Week 5 post production...

Pic 1) This was one of my fav shoot days. Orange picking with the full cast during the day and then a spectacular sunset from a shed rooftop, just in time for a cracker romantic scene.

Pic 2) I usually get in trouble from publicity for posting cast pics, but if you can't really see them you can't really get in trouble right?

Hello friends,

Well it's been hot as a fire cracker in Melbourne town, and looking out the edit suite windows onto Port Melbourne beaches has been like a slap in the face. Hmmm, let me re-think that. Port Melbourne doesn't really have beaches does it? More like sand and water. I can never really get that excited about our bay, but hey, it's better than nothing. I'm just saying Ricky wont be swimming in it anytime soon. But I digress, BIG TIME, or BT as our "Behind The Scenes" Producer likes to say.

Any-ho, in the air conditioned loveliness of our editing abode we've begun fine-tuning scenes, adding music, and recutting sequences to explore different takes and performances. It's not until we watched the first rough cut that we were able to gain perspective on how the characters where working together, and now it's time to hone in on the smaller details.

I'm loving it, and now more than ever feel so freakin lucky to have cast such fine actors. It ain't hard to find a good take when you're watching Susie Porter or Jacki Weaver I can assure you. I think people are gonna be blown away by Rachael Taylor too. She's in almost every scene and man can she carry a movie. Gold.

I've been cutting a few draft trailers for Summer Coda too. I shouldn't say "cutting" actually, I should say fiddling as I'm a real "hunt and peck" final cut pretender when it comes to editing. But I get by. FIDDLING WITH A TRAILER IS HARD. Man, it is SO hard. The trailer is the single biggest way  to sell your film to the public and you've got 2 MINUTES and 30 SECONDS. Hard core. You can't show too much, but you musn't show too little. Gotta be cool and emotive, but not too cool or hammy.

Gotta sell an audience on coming to see your baby. Cause you gotta see the baby! But if the trailer sux, why would you want to see the baby? Like when your friends have had an ugly baby and you wonder what you're gonna say to them. Who are you going to tell them the baby looks like? Or are you going to go with the "Oh, he/she has soooo much character" OR "What an old soul". That's the movie review equivalent of "Wait for the DVD".  So your trailer, like your new born, must be pretty special otherwise people are going to feel awkward about going to see it. And we can't have that!

Well, I've managed to rabbit on for a whole page without actually saying anything. Is that a skill? I used to try it with book reports back at school. I'd be lazy and not finish the book, but pretend that I had, and then waffle on with analogies and points of view without ever really tackling the issues or the ending -- because I hadn't read it! Well, if it's a skill now it wasn't then, cause my marks were NOT flash. Lets pray that's not the case for the TRAILER!

Booking flights for U.S. shoot tomorrow. BT FUN.

Lots of love,

Ricky

Note from distributors: Ricky is not actually responsible for editing Summer Coda's trailer. A quality UK company is producing that for us. Ricky just likes to "Fiddle", as being the writer/director/producer he struggles with delegation.  As well as other things. ; )