The Samuel Wire

It's just after 11 pm, and the office is a hive of activity. Visual effects team is cranking away at making arrows fly, fake cities look real, and waterfalls fall. Downstairs, the audio team is working on what we hope will be the final mix. In the back, Greg is trying to squeeze out the last couple of bonus features.

The final deadline, as might be suspected, is upon us. This movie needs to be off to replication by Monday at 9 am. We don't work Sundays, so that means we have about another 24 hours to put this thing to bed. We've come up against the usual barrage of obstacles -- usual in that there is always a barrage of them, but the specific barrage components varies from each movie.

Still, it is coming together amazingly well. These are some talented people, and they are applying their skills and best inspiration to make this what seems like it will be a very special project.

A week from yesterday, we'll have our premiere of the movie at Thanksgiving Point. That is a whole 'nother project that we haven't had much time to wrap our minds around. But Janna is working hard on it and it sounds like it will be a nice evening of music and movies.

The Samuel marathon continues

I've been straggling in some nights at 3:00 am and other nights at 4:30 am. Wouldn't be so bad, except the next day, it's up and back at it at 9 am. The culprit? One "Samuel the Lamanite," a movie that seems nice, but I've learned better.

This movie has probably 10 times more special effects than we've ever had before in a Liken. Okay, maybe that's not saying much, but still it's a considerable factor. In addition to all the arrows that are fired (we elected not to fire live arrows on our set except under rare circumstances, so they are having to be inserted into the shots digitally), set extensions (necessary to create the illusion that Samuel is standing on a wall far higher than the 18 clear feet we have to our ceiling), and Zarahemla in the distance shots (we first see Samuel a mile or so away from the city), we also have fun little things like disappearing bottles and cans, heart-shaped clouds and a wondrous effect on the faces of people as they gaze up at the sky.

The other challenge is that this is our Christmas movie, and Christmas is right around the corner. Hence, the many sleepless nights and relatively few additions to my blog. Apologies.

But it is feeling like a very special addition to the Liken series, and that is creating a special feeling among the post-production team and a desire to get it right. It is a good bunch of people to work with. I'm greatly looking forward to sharing "Samuel the Lamanite" with our audience.

Samuel update

Haven't posted in awhile. Quite a few late nights and long days working on the various elements needed to get Samuel ready on time. This past week, we've gone through two rough cuts and on to our first picture lock. The rough cut turned out better than I expected. After some tightening over the next few days, it has come a long ways. I have a feeling this will be a very powerful addition to the Liken family.

Topical, too. Just read an article about an elementary school in Florida that is banning even songs about Santa Claus (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,216973,00.html) because of the Christmas tie in. The modern-day tie in on this story strikes a chord with me and I hope will do the same to others who watch it.

This week, we start our ADR sessions. Lots of audio work to do, plus we have about 10 times the special effects on this episode than we've ever had before. We had a long meeting with our SFX team to try to figure out how we can pull this all together in two weeks. We're going to need several miracles on this title.