Yeah, post-production means sitting in darkened rooms for weeks, staring at your film slowly coming together. It’s the very antithesis of shooting a movie, but it’s mentally pretty draining. You are making important decisions and trying to keep the big picture in mind, and sometimes it feels like it’s going nowhere, no matter what you try. I try to keep in mind the phrase: “Your film is never as good as your rushes, and never as bad as your first cut.” There’s some truth in that, it can be very terribly disheartening to watch for the first time, as your whole soul and the weeks of your work and everyone’s work under your authority come to plain daylight. But as you start the work, finessing the scenes and honing the details, rearranging big chunks that allow you to see your whole film in a different light, it gets better. Add foley, sound, and composed music, and you’ve got a whole different beast in your hands.
But I digress. I wanted to talk about the suffering of the mechanical process of post-production. Usually, it means traveling through wintery Helsinki or whatever city you do the post-production in for at least half an hour to reach the studio, and the same thing back. Usually, for some reason, post-production tends to land in January-February axis at least in my case, and nearly everywhere in Europe the weather is terribly depressing, making the already depressing or at least mentally draining feel ten times worse.
So this time, I found a solution: follow the sun. Instead of hauling our asses to snowy Helsinki, me and the editor flew over to Antalya in Turkey and found ourselves at a beautiful beach area where sun shines and it’s an easy 3-minute walk from the apartment to the editing suite. This allows leisurely eating breakfast at one of the beach cafes and dining out at reasonably priced joints serving Mediterranean cuisine. And since my girlfriend tagged along, romantic strolls down the beach promenade are in the menu, as well. Makes the work a whole lot nicer.
Lately, I’ve been watching Fargo, the TV series. It’s truly a gem I managed to miss back when it started airing, thinking it’s just a cheap ripoff of the Coen brothers’ film, but it’s definitely a standalone TV-series on it’s own. I’ve now plowed through 2 season – first one being the absolutely superior one, second trying to be a bit too funny for my taste – and going through the third season – which I find better than the second one, as well. Instead, though, I should be plowing through the Oscars entries, unfortunately, so I’ll have to take a break from Fargos and focus on the movies, otherwise I’ll never make it by the time the ceremony is, and that would be a travesty.
Yesterday was a day off. We finished first version of the cut and sent it out to producers for comments. Me and Lea, we took our asses to the center of Antalya and stayed at a Hilton in the center, enjoying the old town and a short boat trip to the Duden Waterfalls. A welcome break from watching the movie, and coming back with a fresh brain feels great.
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