First rough cut out the door.

I am happy to report that I am now on the other side of the intensity that was getting my first rough cut to Pierre and John (the extremely talented members of my master’s committee). I am currently taking Graduate Sound Design with Pierre and I committed to bring my working post script and the corresponding AIFF to class last night. Class starts at 6pm. I arrived at 6:20p, entirely out of breath but attempting to look nonchalant. I say it still counts.

My first rough cut is about 43 minutes long (22 pages written). This cut includes only the sound bites that I want to use… all arranged in the order that I want to use them. To make this happen, I used the efforts of my transcription brigade to do a paper edit of my entire piece (see the photo of my [extremely literal] cutting room floor). I did the paper edit section by section—arranging the order and cutting lines of a master document then editing the audio in my Pro Tools session to reflect that edit. (Fellow producers: This is an excellent way to do it—takes incredibly less time than an edit using audio cues only.) 

My weekend includes cutting the sound bite collection down to roughly 20 minutes, writing drafts of my vocal part and working on my transition pieces (short little blips of music/effects/titles/etc. to cue a topical change and/or timeline shift). I met with Pierre for an hour or so after class last night and he gave a host of wonderful suggestions; all of which overwhelm me but have the potential to make the piece really wonderful. I meet with John tomorrow at 5:15p… I’m sure I’ll get another host of overwhelmingly brilliant directional ideas. I wanted to have an even tighter second rough cut for him, but that’s not gonna happen (I have tickets to the Red Sox vs. Yankees game at Fenway tonight!).

GOAL: Final cut by April 21. Gives me exactly one week to master it and fix any random unexpected issues before due date. Friends and family— I guess we’ll talk on April 29?

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