Beginning of shoot day #5

Yesterday's shoot went *very* well. Elisabeth and Sean are at the top of their game, Kristina Lilley kicked butt and Pisay Pao came through like a champ. Little pup TinTin was FABulous.

The crew cannot be praised highly enough. Today Megan Griffiths gets a special shout-out. She's the 1st AD (Assistant Director), who keeps the whole team glued together. She's calm, cool, collected; extremely knowledgeable and professional.

We had a later call yesterday and a call today (start time) at noon, so I'm getting a couple things done today before going in and starting a long day that will go late into the night.

Stephen Myers, our editor in LA, started to receive our dailies (the film already shot and developed - we're shooting 35mm), and says they look fantastic! He should finish editing the first two days of shooting today, and we'll keep progressing daily for the editing from now on.

That means we'll have a rough cut of our film shortly after we finish shooting. I'm taking a week off after the shoot to put my brain back together, then I'll be sitting with Stephen every day as we finish the editing process.

I've already been working with Ragnar Rosinkranz, our composer - he'll be looking at the rough cut as it is built and coming back with more themes and scoring music that we'll finesse along the way and at the end.

Following that is sound perfection and "sweetening." That's where I add all the birds and other ambient sounds that we've been careful to avoid during the filming so I can put them in just the right place.

I'm not posting pictures until the film is finished so you'll want to see it and get a kick out of the "behind the scenes" snapshots that were taken.

Two seniors from the University of Arizona arrived yesterday to begin the process of doing a documentary on the making of THE WHOLE TRUTH. A total of six students will be "covering" us without getting in the way. One of our producers, Larry Estes, teaches a film producing class there - in his "spare time."

They get credit for working on THE WHOLE TRUTH.

Me, too.

writer-director and some sort of producer ... ;-)

Back to work!