April 8, 2016
I have been incredibly busy over the past couple of days. Saturday night (April 2) I stayed up until 3:00 in the morning finishing VFX shots before I left on my Spring Break vacation to Myrtle Beach. I had to finish because I didn't trust my laptop to being able to handle the VFX. I sent the film to Jack for review once I got to the beach.
I forgot to tell him about the changes I made to the script. I mean, I told him I was going to make changes at the day of the reshoot, I just didn't get the chance to tell him the specifics.
I ended up changing the end of scene 25, all of scene 29, and some of scene 32. I didn’t like the 911 call in scene 29 because it was an anticlimactic deus ex machina. We didn't see what happened to Monty, but he came out healed. It wasn't set up. Instead, I had Maddox stab Monty with the lamp plug, my reasoning being the charge leaves him when given load. To make this work though, I had to set it up earlier in the film, which brings us to the change at the end of scene 25. Instead of the light bulb exploding, I had it drain the Liquid Lightning of its charge.
After some debate, Jack decided to keep this change, but I need to add some spark VFX to scene 25 to make the draining more obvious. I agreed, so it looks like I need to open After Effects yet again.
The change to scene 32 was a more technical decision. Originally Carter goes into the lab and is about to use the Liquid Lightning again. However, he takes a glimpse at Patrick, and pulls the flask off instead. Because I couldn't do the roto work required to replace the door, I had to remove any places the door was involved. That took out the parts where Patrick is present. Now it looks like Monty makes decision himself.
Jack argued that it was more significant if Patrick was the one to stop Monty, showing you can't do everything yourself. It goes along with our original plans for the story. I countered that it wasn’t worth screwing up the timeline and adding more work time for such a small change. It still works if Carter makes the decision himself. I don't think I officially won that argument. I think it was ultimately the practicalities that swayed Jack.
I mostly blame myself for these confusions. I have meant to work on my communication at Jack’s request. I thought I had a good streak going, but these things slipped through. Live and learn I guess.
I spent a decent amount of time trying to edit the audio for the project. I've officially opened Adobe Audition and began some work on some sound effects. I made it a fair way through, however I still have a long road ahead of me. I hope to be done with sound by Sunday, and with such a constraint, the film isn't going to win any awards for sound design. I think I'm just going to have to leave it at sound effects, however, there are some scenes that I need to completely recreate sounds for… Oh joy.
The Sunday deadline is looking unrealistic, especially because I'm losing Saturday to a convergence media project. Plus, I have a variety of school assignments to do by Monday. The thing is, I still have to fix the VFX and color correct/ grade by Thursday.
I'm glad Jack can relieve some of my burden. He's taken on the music and the opening/ closing credits. With luck and some strain we can release Liquid Lightning on time.
The culmination of 8 months of work is upon us. I loved making the movie, but now it's time to end. School life for the next couple of weeks will be hell, thanks to those diabolical AP exams.