On Editing Production schedules never go exactly as planned, but this past weekend Dex and I saw the upside of that chaos. We'd planned on shooting one sequence on Saturday and another two on Sunday, but we ended up getting all three on Saturday. That gave us an entire day off, and though it took us a while to adjust to such a completely alien concept, we managed to get in some serious leisure.

Our digital production process differs from more traditional methods of filmmaking in at least one major way. Usually, you'd film a "master" of an entire sequence, a wide shot that follows the action from start to finish. You'd then film the sequence again from another angle (perhaps a close-up of one of the actors), and repeat the process until you were comfortable that you had every possible combination covered. Then you'd decide what portions of those long shots to use in the editing room.

Instead, Dex and I storyboard the entire thing first, so we know exactly what we want the final product to look like. We plan a few more shots for coverage, but in general we go on set knowing exactly what shoots we need. Editing the footage goes much faster, because you've already decided what shots to use where, and we know exactly where those shots are on the tape due to production logging.

To make a long story short, we already have a final cut of about 80% of the movie. We still may make editing changes for pacing once the missing sequences are added, but we already have a pretty good feel for what went right and what went wrong on this production.

I'll save the full post-mortem for after we've fully wrapped production, but for now I can categorically state that Steadycam is more trouble than it's worth. Ah well, live and learn.  ¶ 4:03 PM