05.04
I’m pleased to report that the edit is moving along nicely. Bill Ebel (editor of Fireproof, click here to read his story) sent in his second edit for the film yesterday evening. It was one of the scenes I was worried about the most so I was very relieved to get an email from him. Thank you Bill! Kevin Michael (co-writer, producer) came over to take a look at the edit and we worked for an hour or two. We got quite a bit done honestly, putting together two things we just shot the previous week. There have been a few parts of the film that had been put off for a long time that we finally got to but I wasn’t sure how they would go together. It’s funny when your writing, shooting, directing, etc. that you can still find yourself in the edit bay trying to figure out what you were thinking just a few days prior. I was commentating my own editing as I reviewed takes while Kevin was sitting behind me watching it all go together. “Ah tell me I have another take of that” or “walk out of the shot…come on tell me I had him walk out in this take please!” or “come on turn your head, turn your head, YES!” came out of my mouth often as I reviewed things trying to find the proper pieces. It must be funny to watch. :) Either way we filled in some very critical spaces in the film and I’m relieved. After Kevin left I worked on the edit for another few hours. I took chunks of the film that are complete (in terms of shooting) and started transitioning scenes together a little better.
Besides a small piece we are shooting this Wednesday the last 30minutes of the film is doing very well. Aside from that, the first 20 minutes or so is almost complete with the first 10 minutes in its 3rd cut already. Things are really coming together and I praise God for that! It’s been a long time looking at the same edit being unsure how things will work, if they’ll work, what problems might be there and whether or not we can fix them (thankfully we had the rare opportunity to do that with the re-shoots we did), etc. It’s fantastic to see things now much more complete with only a few small things missing.
Something else I’m hoping for but I’m not sure if it’ll be possible is to get a few establishing shots of some homes we shot in. I have some of the main characters home but some of the others are a bit bland. If the the leaves become fuller in the next few weeks that’ll be possible…if not it isn’t a tragedy. We’ve had a lot of rare opportunity to fix things on this film, something many others wouldn’t have the chance to do. God has been good to us.
We will begin tackling ADR this Tuesday as Aaron Slack (playing Shawn) will be over the house to shoot a scene alone and then come upstairs to begin the process of Dialog Replacement. He only has a few lines but it’ll be a good testing period for us. If we can successfully complete what he needs to do, it’ll give me a good indicator of how long everyone else will take and help me schedule. Thursday will have Eric Stevenson (playing Steven) over my house in the evening to work on ADR into the night if need be. We’ll see how we do! Pray for our shooting as well this week. Besides Tuesday, we will be at Kevin Michael’s house for a few hours, and on Thursday it will be a longer day at the church to finish things there for Pastor, Maggie, and Katy. They will be 100% wrapped after that day!