Fast Tongue, Lazy Eye

Today is March 30, marking approximately one month 'til the KW2 premiere, and boy am I nervy. There's still mounds to do, though mostly just inserts and transitions.

For Scott, the major hurdle is finishing the chromakeying. I won't pretend to understand what goes into all that. For all I know, keying involves recitations from sacred scrolls and ritual incantations over a freshly slaughtered lamb glazed in the blood of a firstborn Persian prince.

Compared to all that, fishing out inserts amounts to child's play. (Even the three as-yet unshot bits don't hold a candle.) As assistant editor it falls on me to sift through our pile of tapes and track down missing pieces of what has become an increasingly elaborate puzzle. This is like a Rupik's cube wrapped inside one of those 3-D puzzles put inside a box of Legos that's missing the directions.

Luckily, I took great care in logging most of our 24 tapes, so, allowing for a few timecode discrepancies, culling shots should be an evening's work, tops. Must admit, when I hunkered down to document every pertinent tape, I never envisioned the logs being so useful as they've become. They've saved time when it's really counted, from capturing and recapturing footage to picking out the money. Take heed, paduans. Ample records is not the exclusive domain of documentarians and court reporters. The computer age has opened the gates to petty nitwit filmmakers, too.

Likewise, the logs should prove valuable in sorting through select tapes after the edit's done. Scott wants to review these to make sure we haven't missed any shiny gems. No doubt we'll find some real knockouts and slap ourselves for not having used them, then turn around and realize there's just cause. This is usually a continuity issue, sometimes audio. Occasionally we've dropped a shot because of lighting concerns, or because "my character's" lazy eye was caught wandering.

Confound my lot. The Stewart gene-&-cesspool gave me ample intelligence but no sense of sight, smell, taste or hearing to speak of, not to mention this pair of googly eyes bobbing around at right angles.

Matt

Sandi You're a Dandy

As previously noted there are a handful of shots that are as yet unfilmed. Puppets notwithstanding, these are all simple bits amounting to about one minute of screentime, tops. Most are B-roll, video-only.

Tuesday last week we accomplished the longer of the two non-B-roll shots: a three-sentence block of dialogue to be situated in the middle of "Killer Weed 2". Nothing outlandish, just three lines read by the talented Erica Goings. Explaining the context would spoil the surprise. I'll say only that this figures into 8-Toe'd Joe's designs on world conquest.

The location was Scott's new work place, a post-production facility in Studio City. He's worked there as senior editor for all of two weeks but already seems to have his boss licking gravy off his palms. Scott's just that good.

Bossman was nice enough to grant us afterhours access to his office, which was ideally suited to the scene at hand. Thank you, Bossman.

After a few setting and wardrobe tweaks, Scott rolled camera on "Sandy" and I got to play director for a moment, which is always fun. Still wish Chris Merritt could've been there; he would have truly appreciated Erica's zest for the role. She lit up the screen with her vivacious presence and easily bested the two schmos playing like-parts. She was like a young Judy Garland, minus the glossy eyes and the midday mimosa clutched in her thirsty claws.

Very tired now,
Matt

Sound Off

Time's been scarce lately owing to my new job on a movie set. Every night I return home and do what I can in the way of audio mixing for the Making Of. Scott (my unofficial post-production mentor and spiritual leader) once said that editing is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent brain-sucking minutiae.

Now I understand what he meant. The list of mundane tasks includes not only audio but video transitions and motion attributes, all of which require time and concentration. I make no secret of my lacking technical skills. I've always been the creative hand of Wm. Moses Group. When it comes to things like mixing sound, I'm like Helen Keller on oxycontin.

Luckily I've long had a facility for boring repetitive work, so once I get into the rhythm of the math, it's more a matter of forcing myself to stop. The perfectionist in me won't sleep knowing that a single decibel peaks out or even reads a little hot.

My meticulous compulsions detract from other things I could be doing. There are still the puppets, after all, which is why I take advantage of each and every render break. While rendering video I step over to the sculpture studio (a small table exactly two feet behind my computer) and pick up with the remaining puppet head. I'm usually able to knock out a strand of hair or something before going back for more punishment at the cpu.

And the cycle begins anew. At this rate I should have a full head of puppet hair by decade's end, and two fully functional puppets by the time my grandchildren are impeaching Jenna Bush.

Matt