The Ian Report #488

I've spent a lot of time over the past couple weeks looking over the film in it's entirety, and it's been a reassuring experience. I significantly tweaked the edits of about a half-dozen scenes, eliminating unnecessary lines that just kinda bogged everything down, but that I'd been too close to the film to trim out when I did the initial edit over two years ago. A couple of these changes may be reversed after the producer review... but regardless, it feels good to have chopped off some of that fat.

"Fat trimming" aside, it looks like the film is still clocking in at over a hundred minutes, which is a nice meaty number. I mean, we don't want the film to feel overly long (which, fortunately, hasn't been the response from anyone yet), but it's fun to be able to give someone an entertaining experience of significant length.

While we're waiting for final picture lock, and for sound design to ramp up, I've been able to start appeasing the perfectionist in me and have been going back and updating old shots that never really were as well done as I felt they could have been. Often, in the creation of shots, there comes a point when I have to ask, "Will anyone even notice that, if they're just watching the film?" and if the answer's "probably not" I frequently just let it be. It's a surprisingly easy bar to establish (although I know for a fact I've been the cause of frustration for other, more perfection-minded members of the VFX team).

I admit, there are times (many times) when I watch the film and kick myself. I look at scenes we shot and think, "Why did I direct it like that!?" or "Why didn't I get an angle from there?", but whether or not those questions have valid answers (and very frequently they do, given our schedule limitations back during the shoot), I'm still surprised by the energy and the just overall good-timeness of the final edit. My great thanks to all of you who have helped us get this far. I can't wait to show you what we've created!

Ian Hubert
Writer Director

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