As scheduled, the final version of Pupsock & Wendell in The Gallery of Doom was hammered out on January 20th, 2008. One year and one day after wrapping principal photography. A year ago today was a Monday. Assistant Director Chris Santora and I went back to our day jobs at Northrop Grumman, trying to remember what real life was like, and not happy about it. We wished we were still on the shoot.

Now it’s time for all that after movie stuff. Tom and I are working on press releases (mostly Tom). I’m trying to get a trailer cut and a website made. A website other than this one, of course. With pictures, video, stuff like that. Trying to keep up with festival submission deadlines, making DVDs, researching having them made in bulk, trying to make a press kit. Scrambling to make one, actually, since Florida Film Festival contacted everyone today and asked for one next week. Don’t get me wrong — it’s an excellent problem to have. However, it is still a problem. All this stuff is cool to make, just not as cool as what I spent the last year doing. Hopefully, though, this year will be the year to reap the rewards for all the work I and my crew did last year.

Oh, and as for the sound mixing on Sunday, it was amazing. David Wallace exceeded my expectations by doing a mind blowing Dolby 5.1 surround mix. I’m sure it will never sound as good as it did on his speakers in the mixing room, but I can’t wait to experience it in a theatre that way!

Today is one year since we wrapped principal photography. It was also my last day to tie up any loose ends. I had only 5 shots to work on since finishing the cut on Tuesday, but one of them fell into the category of “too awesome.” One thing that really bothered us in the beginning, but we’d learned to live with, was the presence of an orange princess in her cell. Well, there was also a handheld shot of her that was way too shaky, and the “last” thing I had to do was stabilize it. However, once it was stabilized, I felt the urge to remove the orange, and make her look more natural. Also, her cell is supposed to be this ethereal white room, but one could see the texture of the drywall all too well.

All that was fixed, my friends. All that was fixed. However, that was only one shot, and there were several shots in the cell. So, that took up the bulk of my day today. Well, that and Super Mario Galaxy, but we shan’t speak of that.

Color correcting is yet another art that I’ve had to learn by fire on this project. Not only is it a pain to get just one shot to look right, but you have get it to match with all the other ones. AE has this great plugin from Synthetic Aperture called Color Finesse. It has a lot of power, but it is full of features that require studying to learn. Like, what is a vectorscope really telling me? What is the difference between gain, gamma, and pedestal? What are all these other black and green scopes? Head explode!

Anyway, I went through all the shots of the princess, and stumbled my way through all the various oscilloscope, and eventually got a good group of shots that aren’t too orange, and all look like they are in the same movie. We’ll see what Adam thinks when I bring ‘em over to him tomorrow after the sound design is complete.

Yep, tomorrow the long road of actually making the movie comes to an end. Now for the long road of promoting it.

Just got back from Adam the Editor’s. It was great seeing all the shots I did since the test screening laid into the movie. The extra effort was definitely worth it, and I’m more pumped about the movie than ever before. Of the 66 shots I delivered today, only one was decided unnecessary. I can only claim partial victory, though, because 5 shots had very minor problems. Since they don’t affect the timing of the sound mix at all, I should be able to fix them all in a night (not tonight) and bring them along to Adam’s after finalizing the sound on Sunday.

Also, we did some counting and thought I’d share for the numbers geeks out there:

117 Visual Effects shots (I said 115 yesterday, but we’re adding two as part of the five fixes mentioned above)

39 Non-FX shots

Total Running Time:  12 minutes, 39 seconds (down from 13:19 from before tonight’s tweaks)

I finished off the last of the effects I had to do a while ago.  I just made a disc that contains 66 shots that have been enhanced since the test screening at puppet fest.  I’m declaring interim victory, because I still reserve the right to look over the whole movie tomorrow and see if there is anything else that needs to be done, that can be done tomorrow.  Staying home from work Tuesday remains a possibility, though I’d like to save my personal days for film festivals and such, if I can.

It seems every time I deliver an FX disc to Adam there are 65-70 shots on it — obviously with some overlap from disc-to-disc.  This got me curious, so I did a search for all the avis in my “Gallery of Doom” directory on my hard drive.  Lots of files came up.  I weeded through the ones that were actual shots, and the ones which were tests or backups.  The grand total of FX shots for this movie turns out to be 115.  It’s amazing what one can do with a year’s worth of spare time, just a few hours a night.

OK, sleep now.

This whole business is really coming to a close — though winding down is not the term I would apply to the current situation.  I’m rendering a shot right now, which claims it will take another 3 minutes.  That would mean about 6 minutes to render the shot, which would make it the shortest render of the day.  I’ve been working since noon (it’s current 8:30), with only a dinner break, and yet I have a small number of shots complete because each one has been taking around 25 minutes to do.  That’s the trouble, I suppose, of doing green screen compositing inside a large 3D environment solely created inside After Effects.

Things have been going pretty well during the last week.  I got the Dungeon Painting scene completely redone, and it looks pretty much how I envisioned it before we even shot, so I’m proud of that.  I’ll post about it next week.  It was an arduous, hair thinning process that involved me re-learning LISP, and only for step 2.

I’ve only got about 5 or so shots left to do before I can call this thing done, though  they aren’t going to be particularly simple.  Mostly having to do with morphing fog.  All needs to be done tomorrow night.  Plus, I have to get a screener off to the USA Film Festival by Tuesday, which was a poorly chosen date on their part, since Adam and I are making the final cut Tuesday night, but the DVD needs to be postmarked before then.  So, they’re going to get a hybrid cut.  I am excited about that festival, though, since Dudley won its first award there 3 years ago.

Render’s done, so I guess I better get back to it.