Complete!

Sorry for the lack of updates. We have been thoroughly deep into post production for the last week and a half. The only reason I am here now is because: Yes! We are done! The final cut of Two Hours was turned in this morning at 9:50ish a.m. after a grueling 15 hours of work. I and my fellow editors are recovering as best we can. It turned out great, though we did run into several problems with Logic Pro.

At a certain point, Logic Pro decided that we were done dragging clips around. For whatever reason, and no one is quite sure why, the sound would corrupt and become silent every time a audio region was moved (like some kind of protest). The clips themselves were untouched, and would work perfectly fine upon re-opening the file, but they were being quite stubborn. We found some decent workarounds and finished on time but it made things much more challenging than it needed to be and certainly more than either of us wanted it to be.

But it is finished. I do still hope to get some of our behind the scenes footage edited and put online for your viewing enjoyment. But babysteps right now, I don't think I can go near that room for at least 48 hours. Blah.

Until next time.

Quick Update

We had another meeting with the EP's this week. Went well mostly. They made a couple major changes but mostly just advice on things that weren't playing right. More on the changes soon.

I know the editors have been swamped trying to get picture lock by next Tuesday. I hope you can all stay patient as they are also responsible for the behind the scenes footage we shot. I will get that up here as soon as we can but it's getting to be a very busy time for everyone here.

More to come when we get it. Sound Editing starts next week over the Holiday weekend.

EP Meeting and Sound News

Met yesterday with the Executive Producers. They have been pretty happy with our footage so far but they asked us to re-shoot. Don't worry, we have been asked to re-shoot a cutaway of a sign on Jed's office.

In other, actually interesting and exciting news, we finally have composers. We had been working hard to get one that our director knew and that fell through in an ugly, prima donna kind of way. So we have officially assigned the scoring to two of our own crew members. They both have extensive backgrounds in music (one of them wrote a musical that is also being made this semester, the other wants to be a song writer) and the only reason they weren't chosen earlier is because we did not want to divide our crews attention if we could help it. But here we are with what was really our (the sound designers) first choice all along and we couldn't be happier with it. Except for the lost time this has fallen together wonderfully.

We also have gotten a chance to look closer at our footage from the mall and the sound isn't nearly as disastrous as we initially feared. We won't know for sure until we start running it through post but we are hopeful that we can use what we shot. What a blessing!

We're still working on putting together some of the footage we shot on set so you all can see some of our behind the scenes fun. Hopefully we will have that finished this weekend to show all you lovely readers. I also hope to put up some bios from the crew so you can meet all of us who have been working so hard on this the last couple months. Stay tuned!

Wrap on Principal Photography

Today was our last day of shooting. We will not be shooting anything new unless we need to do pickups. It's extremely relieving to have done.

The shoot this morning ran from crew call at 4:30 until we wrapped at 11:15. It would have been exhausting under normal conditions. But with limited sleep and an unpredictable environment, stress levels were running high.

We got some good shots but the mall, which doesn't "open" until 10 am was allowing people in off the street starting at 7 am. As a result, our audio and several scenes were compromised by people walking by, around and through our scenes.

Audio was the worst. We may have to try to ADR some of it, but the young boy playing "Kevin" is not necessarily a strong candidate for such a challenging assignment. We will have to work with what we have I guess. But we didn't expect that we'd have to compete with so much background noise until much later in the day when we were shooting scenes where the audio wasn't important (cutaways and dialogue free scenes were saved for last with that intention). This is likely to be the most difficult part of the entire process for me and my sound partner Trevor.

Anyways, we have some pics from on set that I hope I can get up this week some time. I also am hoping we can throw some of our behind the scenes footage together to post up here as well. A rough timeline is due to the EP's on Wednesday so we will see our story told in full then I guess.

Keep checking back regularly to stay up to date on the latest as we head into post production.

We have screenies!

We wrapped office shooting on Sunday. I didn't write out an update yet because I wanted to get you some production pics. Our editors have been busy this week compiling dailies to show the Executive Producers so we didn't get them until today. Here are some first looks at Two Hours!


This is Riley Rydin. He is playing Kevin, the little boy.


This is Judd Laurance. He is playing Jed Wellington, the main character.


Jed has to take care of Kevin for his boss (Kevin's dad), played by Don Danielson.


Jed's not a kid person.

Anyways, not to turn this into a double post, but there is more. We met with the EP's today and they were pretty happy with what has been shot so far. They had some advice and some criticisms but mostly positive. They loved our casting. Judd and Riley are playing great so that is fantastic news.

We plan to wrap shooting this Saturday. We will be shooting at the Panorama Mall in Panorama City. Then we will dive head long into post production. Yea!

We have been shooting behind the scenes on set and I'm hoping to have that footage up soon as well. More as it comes. Ciao for now.

Shooting Begins

We are all pre-productioned out here at Two Hours. Time to get to the filming! We start shooting tomorrow morning bright and early.

Today we had our last pre-production meeting. It was a little intense as you might expect this close to crunch time. A lot of people are feeling the stress. Luckily, I'm not one of them. As a sound designer most of my work will come in post.

We have finally cemented our shooting schedule. We will be shooting office scenes this weekend at an office on Wilshire. We'll be shooting for 7 pages this weekend but realistically we expect we'll have to come back to the office next weekend as well. We'll also be shooting at a mall in Panorama City next weekend. That should wrap production. Just two busy weeks.

Check back in the next couple days to see some stills from the set. Hoping to get some video clips up here as well. Stay tuned!

Go for Launch!

This is the first post for the production blog of the short film Two Hours. It is the story of a grumpy old man who must care for his boss's 7 year old son for two hours. It is a charming little comedy and we can't wait to bring it to you. We will be posting some post-dated entries to get you caught up on the pre-production work we've been doing for the last 2 months. Production officially starts this weekend so we hopefully can have you fairly caught up by then.

This is your exclusive site for production news, video blogs from the set and production stills. Come enjoy the ride with us!