Ep10: Finish This Movie

Make This Movie: A Filmmaking Series

Having locked the cut of Counterintelligence, there’s still a whole world of post that needs completion, even at the time of this episode.

On the docket: scoring, color correcting, some minor visual effects, sound design, and sound mixing.

Our score was composed by the great Noah Simons. Sound was mixed by Mike Elliott, who you’ll recall was also our Director of Photography. Everything else was done by me, and that’s where it got murky.

As you’ll hear in the episode, the extended post tasks like coloring and VFX require a great deal of attention, organization, planning, and most of all accountability.

Without these factors at play, post can drag on forever. On Counterintelligence, it certainly feels like it has.

The finishing touches of post can get completely underrated in pre-production. They are where the film truly becomes a film, and as important to the filmmaking process as anything else. They deserve a filmmaker’s full attention.

In this episode you’ll briefly hear from Noam Kroll, host of the fantastic Show Don’t Tell podcast on filmmaking efficiency. You’ll also hear from composer Noah Simons on creating the score, and sound mixer Mike Elliott on how that process worked—or didn’t—and how we made lemonade, Beyonce style.

Most of all, you’ll hear why things like plans and strict deadlines are crucial, especially when working for yourself.

For exclusive access to documents, guides, and detailed breakdowns, expanding on this and other episodes, sign up and ShoHawk.com/makethismovie!

The guide for this episode includes hours of tutorials on specific post production tasks, so don’t miss it. It’s like a masterclass!

EPISODE OUTLINE

• Why post-production help is important
• Working with a composer
• Inefficiency of experimentation
• Color tools and methodology
• Painting with sound design
• Audio organization
• What sound mixing does
• The sound mixing process explained