milestone

over the past weekend, i hit a major milestone in the post-production of the film. i was able to sub-rent the digital betacam deck from a local dealer, and i spend most of the weekend digitizing the footage into the avid: roughly six and a half hours worth of footage that used between 500-600 gigs worth of space. fortunately, i had plenty of hard disk space: 1.5 terrabytes on the avid system, and a terrabyte worth on a backup external hard drive. i captured all the footage into the avid as uncompressed 1 to 1 .omf files and .aiff files, which are the native file formats for the avid. needless to say, the footage looked incredible, and i'm excited that everything worked out this past weekend relatively without any problems.

i guess that i can finally say that i'm in the final stages of the film's post-production. over the next couple of months, i'm going to on-line the film footage using the off-line edit that was created using adobe premiere. i'm also fine-tuning any effects using after effects, and finalizing the music for the film as well. and i can tighten up any scenes that need a little tweeking.

up until now, i was essentially working with a lo-res dvd version of the film, which is like watching a fourth generation vhs copy. now i'm working with uncompressed super16 digibeta footage, and i think everything looks incredible. it's given the film a brand new life, and i think the final product will look incredible on the big screen. the footage still needs a bit of color correction, but fortunately, everything was transferred well enough that this won't be that big of a deal.

so the plan for the next couple of months is to finish the fine cut of the film on digibeta, fly out to l.a. and meet up with bob massey to finish up all the music, and plan for a local private screening for cast and crew and any press/production contacts.

in the meantime, me and paul are head-up to new york for the x-mas weekend.

guess, i better finish this film soon, yeah?