Post-production, year one

Today happens to be the one-year anniversary of the last day of our marathon shooting week with Imazawa-san last summer. Over the past year there were several pick-up days, but today feels like a milestone. I’ve been at this post-pro stuff for a year. And while it’s been fun if you like this kind of thing, it’s been a pretty labor intensive year. I’m not sure I want to publicly acknowledge how many hours per week I’ve been putting into this. Let’s just say this isn’t really a job for one person who hopes to have a life outside of it.

The good news is that I’m really, really close to being at least done enough for picture lock. I’m estimating that to be maybe a month off, at most two months. Then I’ll turn things over to Rob for sound and I’ll focus on minor fixes and re-renders, a bit of superficial compositing work, color correction and grading, and titles. And then I’m done! Well, of course then comes festival submissions, wrangling with formats, etc… But at least the nature of the work I need to do will change.

In the meantime, more animation, rendering, and compositing. The toughest shots are now behind me, including the ones on the bridge like this one below, which I really didn’t know how I was going to clean up. And for the most part they’ve all gone at least passably well. I’ve been reminded again and again how much better preparation at shooting time would have made my life easier at tracking/compositing time. Which of course I knew even at the time, but for some reason (laziness, expedience) didn’t always prioritize. Well. Next time.