Director's Weekly Post Production Blog WEEK 45 Friday September 12th...

Last weekend Lewis Hamilton stormed to an amazing victory at the end of the Belgian GP. I could almost not believe he had won! Afterwards, unfortunately, he was relegated to third in a debacle reminiscent of yesteryear.

On Monday we resumed FX pre-mixing after a long, long wait at Synxspeed in Denham. We had the whole week assigned to us for finishing the pre-mixing. Thanks to Mark Sheffield doing some prep work last week, we were able to finish reel 2 that day. 45% of the way there!

During lunch I bumped into an elderly producer called Stanley Long. I’d met him last 2 years previous before he’d suffered a stroke. I found him quite changed. Stanley was very successful in the early 70’s making independent British films. One he made for £9k all told, had revenue of £2m! During the conversation where he asked about our film he said “It takes a long time.”
“Too right!” I replied.

At the end of the day I found out that we had lost Thursday and Friday but that we still had two days left this week.

Tuesday morning was absolutely wonderful working on reel 3. We were really motoring and doing great work with car passes, wind in the trees, birds tweeting, forest sounds and their placements and panning across different speakers. The sound at the double car pass in front of Mont. St. Michel, the first edit we did on the film, is wonderful as well as the sound of the hawk circling above just before Merlin’s tomb.

Midday I got stuck into pushing through the last of the music contracts. I negotiated some extra wording with the Wolfmen’s lawyer, the contracts of which will be signed this week I have been assured. With Ellie Lawson I am a little frustrated as I haven’t been able to get hold of her since Thursday last week. Apparently she has a meeting with her manager on Thursday so I hope things will be sorted after that. Steve Lindsey is also tying down the other three songs. Vanessa and the O’s will record a new version of Comment Te Dire Adieu next week. He said it should be all tied down contractually by the end of the week.

On Tuesday afternoon, not long after Neil Harris popped in to see the progress, disaster struck. A gremlin in the mixing desk escalated into a full blown technical problem with the card that runs the desk. After two hours fiddling about we had to abandon the day, having not completed reel 3. Then I discovered we wouldn’t be able to mix on Wednesday either. So that was it for the week. A day and a half mixing. It is planned we will reconvene on Monday.

On Wednesday Rebecca from Midnight Transfer called to say the scanner should be up and running again next week and also that it is likely that we will have time for grading then also.

Yesterday and today I have spent in a flurry of activity in preparation for the start of the documentary shoot that I am do UK production for. There is a second unit day shoot as early as next Tuesday so I predict the weekend will be full on as well as the next four weeks.

At the end of the week we are 48% of the way with the mixing and still 70% of the way with the grading on DEP, a gain of 8% in the mixing. I estimate that now we might be 13 weeks away from completion.

Moviehouse also told me this week that they want to announce “The Power” at AFM!