Word to all.

Final day of the edit here. Final day of the edit!

Cronin goes home on Sunday for good so we are done, at least with major stuff. Johnny will still be here for another week but he is crammed with technical work so getting in to edit anything will have to be extremely minimal.

Two of the three producers, Rob and Gregg, are here, giving final notes but basically just sitting here taking up room in the edit room. It’s good to have them here, though. It’s a big moment and we’re all anxious to move to the next step of this journey.

The film is looking pretty good. I am so sick of it that I can’t honestly say how it is, but people seem to dig it enough. I am ready to be done with this phase, man. Done.

Heading out tonight for a little PICTURE LOCK dinner we’re giving ourselves. I plan to get mighty celebratory tonight, that’s for sure. Gotta let off some of this stress, man. I’m about to boil over here, dudes.

We had a few trouble spots to fix, especially a third act transition that has been kicking our asses for a month now, but we’ve added enough audio tracks in there and tweaked it enough to leave it in SKYWALKER SOUND’S hands now. It’s a very sound-dependant scene that we’re trying to pull off, so after many hours of work on it we’ve gotten it to a point where we’re confident in handing it over to the pros.

Actually, doing mostly image stabilization on this pass. We thought these last few days were going to be light, but Cronin and I discovered that we could actually do some really decent image stabilization within FINAL CUT PRO, so we have been some image stabilizing mother****ers the last few days. One of the issues some people have been having is that the film is too shaky at times, so we have been smoothing out things for sure. It doesn’t take the shake all the way out, that’s not what we want, but it definitely makes it easier on the eyes. I’m very happy with it.

But it takes a while to do each shot so that’s basically all we’re doing now. Gregg, Rob and me are on our laptops doing other stuff and Cronin is stabilizing, playing his guitar as the computer analyzes the long shots. It’s funny that it should end like this.

Whatever we can’t finish today I’ll try to squeeze in with Johnny early next week. Then I’m off with Gregg to San Francisco where we’ll do our spotting session at SKYWALKER SOUND. That’s when we meet with our sound designer Bob Shoup and go through the whole film, scene by scene, and talk about sound ideas.

Then the next day we meet with Kent Sparling and Tony Cora, the music composers, who are bi-coastally collaborating on this score, something that no one involved has ever done. We’ll go through the temp music cues and figure out what we all want to hear. I haven’t seen Kent since the ALTERED sound mix and Tony and him have never physically met, so it’s going to be good visit. Or a really bad one that ends up with someone getting stabbed. Never know with musicians.

So that’s the deal with all of this junk that’s happening over in this joint. We are hours away being done. I’m going to miss Cronin like crazy, but he’s anxious to get home and I don’t blame him. It’s going to be quiet around here without him or Johnny around, but we’ll be making another movie soon, so it’s just so long for now.

I can’t believe I’m thinking of making another film. I must already be drunk.

Peace and love for the last time from the SEVENTH MOON editing room at CAMDEN CLEARBROOK APARTMENTS in Frederick, Maryland. SKYWALKER RANCH, here I come!

-ed

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