Yesterday disaster struck in the special effects department. But these days I laugh in the face of Disaster, tweak the nipples of Calamity and tickle the lower back of Chaos. I won’t go into details now, except to say that David Markwick, who had just finished work on all the umbilical cord shots and was enjoying his first Soul Searcher-free weekend in months has been drafted in to sort it out.

Neil and I have speeded up the mix a little, but we’re still only 33 minutes into the film, and once we get to the end we still have to spend a day revisiting all our work and tweaking stuff, and another day doing the final master mix. Neil’s taught me the basics of the software, so I can do the easier stuff myself. Tomorrow, for example, I’m going to be working on it in his studio while he’s out. I’m already beginning to suffer from lack of sleep. I was fighting to keep my eyes open all day and today, and tonight I’ll be lucky to get five hours’ kip.

The good news is that most of what we’ve done sounds fantastic. Even some dialogue scenes that had pretty ropy location audio now sound like a million dollars. And the music increases the budget tenfold and papers beautifully over all the compromises in the production. Finally I feel like my vision is nearly there on the screen (and in the speakers).

Having said all that, it’s quite likely we will need to do another few days after Borderlines to really get it sounding its best, not to mention doing a surround mix at some point in the future for the DVD. Will it ever end? Nope.