Post-production, poster and Palin?
Well, the movie's about a third of the way edited and so far, it looks pretty darn good. Thomas is happy, and I guess if the director's happy, it can't be too far from what we had originally envisioned.
The poster shown here is completely finished, and (dare I say it?) looks amazing. It's already getting some very positive attention online (except from that one person who thought I looked like Sarah Palin, but that's another story … Then again, I'll take any and all comparisons to Tina Fey I can get), and generating some excitement from the online community. This is a very good thing, and all very helpful in our plan for world domina-- er, gaining distribution. Yeah, that's it.
Making a movie is lot like the creation of our poster. Pre-production is when you ready the canvas, organize your paints, sketch out your idea, and generally put yourself in the right frame of mind to do your best work. The production itself is very exciting. You see your vision come to life, deal with setbacks, revel in happy accidents and make dozens of frenzied decisions that can make or break your project. Eventually, if all goes well, you have your highly anticipated finished product that you can proudly display and, hopefully, one day sell.
Post-production is when you watch the paint dry. There's a lot to do, but also a lot of sitting around and waiting. Waiting for video to upload, waiting for audio to upload, the tedium of syncing sound to picture, the frustration of editing. Then there's the waiting for your team members to do their jobs, and all of the many hours of painstaking work that goes into sound editing, special effects, color correction and scoring.
Of course, the stress level doesn't go down with this waiting. If anything, it's amped up to 11 because you have less control over the situation (It's already been filmed; here's no going back, now), and you're just hoping and praying that everything flows together the way it should.
Frankly, it's torturous.
That's why we have wonderfully talented people on our Post team. Today, I'd like to introduce you to one of them: Shaun Burdick, our Sound Engineer.
Shaun is a California-based freelance sound effects and dialogue editor. He's a recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), with a Master of Fine Arts in Sound Design. While at SCAD, he received a nomination for Best Sound Design for a Graduate Film, and also completed an internship with Chace Audio in Burbank, CA. A multi-talented artist, Shaun is also a Journeyman with IATSE, the union of professional stagehands, motion picture technicans, and allied crafts. He worked wonders with the sound for our short film Not-So SuperFriends last year, and we are thrilled to have him onboard for this film. Oh, and he's also a really nice guy.
We met a few years ago while working on a musical theatre tour (I acted, he ran the sound board), and have been friends ever since. Let's face it, making movies is rough. It's always nice to work with talented people, but when the person is not only exceptionally good at what they do, but a joy to deal with, it makes the work so much more pleasant.
So, to recap, the movie looks good, I look like Sarah Palin, and we're all looking forward to working with Shaun. Until then, I have some paint drying over here, and it's not going to watch itself.
Next Week: More on our awesome post-production team! In the meantime, you can learn more about The Night Shift at www.thenightshiftmovie.com. You can check out the poster, trailer, cast and crew and some fun downloads. Heck, if you like, you can even be our friend on Facebook and Twitter (@NightShiftMovie), where you can follow more of the progress of the movie (Hint: It's very slow).