Fix List

Our mysterious super-secret special mystery guest star (of mystery)-- that's OMSSSMGS(OM) for those of you playing at home-- will be back in the States next month, at which point we are to pester him relentlessly until he sends us his footage-- which, we're confident, will be absolutely golden-- a great way to kick off the film (as his part takes place about five minutes in and is an integral part of the film's now-legendary eighteen-minute opening scene).

To better adapt his performance to the tone and feel of the film, OMSSSMGS(OM) has asked us to send him a copy of the rest of the film, with his spot left blank so he can see where-all it fits in. We are, of course, more than happy to oblige, and after a bit of puttering around, we tonight burned a DVD with said film-in-progress and gave it a look on our telly.

We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the film looks absolutely gorgeous on our television set; we had gotten so used to looking at it on our computer, with its dismal colours and splotchy blacks. Whereas on the TV, it looks much the way (if not better) than it did on the camera. Which is wonderful.

We were not so pleasantly surprised-- indeed, we weren't really surprised-- when we came across a few places where the audio needs a little nip and tuck. When we mix our sound for our movies, we do it right on our computer, right in Adobe Premiere, using our computer speakers to judge when something needs to be raised and something needs to be lowered. Often, we miss little things with our imprecise equipment, and watching a rough cut on TV results in a long list of things to fix-- or, a Fix List.

This Fix List, however, was not actually that bad; there are ten spots to be fiddled with. Four of them are "spikes"-- when the decibel level is so high that an unpleasant distortion is present-- and there are three quiet scenes in which the mix itself is a bit lower than we would like, and so those must go up.

All-in-all, though, everything looks nice and everything is more-or-less audible; there is one small snippet of a scene where David decided to mutter, despite us telling him again and again to be louder, we told David to mutter, making it a "quiet moment" between the two characters in which only they know what is said-- like the bit at the end of Lost in Translation but less "emo"-- but we'll live with it it was intentional.

We would, though, like to get a better mike for our next project-- and one with a longer cord. Maybe even an actual boom operator with a sound mixer.

We'll see what happens when the time comes; we've already started taking a few stabs at the characters (with the help of our able-minded actors) and storyline of the next project, though nothing concrete will come out of it for at least a couple months yet.