Finally THE ROUGH CUT!

It took 60 days, but we finally received our rough cut from Joe Dae.  Joe explained that Bob had failed to send certain elements, the time codes were faulty and so on to justify the delay.  Frankly I could care less - I was thrilled to have something to look at.  Bob dropped the take off at my house and Ethan (my 2 year old) and I sat down for a screening (I could not wait for Michele to get back from her workout). 

WOW!  When they say “rough” they really mean ROUGH.  I have been told that I am a somewhat critical person at times so perhaps I was being critical - but there were major problems.  I assumed that with 60 days of editing we would have made more progress, agian I certainly did not have any experience so I kept fairly quiet. 

The problems I noticed were major including: color variations between cuts, lighting problems with amny of the shots, the lack of noise/sounds, framing problems and so on.  I guess the biggest issue was the sound - I knew we were going to lay in music later, but you could not hear the cars - sound is SUPER important in a car show. 

 

Anyway, Ethan (who can barely sit still to watch anything at this point) is sitting quietly next to me watching the show intently.  He seems to like it - and more than that it was capturing his attention - warts and all.  Soon Michele arrives and I restart the tape - Ethan has lost interest at this point and we had to keep rewinding the tape as Ethan was jumping around making noise and blocking our view.  Michele decides the the bed of the show is slow - specifically the start - it does not draw you in - instead she thinks the race is very good.  I was very surprised at how well the race was put together as well. 

The next day I took the rough cut over to my parents house and held the second screening to my Mom, Dad and Grandfather (whow as in town for a visit).  Mom and Dad said they really liked it - who knows - parents will say anything about their kids art projects.  But my GrandfatherB24 (a WWII bomber pilot) simply said “you will NEVER sell it!”  Thanks Granddad!  Don’t pull any punches for your Grandson. 

I guess moral of the story is NEVER SHOW THE ROUGH CUT TO ANYONE!  I just watched Project Greenlight III last night and they were forced to show their rough to the studio after two weeks of editing.  I cannot imagine what ours must have looked like after two weeks.