I’ve been prepping Soul Searcher‘s 42 tracks of audio for the final mix, which we start next week. Scott meanwhile is hard at work mixing the music. I’ve only heard a small, unfinished sample so far but it sure sounds good.

Today I started grading, which is the process of tweaking the colour balance, saturation, brightness and contrast to get the best and most consistent images. On video I see it as damage control. I try to get “the look” in camera rather than fiddling about with filters in post. However, Soul Searcher has at least three scenes (including the infamous nightclub one) that are in desperate need of some grading thanks to bad locations/extraneous light sources/not enough lights. The one I’ve been tackling is the opening sequence, which now looks much better with the blue of the “moonlight” and the yellow of the street sweeper brought out, and the rest of the colours (i.e. nasty reddy-pink streetlights) suppressed. Some of it recalls the Alien Queen/Power Loader fight, which was the idea all along.

The Guardian are interested in maybe doing something on the film, but I’m not sure if they realise it isn’t finished yet, so we’ll see what happens with that.

And the premiere’s booked for a month today. Four weeks. The clock is ticking. I wasn’t able to get as big a venue as I wanted, so I haven’t been able to invite everyone, but with the Borderlines screenings the following week everyone should get to see it.