That Christmas Movie

Post Production Continues...

follower @ That Christmas Movie

Published on May 20, 2018

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Hello, everyone. We are deep in the post production process. We've been editing for over 2 months. It's a slow process and sometimes involves adjusting the movie by a few frames at a time.

Then there are the hundreds of sound cues -- dialogue, sound effects, music, etc., that must be taken care of. Plus the digital visual effects -- our movie only has a few of them, but they must be done right. (No, there's no magic or anything... well, you'll see when it comes out.) And then there's the task of making the titles -- if you don't do simple text over a black screen, then it requires some creativity and another graphics team to make that happen. (Plus there are legal requirements as well.)

We have a team of 10 people working to put it all together. That's for a low budget film like ours -- major studio films have hundreds of people working at this stage of a movie! 

We are almost finished with the first cut, and should have it ready to screen for a test audience in about 4 weeks. Based on how that goes, we will then make more adjustments and finalize the film and have it all finished by mid-July. That's the plan, anyway. These small test audiences (about 100 people) will provide valuable feedback. If a joke isn't getting a laugh, we'll cut it out or change the way it appears in the movie. The best case scenario is when the audience is laughing so much at a joke that they don't hear the next few lines. When this happens, we'll add a few seconds in there to allow for that. (That is called the "laugh spread" in our business.) We screened the rough cut for 10 people, and we had that happen several times so we added a little time in those spots. This is a good problem to have!  Test audiences can also let us know if there's a problem following a plot point and other issues. But we're in very good shape based on feedback so far.

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I made our editing team pause in their hard work in the edit bay to smile for the camera.

The Premiere

We keep getting emails asking when the premiere will be. We won't know that info until mid-June at the earliest. I'm not trying to be coy, but there are many many factors involved in getting to that point. Music rights have to be cleared, technical issues must be resolved (that's the biggie), etc. Again, the major studios have a huge infrastructure in place to deal with all this. We don't! It takes time to do it all right. We can't rush the process without compromising the quality of the film. Everyone who's seen it says it looks much more expensive than it is -- because we've been careful to maximize our resources. 

Believe me, as soon as we have a finished film, we will schedule the Los Angeles premiere and let all the investors who have that perk know immediately so they can make travel plans.

And we can't wait to meet you at the premiere when you walk down the red carpet!  Remember, it's impossible to overdress for that occasion!