So Lucky Am I

I feel extremely lucky and glad to be surrounded by such immense talent. This is why collaboration is important. It is not just simply splitting the work - that has nothing to do with it. Neither is specializing in each field. No, no - the true power of collaboration comes from influencing each other.

Understandably at first, the script for EoR recieved decent response. "It's good...". You know, nothing mind blowing. After all, I am no writer and it was written in about a week, so I definitely wasn't expecting much. By the time I started production though, over half of the story had to be cut out. For example there was a battle scene planned with over a hundred fighters. In the end it was cut down to four.

I most definitely was way over my head when I wrote the original draft, since we only had a month. In fact even during production with the shaved down version and even in post, I was constantly bashing my own head thinking "you're way over your head" "what were you thinking!" and "you're fucking crazy dude".

But I got to work, trying to hurry off a rough cut with an edit lock, so that gToon and Scott can start on the audio as soon as possible (the Xfire deadline loomed over us - I think it was about 2 weeks left at that point). So I finished the cut, then came the sound effects.

Sound made everything different - it made things flow better, made the film infinitely more watchable. But the point is, the quality of the sound, and in some cases sound that was not originally planned for, caused me to take a second look at the visuals. What can I do to improve the visuals, so that it may reach the level set by the sound effects? And thus, the visuals improved, and gave me different ideas on then incomplete visual effects.

gToon gets a new cut with more complete and advanced visual effects, and he changes his sounds to match the new visuals, and so on and so on. Xfire deadline was extended, and we breathed a sigh of relief.

Then came the music... yea. That changed everything. That was when the afterburners turned on, and caused both me and gToon scrambling to catch up. That was a very intense and exciting time.

Additionally, morale support and technical / creative suggestions were often made at this stage by the rest of the active team: Allen Marshall, Nefarious Guy, Macabre, and Drowned Fish. This was important for me at least, seeing any kind of response, just knowing that someone else is watching and giving you support, is good enough for me to keep going, even completely without sleep on the last few days. Thanks guys! I owe you guys (especially Scott and Ricky) more than just a credit and thanks.

So even though we had a passable film on the first edit lock, each person's contributions just added to the film and influenced the others to change or adapt to the newest version. It was great that all of us were discussing on the same forum, as it allowed us this opportunity of collaboration. The product feels like a cohesive product, working seamlessly rather than something stitched together at the last minute. (which is admittedly what we did!)

Next time you're making a movie by yourself, reconsider. Even just getting a few friends to give you comments and suggestions is a giant leap away from doing it yourself. Multiple brains are always better than one.