Well, it’s been a while!  Glad to say it’s because we’ve been busy.  Here’s the status of our current works-in-progress, for anyone who is wondering:

What Light Remains – is currently on Jayson’s editing desk.  We hear that his girlfriend is helping him.  Estimated date of completion is approximately sometime in the future.

The Cthulhu Chronicles – is also in the can, and on Eric’s editing desk.  He’s getting set up for post audio work and is aiming for completing by winter’s end.

Tin Can – is about 50% complete.  Left to shoot are all of the soundstage scenes.  We are hoping to have those done by the end of November.

Our future plans currently entail the completion of these three projects, followed by instantaneous fame and fortune.  (Or maybe a festival or two).

Been a little while since finishing production, and the post-production machine is in full swing. Editing is underway and looking very promising so far. Our biggest hurdle has been figuring out how to best obtain & configure the technology to handle the extremely high resolution video on which our film was captured. Now that we’ve mostly gotten that settled, we are off and running.

A wrap party is in the works; cast & crew stay tuned for details on that.

We are also beginning pre-production on our next film; no rest for the insane!

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Editing of our rock video project (Deadly Sight by Nowhere Found) is coming along nicely. This is in great part thanks to Harry Goldhagen and Joe Siegel, who have generously loaned us an HD video editing setup. We’re cutting the video in Vegas, which is new to us, and learning all sorts of new things.

I thought I might post a few of the things I have learned, from an editor’s perspective, in connection with this project. If we ever do one again, we’ll want to remember these things. They might also be useful for anyone else who does a similar project.

These notes apply to our sort of project – a rock video with a crew of about 8 and 4-5 cameras.

1. If something happens to screw up continuity (hat falls off, strap breaks, etc.):
   

   The individual should stop playing and fix it, and then continue once it’s fixed. Everything else should continue as if nothing happened. This is not a performance – if you leave it, it screws up the entire take, whereas if you fix it, you only screw up a few seconds of footage.
   Musicians will probably need to be specifically instructed on this, as they are used to continuing no matter what while performing.

   If the individual doesn’t notice the continuity break, or doesn’t fix it, camera operators should stop shooting that person/angle. Look for something else interesting, because the broken continuity shot won’t be used anyway.

2. In the best case scenario, camera operators will know the parts of the song (ie: who does what, when) in advance. This will help prevent surprise “Oh, look, something interesting is happening over there now!” movements.
3. If you do a lot of takes of one song, with a lot of cameras, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify how they match up in post. Easy solution: before every take, have the drummer strike his snare before the song begins – he should do it in correspondence with the take count. (Take one: strike snare once. Take two: strike snare twice, etc.) This allows for easy identification of takes and syncing of footage.
   Or use a slate. But everyone hates those things.
4. Remind camera operators to set their audio levels low. Sound is important for syncing, so audio needs to be captured, but heavily clipped audio is almost worse than zero audio.