A Job Well Done

Wow. Thats all I can say about last night at Filmworkers, Dallas. We drove up completely nervous about the footage not showing up / one of our rolls was supposed to be messed up, and we just tried not to talk about it until we got there. Then we got there. Let me start by saying I was expecting the lab to be someplace that resembled a run-down Radio Shack with an old dude and some colored markers just drawing on our film. What we got was quite possibly the coolest film place that I've seen in Dallas. We were greeted and ushered in to a swank, upscale film club, complete with free drinks, free food, leather couches, and a breakroom with pinball among other things. Our colorist, Valerie (who was very very helpful and nice) lead us into our own private color-correction session. The room had all the technology imaginable for color correcting in HD + more leather couches, a guitar, full sound system, giant screening tv's, a mac to check our email/internet, and movie seats. It was pretty much the coolest place.





Then we got to see our footage. To attest that we are not in control of this project, most of our stuff was slightly overexposed, some parts really overexposed, and there was one part when we were shooting where the roll came off of the gate of the camera, giving us some blurry images. That was all fixed. In the most beautiful way. Our footage is quite possibly the most amazing stuff that I have ever shot. Valerie just pushed some buttons through color correction, and our footage came to life before our eyes. We just had to sit back in the leather chairs and tweak colors in accordance with our vision for the film. We opted to scan the film in HD at 2k resolution at 24p (for any geeks out there) which basically means we have a high definition scan of our color negative (that can be played on HD monitors, etc). And man does it look ridiculously good. All of our fears were alleviated with some amazing technology. As Brendon put it, we were served a slice of humble pie. I'm completely convinced HD color correction/DI's are the way to go with film because there is so much latitude for creativity.




After the session, we got to go visit the HD scanner room and the actual lab in the back where our film was developed. Basically, the whole trip was completely educational and completely worth all of our time we spent shooting this past week. It's crazy how just this one day made everything worth it. Everything. So, thanks for all the encouragement/prayers that we've received during the production process. We've learned that this isn't really our project that is in our hands, rather it is something of a bigger orchestration of the ultimate colorist and filmmaker. This was evident in the events of last night as we drove back in a lightning storm completely in awe.

I can't wait for you to see what is happening here.