Happy New Year! I have big news: Today my editor Marc Wade and I finished the Claustrophobia rough cut! And happily, the film is going to clock in - factoring in the yet-to-be-created end credit crawl - at between 78 and 80 minutes. Which is a far cry from my earlier fears that it would wind up at a mere 63 minutes. So I'm immensely relieved. And I think our movie is great. It's very suspenseful and engaging. Marc and I will tweak a few scenes and play with some of the temporary sound effects later this week, the next goal being to achieve "picture lock" - that is, all the visual cuts finalized and more or less set in stone (though with digital there's always room for change) - by the end of January. Then I will sit down with the material throughout February and clean up the sound myself. That will be fun, in a tedious sort of way.
My patient editor Marc Wade and his even more patient wife