One of the paradoxical things about making a movie is that you don’t have time to actually see any movies. While in prep and production of ROWS I went four months without seeing a movie, and this from a guy who regularly watches one feature film per day. I broke the drought a few days back when I went with my friend Greg of, Baltimore Precision Instruments, to see Apes on a Plane. Or was it The Apes of Wrath? Anyway, it’s spun-off from that damn dirty ape movie from 1968. You know the story.
Another paradox of making a movie, at least on our schedule, is that you never have time to actually watch the images you have captured (aka the “dailies.”) We finished shooting on 8/17 and I have literally only seen maybe 25% of the film we shot. There just hasn’t been any time. I did have fund raising, urgent family business, and various long-neglected responsibilities to attend to, and there was a hurricane. Now, those things are squared away so, I can turn my full attention to post-production.
Attention: ROWS is looking for an experienced feature film editor. Or somewhat experienced. Or an experienced assistant editor that needs to be the key editor on a feature. There is pay, ranging from low to very low, to maybe pretty decent, depending on outcomes of our continuing efforts to raise financing. We have done well so far, and we did reach our Kickstarter goal, which helped a lot.
Another challenge to our post-production plans is the recent decision by the Final Cut Pro development team to make the FCP 8 version (aka FCPX) of their software TOTALLY SUCK ASS. Final Cut Pro was the go-to software for so many editors, but now you must stick with version 7, for which there is no longer support. If you need to buy 7, you can’t. Here is what professional feature film editor Scott Chestnut has to say about it:
“As for Final Cut X, it is a highly polished turd. The turd in question was iMovie 9 and they just kept polishing until it became 64 bit. Oh, and I think they meant to add the letters S-C-R-E-W-Y-O-U after the X. There are people who like it and I think those are the people Apple hoped to reach, but they are mostly hobbyists or others who do short- form work for the web. People who make a living with it have to eat cake.”
Adobe Premiere and Avid Media Composer are moving fast to pick up everyone that’s jumping ship from FCP (offering 50% price cuts till the end of September), but many FCP users are in wait-and-see mode. Lightworks, which has become open source (PC only so far), is making a big announcement on the 8th of September. This might mean Linux-based editing software, or maybe even Mac. If so, there may at last be editing freeware for the people.
Once we get the Editor and software thing worked out, the next big priority is to get in bed with a Composer. ROWS is a movie that demands an original score with a capital “O.” The score will certainly be a key component in making the film work, and we’re not going to get by with suspense cues, canned tracks, and source music. We invite interested Baltimore composers to submit samples.
David Warfield
