SEEING THE LIGHT...IT'S EDIT TIME

hey there, shel here, things are getting HOT and HEFTY here in GERALD'S LAST DAY land...

and i am so happy to report that i've been EDITING! the last two weeks.

justin taught me how to use adobe premeir (an editing program) and now i'm pasting/cutting/tweaking/massaging/adding foley (tech talk:sound effects)....

so far i have rough edits of 3 1/2 scenes (out of 5).

okay, i'm going to type that again....cuz after 2 years, this looks really sweet to me:

three and a half scenes (out of 5) are roughly edited.

justin, seeing the end is near, is pushing more doggedly (sorry) than ever. hard to imagine him pushing harder, but he has 18 more shots to do (out of about 67 total for the film) and he's out in the garage right now knocking 5 super short ones off the list, so by the time you read this he'll have 13 more to go.....(6-8 weeks, i figure).

....you see, it's like that, the end is coming so fast now we can ALMOST taste it.

it's helpful to be editing now, while justin's still shooting, cuz we're able to improvise on the storyboards as needed with pick up shots (shots that weren't planned on the storyboards, so they aren't on our shot list. in fact next time i think we'll start editing even sooner. (yup, now that we are totally addicted to stop mo we are starting to get juicy about our next fix.....uh, i mean film.)

it was SUPER exciting at first to just start stringing shots together.....and then scenes together....... and now adding sounds is bringing it to life in a whole new way.....i know when we get the music it's gonna put us over the top!

SPEAKING OF WHICH, we found the composer of our dreams --so dreamy that he needs a whole post to himself so more to come on that in a couple weeks--except to say we should have 4 solid roughly edited scenes, including the intro, when we meet with him in 2 weeks.

BUT THE COOLEST PART is that the shots are WORKING together.....they are telling the story, just like justin's storyboards said they would (much to his relief). to see it all flowing together after all this time.....MAGIC.....is seriously GRATIFYING. justin's animation has brought these puppets to life, i can't wait for you all to see it. i swear, the scenes are moving even me and i know exactly what the puppets and sets are made of! when i hold these puppets i think of mold making mud stuck to the table, and armature wire, and i smell the foam chemicals, and remember propaste and zap a gap and 5 minute apoxy stuck to my fingers for days, i see places where i could have been more sure handed with the paint lines...but when i see them on the screen i see real live beings, moving through moments in time, affecting all they come in contact with. it's life.

OUR LIST OF THINGS TO DO, WHICH FORMERLY HAD 5568 THINGS (OR SO) ON IT, HAS DIMINISHED TO THIS SHORT LIST OF 11:

1. 5 more shots in the cage (i'm pretty sure justin will slam them out this sunday)
then we turn the set around
2. 9 more shots in the hallway
3. then i rebuild the intro set
4. shoot the intro (1 long shot)
5. then i build a hillside set
6. shoot the ending (1 medium shot)
then
7. make a few more puppets for end credits
8. make the credits
9. make the end credit animation (short w/green screen, so no sets)
10. clean ALL the frames (OK--that one kind of hurts!)
11. then we take our rough edits of the super small movies we've made of justin's HUGEMONGOUS HDVD size frames and somehow (.....have to figure this one out??cuz our computers can't handle those monstrous frames.....) edit those for REAL with the music.

Five months i figure (hope).....and then i'm hoping, but not holding my breath, that justin will take a really long NAP.