Last Thursday I met with my AD so I could pick up all the rest of the equipment and props. Poor girl has been literally living on set for the last month or so. It makes sense being that I used her apartment for the piece. In any case, when I met with her, we talked a bit about the piece and what can be done in post. She suggested I do a bleach bypass (it was done in "Saving Private Ryan"), saying that she thought it would be really good for my piece. I kept it in mind and did some research on how I can do it in post rather than as a method of film development (which is what I understood it to be). Turns out that there are tons of ways to emulate it in after effects. So I tried about half a dozen different ways before settling on one. While doing that I also decided that I wanted a smaller depth of field in some of the shots and started playing around with defocusing. While doing that I stumbled across an effect that makes the piece almost look painted. Which is an incredible find considering the piece is about a painter that is disenchanted with his work. After two days work of just playing around with effects I finally have a great starting point for my first draft of my sweetened cut (my 5th or so cut of the film). Now I'm just 6 short rendering hours from a new version to show around.
I'm kind of working out of order, considering that I still haven't put in the good audio from the shoot. Who really cares though? I'm just amped that it's coming closer to a final product. Currently I've put roughly 230 hours of work into the piece, and I'll end up breaking the 300 mark long before it's finished. Hopefully this piece will get me some work.
