Alone in the narrative structuring of a project that spans decades of time, telling the stories of Canada's aviation legends was a steep cliff to scale. My devotion to the client added a high standard to what I wanted to produce.
It's actually been years since I've completed a film, and the emotional journey is intricate.
Yet, on the home stretch, so many heros rise to the occasion that it's difficult to adequately express my gratitude.
Andrew Oye eagerly awaited each rough edit as I spilled pieces of it off to him. He instantly produced a quantity of music with great enthusiasm. Specific and inspired, he wanted it to fit into the film according to my vision and then he took it one step further. A small amount of input from me was quickly and expertly incorporated into what has become a thrilling film score.
I didn't leave much time for a sound mix and the online edit. We really only finished filming a couple of weeks ago and I lost 4 days to delays in the approval process and a couple more that it took to recover from that. Then it's hard to let it go when every extra hour at this stage results in massive improvements.
I really only gave Earworm Sound as much time to do the mix as it would take to upload and download the files. Other than a few well placed emoticons in skype, he hardly complained. Like Andrew, he worked through the night and all of the next day to pull something together that he could feel good about. An 80 minute film is a load of sound.
Since this was originally a 20 minute film, our original quote can only afford this much work from Matt anyways, but hopefully we'll get to revisit the film after it's screening today at the operators conference at Viking Air. It would be exciting to see what Matt could do with 2 weeks of sound designing.
I'm editing in exile (for non-professional reasons) from the studio where the film is completed and so I managed to do absolutely everything that was possible for me to do remotely so as not to lay too much onto the online edit. Yet, on the homestretch most of our time is spent uploading and downloading files. There simply wasn't enough time to render it out. Unless someone worked all night long.
Here we add Jeremy Klassen to the list of amazing night owls who contributed to this film while watching the sun rise. Last night he and David watched it at Gamut Productions, and became the only two people in the world who have seen the film with all of it's pieces together. I usually feel like Jeremy is uninspired by the projects I helm, partly because his role in them consists of uncreative aspects required due to my exile. Indeed it is beneath him to be doing my lower third titles, he should be making the next break-out indie film.
He spent the night watching the download bar, the render bar, the progress bar. Not very glamorous. But if he hadn't done that, we wouldn't have delivered.
How do I appreciate these people properly? How can I ever even begin to?
A week ago I felt as though I was making this project by myself. This morning I look around and am truly amazed at the team of talent that is forming around me. The feeling of working with someone, and enjoying it, is unlike any other.
I'm going to ask approval to post a scene from the film here. Otherwise it will only be available on DVD from Viking Air. It should be interesting to see what they do in sales.
