We're nearly done with the assembly edit and excited to see the first full cut of the film soon. Sorry to say this edit will never been seen publicly. We have too much work to do yet.
I recently compared this point in editing to cooking a three-hour meal. When you're only twenty minutes in to cooking a meal that takes three hours to make, there's no point in asking how it tastes. It's just too raw with most of the tasty ingredients still missing. But otherwise, everything is coming together nicely.
If you're curious to know more about the phases of editing (including the difference between assembly edit, rough cut and fine cut), check out today's post on my DIY Filmmaking Sucks blog.
One other thing.
If you've been following the project for a while, you've probably wondered why it's taking so long. So we wanted to address that, to give you an idea of what we've been working on.
Why did it take so long to start editing?
Principal photography on In-World War was in July 2009. Second unit was
shot in late September and mid-January. As of this writing, it's
mid-April. Why the delay to get into editing?
First and foremost, most of us have day jobs. There are only so many hours in the day sadly.
Second, we had multiple hard-drive failures resulting in lost weeks
waiting for delivery of new hard-drives, backing up, checking data, etc.
Since we're cheapskates, we didn't ship anything overnight, so we often
had to wait up to two weeks for shipments to come via ground from the
East Coast. Those delays cost us months, literally.
Third, we shot with four different cameras (five if you count the in-world "camera" used to capture some animated 2nd unit footage) and it took quite some time (hundreds of hours) to untangle the resulting data file confusion and transfer it all so we could edit in Final Cut Pro. Even then, the complexity of the shoot has resulted in a few data snafus that stopped the clock while we worked things out. Luckily we have some smart people helping us sort all this out (looking at you guys Dave and Alex).
Lastly, there have been a few other priorities that took over our time and energy, most significantly a big grant application for the film and the successful WonderCon indie sci-fi panel (and io9 after-party) that we organized. Again, only so many hours in the day.
Currently though, things are moving forward well. But fellow filmmakers be warned: getting into editing may not be as simple as firing up Final Cut Pro the day after production ends.
Want to help us get done quicker? Feel free to help us out with a donation. Every dollar helps us get closer to the finish line.
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