Ending Changing Lane

Last Monday afternoon, I met with Rob to continue/finish our edit on "Changing Lane." When I got over to his place, I learned that he had been having serious computer trouble over the last few days. He thought his video card might have been giving him trouble, since his computer kept freezing due to digital distortion on the screen. Needless to say, with a contest deadline approaching, that was not something that I wanted to hear. We took the computer out to the local Apple store so they could spend thirty minutes deciding that they didn't have the part to fix it, and then we returned home with the still-busted computer. Hoping that it would fix itself, we turned it on for one last time. No distortion, no problem, and we started working. We came up with a short list of things we needed to correct in the film, but as we kept working, that list kept getting longer. It's not that we found more and more things that we didn't like about the film, but we kept spotting those little details that would make the movie all that much better when they were fixed.

We spent a long time on the closing credits sequence, both making the sequence time correctly to the music we had chosen, and allowing Rob the time he needed to learn how to use the 3D modeling program that we used for the sequence. Even though it was quite maddening to match the music cues together into a seamless transition, I think the final result is worth the effort. Once we hit the 4am mark in the editing process, we both decided that we might as well finish in that sitting. So we worked until about 5am, and then spent an hour waiting for the computer to encode the movie so it could be put on DVDs. Another hour later, we had a finished film as well as three copies of it. Bidding Rob a good morning, I managed to make it home around 6:3o in the morning. I literally dropped my clothes on the floor before I fell into bed, slept for about 30 minutes, and then I got up, got dressed, and got out the door for my first day back to Pella Windows. We had been editing for seventeen hours, and we managed to finish the project. It hit the mail the next day, and I'm really proud of the movie that we created. It was exactly what I wanted it to be, and the film came out very well.

Or should I say that our "competition cut" of the film is completed, and now it's time to work on the general release version. Not that it will have more scenes or different cuts, but it will feature alternate effects and perhaps a more finely tuned opening sequence. There were a few moments that got the "quick and dirty" treatment just because we were starting to run out of time. Rob and I discussed those alternate cuts, and now it's a matter of finding the time to put those finishing touches on things. We also still need to finish the promotional materials for the film, including a movie poster, and then we'll schedule the premiere and have ourselves a party!

And this is just me being paranoid, but I wish I had used overnight delivery to make sure it reaches the contest before the deadline. There, all said. Saying it out loud makes it better.