With anything big – writing a book, completing a PhD, finishing a feature film – the last bit always seems the longest. Every time you think you’re finished there’s something small and faffy that means you’re not finished. PILI is pretty much finished. The sound is good, the grade looks good, the credits (of which there are comically few but for a whole list of extras from all the buses in the film) are done. The film is done, but for a few faffy bits.
Colourist Malcolm, DOP Craig, Director Leanne, Agueda and me all watched PILI back in the Soho Screening rooms earlier this week. This was meant to be the final sign-off. However as soon as we started watching it we noticed the film was distinctly darker than it had been graded. No-one knew why until Malcolm realised that something to do with the subtitles (technical bit that I missed) had made everything darker. The solution – he would take off the subtitles and we would start again – et voila! One good looking film.
If you ask me is the film finished, I will continue to say yeah pretty much (my mantra of the last 10 days). I’m off on holiday next week and when I come back the film will have been signed off by Leanne and I will have a nice collection of DCP packages waiting for me on another load of hard drives (how many hard drives does one project need?!) to send off to film festivals.
Not Another AIDS Film 