Back in December we picture-locked on my short film, Bunker. The plan was to be done by December 20 and shipping off to fests before Christmas. We locked picture on the 8th. We recorded score the 9th-11th. We were done with color grading and post-sound (stereo sound, anyhow) by deadline. We were golden. And then I did something I swore I’d never do.

On December 15th, the day after Neve’s surgery, the day we were slated to get Dolby sound done at Bad Animals … I broke lock on the picture to re-edit.

Now, back in my project management days, I would have pitched a serious fit if anyone had tried to break lock on a project I was in charge of. Dave Howe at Bad Animals was, thankfully, very understanding, and encouraged me to do what I needed to do to make the film right. Get it how you want it, he said, and then we’ll bang this part out in a few hours. No big deal. It was a bigger deal for my post team, particularly for my editor, Joe Shapiro, and my sound guy, Vinny Smith, who had worked hard to meet our deadline. But I think they both agreed with me that it needed to be done. I thought, at first, that all we needed to do was a simple excision of one continuous piece in the beginning. I was wrong.

Once you break lock and start re-editing, all kinds of hell breaks loose. Or at least, it did here. Since we’d already broken lock, Joe and I ended up not just making the quick, neat excision I’d envisioned, but going through the film practically frame-by-frame, looking for places to shave a bit here, a bit there. It was painstaking, excruciating work. Essentially, we had to get to another rough cut first, and then go back in and smooth out new editing bumps to make it flow. We got it done, and in the end we shaved off nearly five minutes that needed to go, but it wasn’t easy. Then Vinny had to start all over with the sound, because it would have taken more time to do the tweaking than just to start over with it. And John Davidson, my brilliant colorist, had to make a few fixes, too.

I imagined Joe, Vinny and John were muttering choice curses about me under their breath the entire time. Probably they were, though they never showed any frustration to me. The only silver lining was that we didn’t have to mess with the score work that my composer Ken Stringfellow had already done, which was a good thing because he was already back home in Paris for the holidays, and gearing up to go tour Asia in January. It was kind of miserable, having to go back in and do this when we were so close to being done. I started to second guess myself, to question whether I knew what I was doing, to obsess about how much we’ve spent for me to take this leap off the cliff. Then I’d think on it and know I was right, that we simply HAD to suck it up and do this because it just wasn’t ready. I was exhausted from dealing with post-surgery fun with Neve, and the holidays, and this all at the same time. A depressive cycle poked its head over my shoulder and wiggled around a bit, looking for room to settle in for a cozy stay. I shoved it aside, kept my head down, and focused on getting through it, knowing we had a good film before we broke lock, but that it needed to be more than just “good.” There was a better cut in there, we just had to muddle through and find it. And we did.

But now, we’re done. We trimmed off enough to tighten it and keep it from dragging, without losing the flow. It looks great, it sounds great. It’s off to the fests now, the fate of my little project in the hands of festival programmers who have zero investment, emotional or financial, in whether it succeeds or fails. I’m elated. I’m nervous. I hope people will like it, I fear that they won’t. But it’s done, and time to move on to the next project; I’ve been working hard on two feature scripts through all this, but there’s another very interesting and exciting project that’s just started to come together in a very serendipitous way that, for me, bodes well for it being the one I need to pursue hardest right now. Before I do that, though, I need to pause and take stock of lessons learned from Bunker, do a little reflective post-mortem to evaluate, with the benefit of hindsight, what I’d do differently next time around.

I wouldn’t change a thing about my cast or crew. Every single person we hired to work on this film was fantastic. I’d maybe manage expenses a little tighter, but there are things I wouldn’t change, like the fantastic catering we had on set, or the decision to rent a spendy lens my DP felt we needed. He was right, and the shots he got with that lens are just gorgeous. I wouldn’t change spending the money we’ve put into post, either; I’ve seen way too many indie films, both shorts and features, where post was skimped on, and to me it’s just painfully obvious when that’s the case. We didn’t skimp on any of it, and I’m glad we didn’t.

What I would change — and what I know now to apply to future projects — is making sure we have the coverage we need. We did a good job of getting coverage, but even so there are scenes that, when we were editing, we’d say, “Oh man, if only we had a shot where we didn’t have to worry about continuity with that guitar!” or “I really wish we had a better take on her from that angle” and so on. I’ll know next time to plan even more than I did this time, to make sure we get everything we need. I think I’ll probably want to storyboard on future projects to make sure we cover all the angles. I understand better now how to get what I need, and how to know what I need to begin with.

The other thing I’d change if I could, and will next time, is to be more ruthless with my own work. I was very green and very nervous about wanting it to all be perfect, and there are places where I tripped myself up with that. You have to be rigorous about knowing when to cut, where to tighten. Keep it lean, keep only what you absolutely need to make the story flow without having scenes that are superfluous — no matter how great the lines are, or how funny, or how impressed you are with yourself for coming up with that terribly clever bit of dialogue. Clever it may be, but if the audience is bored because the pace is draggy, no one’s going to care about how smart you are. You can’t be emotional or sentimental about it, you have to simply look at what’s cinematic and what’s not, what’s working and what’s not. And cut and join, cut and join, smoothing out bumps until you make it right.

It was all a learning process, and I certainly understand practically now a lot of things I only knew intellectually before I made this film. Lessons that are already paying off as I hone the scripts I’m working on, and lessons I’ll be able to apply to shooting the next film. And next time, I’ll get it where it needs to be before we lock, not after.

Knock wood.

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