Whimpering when only a bang will do

Well, that was a bit of a damp squib.

Oh, welcome back, by the way. With the weeks of pre-production panic, shoot insanity and psyche re-balancing now officially things of the past, hopefully we can get back to more regular communication. Having just spent an especially relaxing week sat indoors watching Wales getting rained on, I am now officially champing at the bit to dive into the post-production.

And as I mentioned in an earlier post, the 12^th September was planned as the date that Jake and I would reconvene in the Charmed offices, and gaze wistfully over the fruits of Sam’s first assembly edit.

On paper a first assembly is no massive milestone – simply a rough edit that has been quickly pulled together to check that we have all the shots that we need to make a movie. Sam, along with our Digital Imaging Technician Alex, has been meticulously building this as we went along throughout the shoot, from the comfort of a number of silos suitably removed from all the action and production faff.

So, no massive milestone. But then again it is our first opportunity to watch the whole film.

Tradition dictates that directors and producers walk way from viewing their first assemblies in exceptionally bad moods. The temptation, I guess, is to watch it as you would a normal movie, even though the shots have been stuck together in a fairly utilitarian manner, the sound is all over the place, no one has even thought about the pace of the film, and there’s no music or foley, or digital FX. Instead you’re presented with a smorgasbord of off-mic dialogue, performances that look different to when you were shooting them, un-fixed continuity issues, prized footage buried in a soft focus, etc. etc.

So Jake and I were bracing ourselves for a thoroughly miserable day. That is until last night, when it became evident that Sam needed an extra 24 hours to tidy the edit up further.

And so our day of communal Charmed trauma has been commuted till tomorrow. And a morning that should have propelled us into the boozer at lunchtime to reflect on the error of our ways passed by without issue.

Meh. Tomorrow we hit the ground running. You have been warned. Stretching.