Back From Hybernation

Hello readers!

I'm finally back from a very long hiatus to shoot Love, Concord and then recuperate from that marathon that it was.

But before I start the usual updates allow me to say thank you to all of you who have made a contribution both large and small to the movie. I want to specially thank my extremely talented and hard working cast and crew. You were all amazing to work with and I would jump at an opportunity to work

with you all again.

Next I want to thank all my friends and family who did favors here and there to helpthe project come to reality. There's too many of you all to thank, but know that I'll always remember your contributions and consider myself fortunate to know such kind people.

Updates:

So what have I been doing since we wrapped you ask? Well I took a much needed mini vacation and purposely didn't think, look, or deal with movie stuff. I purposely wanted to put some distance between myself and the movie so I could enter post production with a fresh set of eyes.

I also began my video teaching job at Heritage high school, so that took up a lot of time also.

Post Production has begun

About two weeks ago I finally sat down with my Producer Virginia and Co-Producer Jimmy to finally start the post production process.

The first thing we had to do convert the raw footage to a format Final Cut Pro (our editing software of choice) could work with.

Next Jimmy and I began syncing all the individual shots and takes of the movie and synced them up to all the individual sound files. And when I say Jimmy and I, I really mean Jimmy. Because with the exception of the last two days of footage, Jimmy synced pretty much all of the footage. If not for his help I'd be about two weeks away from editing.

Instead Jimmy and I will be meeting tomorrow to do the final data arranging so we can both begin editing the movie separately on two different hard drives. While in the past I'd have never let anyone edit my movies, having realized how much we actually shot, there's no way I can edit the movie and have it anywhere near close to ready for Sundance Film Festival deadline of September 25th. Luckily for me, I have someone I trust and who is amazingly skilled to help me edit. That person again being Jimmy.

Lead Animator Hard at Work.

During my hiatus from Love, Concord my lead (and only) animator Megan Johnson has been hard at work doing animation for the feature. While I can't go into detail about what she's been up to, what I can say is that it's looking amazing! She really is quite a gifted artist and her ability to turn my idea and vision into actual animation is just simply amazing!

She's still working on the animation and I hope to meet with her soon to see the final details in motion.

After Editing, Then What?

So while I hope to have a rough cut done by the end of September, it should be pointed out by no means does it mean the movie will be ready to screen. The rough cut will be simply that, rough. I'm hoping it'll show enough quality, even at the rough stage, to be accepted to Sundance. However, after the rough cut is assembled I'll most likely screen it to a select few fellow filmmakers in order to get some feedback, and then it's back to the editing room. This cycle will repeat until I feel the film is clearly telling the story I intended it to.

Once I have a final cut done, I'll begin doing sound work on the movie. Again, many people forget that most of the sound you hear in films is recorded after the fact or pulled from a library of sound effects. Luckily for me I had Dan Jasper as my production sound recordist, so my dialogue is amazingly clear and won't need much if any re-recording! Thanks Dan!

After sound is done hopefully I'll be premiering it either at a popular film festival or in the very least somewhere in Concord.

So that's the post production game plan. While I hope to continue posting blog updates about editing, there wont' be much to write about until we get the work done. That and my full time teaching job kinda makes it hard to write weekly now. Nonetheless I hope to write at least bi-weekly to let you know what cool scenes I've worked on.

Also I plan to slowly release the many thousands of productions photos taken by the awesome Mike Padua!

Well that's all for now folks. Thanks for being patient with me and I look forward to sharing the post production process for you.

Forward!

-Gustavo