NOTES FROM HOLLYWOOD: PART 11

Reflections on the Journey to Make a Feature Film

Aaron and Josh on set in June during pickups in Los Angeles

Thank you to everyone who has made contributions to support our FINISHING FUNDS CAMPAIGN. You are helping us get to the finish line! The team and I are so grateful. (You can still contribute HERE and info below.)

And thank you to everyone who responded so favorably to the TEASER TRAILER, I appreciate your enthusiasm so much. The edit has been a grind and your solidarity and support has meant the world to me. (TEASER at the bottom if you haven't seen it yet).

So where are we in the process?

In June we gathered a small crew in L.A. for a weekend of pickup shots. I had made some changes to the order of events in the film during the edit and needed some footage to connect a few scenes. It was fun to be back together with our original crew as well as actors Josh Close and Gilbert Owuor. We got some good stuff!

And I had an epiphany. After a long process of editing, I walked on set with a different sensibility as a director. During the original 4 week shoot in February I had the confidence of a stage director: I knew how to work with actors; how to create an atmosphere of focus and intention; how to draw out honest moments in performance. But I was not sure how to get the right coverage for the edit.

Hana on set in L.A.

Cinematographer Hana Kitasei was a terrific collaborative parter and I can't imagine being more prepared than we were with our approach. Our shot list was thorough, our understanding of the visual language was in sync, and we remained flexible to the changes and surprises that arose each day. Hana, who teaches cinematography at American Film Institute, taught me so much. But none of it made up for the fact that I had never been through an edit on a feature film before.

Now I had spent 7 weeks with my editor, Libya El-Amin, grappling with the consequences of every choice I made during the February shoot. Cutting in and around every moment in the film, trying to make the story sing. When I walked onto set for our two days of pickups I looked through the camera lens differently. I understood our shot list differently. I knew how the pieces we were shooting would cut.

Trial by fire. I finally felt like a film director. 

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After the shoot I spent some time with composer Ronit Kirchman at her studio in Silver Lake. Introduced to me by producer Lisa Bruce, Ronit came on the team a few months ago. We'd begun to discuss tonal approaches to music for the film and finally had a chance to meet in person. She's been working up sketches and compositional experiments like a mad scientist in a lab. I'm delighted to be working with her and we're about to dive in deep, next week, to start adding music.

Do you know what that means? That means that we have LOCKED PICTURE. Yesterday I delivered the longed-for words "we have picture lock!" If "that's a wrap" is the end of the production process, "picture lock" is the end of the editing process. With the film edit locked, the post production departments of sound, music, VFX and color correction can all get to work. They can't work if the cut is still in flux. These craftspeople all work to precise timing and if you're recutting the film after they've worked on a whole series of details, it throws everything off and adjustments are costly. 

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I brought on editor Dagmawi Abebe to give me fresh eyes on the final push to finish the edit. I met Dag, as he goes by, at Tribeca Festival after the premiere of McVeigh, which he edited. There were some areas in our film where I felt stuck and needed someone with no reference to the project to come on and help me see what I couldn't see. Most of the edit was done remotely with me in one place and my editors in L.A. using a software called "Louper". I took a celebratory screenshot (above) when Dag typed in "picture lock" to name the final cut before outputting it.

So here we are in the Dog Days of Summer, a full 7 months since we first gathered in Hollywood in early January to prep for production, and I feel relieved and inspired that we've made a worthy and beautiful film. I can't wait for you to see it. There's a lot of technical and creative work still to come. All the little (and not so little) behind-the-scenes things that you never notice when you're watching a film, and yet are essential to the successful completion of a movie. We're on a tight schedule to hit the first of a series of film festival deadlines September 23. 

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I'll have more news on the process soon.