Updates...

There are some new pictures and updates on the "What If..." site, http://whatifmovie.wordpress.com.

Good movie streak...
Published: August 18, 2009
Right now I'm on a streak where I believe the last eight movies I've seen in the theater have been very good. I recommend all of these films for various reasons:

Up, The Hangover, The Proposal, Away We Go, Funny People, 500 Days of Summer, The Hurt Locker, District 9

I think Funny People is very underrated--my wife and I really liked it. The Proposal was surprisingly witty and well-done. District 9 was stunning, you really have to see it to believe it. I was especially charmed by 500 Days of Summer; wonderful movie, surprisingly good message.

Now, some of you might be offended or turned off by some of these films, so please check the ratings or the details of what's in the films before you see them.

Editing has begun
Published: August 11, 2009
It's been a few weeks since I've blogged about the film. I hope you took a look at the videos on http://whatifmovie.wordpress.com.

Since shooting, most of what's gone on has been purely technical. Transferring footage, getting paperwork wrapped up, etc.. I was finally able to watch the footage in raw form, although some of it didn't have sound yet. I have to say, looking at footage has made me more optimistic than I've ever been on a film. Everything looks how I hoped it would, and the performances are just as good as I thought. This has a chance to be really good; hopefully, I won't screw it up!

Frank Reynolds is the editor on this; he came on board Midnight Clear halfway through and did a great job for me. He's out in New York doing the assembly, which is the very first edit of the film. He basically takes all the footage and comes up with a longer version of the film; he tries to make it good, but his primary focus is to simply put the story down and let us see how it all works. The larger adjustments come next, and then the finetuning commences. He'll come out to L.A. for the finetuning. The whole process will take about a month and a half or two months, and then we work on music and finalizing the sound.

Frank has forgotten more about film than I've ever learned, so it's good to have someone who can look at the film from a different perspective and see what he comes up with. As a director, it's important to not be married too strongly to any one thing. A lot of times you fall in love with a moment or a scene because you know how hard it was to get it; but the audience doesn't know or care about any of that, and neither does the editor, so it's important to grasp what he sees.

For the next few weeks, I'll just be catching up on business stuff, watching a few scenes as he puts them together and sends them to me online, watching lots of movies to keep my brain active and creative, reading books on filmmaking for the same reason (right now I'm reading "The Director's Idea," which is great), and preparing to be out of commission again once Frank gets out here.

More to come...