. It had just better be sometime in the next three days, or I'll never get done. Here's a picture of my professor Gerald Saul and me trying out Flipbook with a sand animation test.

Pretty cool. If I have the time I really want to incorporate some sand animation in the film.

With the end of summer came the beginning of post audio. Before the first snowfall killed off the crickets and grasshoppers, I did some field recordings for the soundtrack, and I even got some audio of boat noises during an outing at Regina Lake with Kevin and Dauminique on their sailboat Kazumi. I have also spent quite a bit of time in the sound studio, and since I am lucky enough to be working with the amazing professor Charlie Fox in the New Media Studio Lab at the University of Regina this term, I will be there more frequently. Here are some pictures from some of the voice-over and foley work that has been done so far, and some of the awesome folks who have come down to help out.

"Whee! Audio is fun!"

"OK, quit smiling, Don. This is WORK, darn it!"

Don and I spent two days in the recording studio working on some voice-over and narration before he went back to San Francisco.

The lovely Megan Fries who plays Tom's mother came in to record some voice over as well. She has an incredible voice, but doesn't speak Finnish. As all of her lines were in Finnish, Megan got some coaching on Finnish pronunciation and gamely forged ahead with complicated Finnish poetry and narration. It'll be up to a real Finn now to tell us whether it'll work or not.

Other ADR and voice work that I have done so far includes elements of sound scapes that I'll need to create for the film, such as nurses talking and other sounds in the background to create the hospital soundscape, men and boys outside of the New York dockside bar, and the voices of people at the threshing party. Some of the folks who've already appeared in the film as actors came down to help out, including Wayne Slinn, Derek Finnick, Susan MacKay and Kelly Liberet.

Foley is fun, but as most things related to film are, it's also time-consuming. I am picky and detail-oriented so it ends up taking even longer. Basically, foley work is creating sound effects for the film that for whatever reason are not satisfactory on the initial live audio recording. In some cases the action was just too far away for the mic to pick it up, like someone walking away on a dirt road, and in others there were, oh, like FIVE fire trucks doing drills on the half-hour on the next block. In addition tiny sounds like rustling fabric, like when Tom turns his head on the pillow, must be added to give some scenes a sense of realism and immediacy. This will help to emphasize the difference between the dream scenes and the scenes where Tom is awake and aware. You'd never know all this work goes into audio when you're watching a film.

"Now, if the sound doesn't come in these two holes in the sides of my head, you have to be louder."

Kristine Dowler, Art Director (pictured), and Dauminique Napier, Line Producer, joined me for some foley work.

Believe it or not, Kristine's feet in a pair of Japanese tabe socks in coffee grounds sounds just like someone walking on a dirt road in their bare feet.

There are a significant number of scenes in the film that require 3D models, animation, compositing, particle effects and match moving. Brian Andrews of Ex'pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, California (where Raul and I used to teach) has taken on the role of Special Effects Supervisor, and students at the college are creating elements for the film as course work, or as additions for their reels. In a couple of weeks I will be going to San Francisco to do some Additional Dialogue Recording (ADR) with Don, Stephen and Dave from the November 2007 San Francisco shoot, as well as a greenscreen shoot with Don for the end of the film. I'll post pictures from that when I get back; it should be pretty cool.

We don't have any pictures of Dave Lawlor or Francis Marchildon (yet) but these two wonderful local musicians have joined Team Sisu to write and create the score for the entire film. As keeps happening with this project, the angels just drop down from the sky when we need them most. Dave is already working on some ideas for the various themes in the film and I can't wait to hear the first music!

In addition we are still trying to raise money. If there are any producers or executive producers out there who would like to come on board, please don't be shy! As we head down the homestretch with Sisu the next phase is rearing its head. Marketing and publicity are not cheap and we definitely need to start beating the bushes.

The film is scheduled for its premiere in April of 2009. There is a staggering amount of work to be done between now and then. Tom Sukanen continues to inspire me, and whenever I feel like I am so burned out I can't go on, I picture that image of him pulling the Sontiainen across the prairie with that one little horse...

So, until next time, SISU!!!