I hope you enjoyed last week’s Stop/Eject lighting breakdowns, but you’re probably wondering by now how post-production is going on the film.

The first month after the shoot was spent recovering, catching up on non-Stop/Eject stuff and getting everything ready for the launch of the second crowd-funding campaign – building  the website, editing the trailer (and doing some VFX shots for it), filming the pitch video and creating the first public rewards. So it wasn’t until about five weeks after wrapping that I had a first assembly. This ran to about 24 minutes and was very slow and clunky, as first assemblies usually are.

Since then I’ve been gradually making the film more watchable, tightening it up, adding temporary music and sound effects. Yesterday I reached the stage where I was ready to get some feedback on it, so I showed it to my wife Katie and to the producer, Sophie Black. They had some good suggestions which will inform how I proceed as I try to get it to a stage where it can be shown to some people not involved in the project, who can watch it with fresh eyes and really tell me whether the story and character arcs are working.

My list of pick-ups to shoot is being added to faster than I can cross them off, and every time I show the edit to a new viewer there is potential for more to be suggested. Luckily most of these can easily be shot in my living room with Katie’s hands and existing props. (I’ve never been a big fan of insert shots, but they were unavoidable when so much of the film is about pressing buttons, and they’ve proven extremely useful when it comes to pick-ups.)

Eventually I’ll be able to lock the picture, meaning that no further changes are made to the picture edit from then on (theoretically). It will then be down to the composer, the sound designer, the mixer, the visual effects artists and the colourist to put the flesh on the skeleton and complete the movie. Needless to say, you will hear plenty about who these people are and what they get up to right here on this blog.

P.S. Don’t forget to spread the word about our crowd-funding campaign at stopejectmovie.com