How To Think Like A Post-Production Supervisor

Tonight I’m teaming up with Peter Levin of Splash Studios to do a free seminar, “Mixing Light & Sound: Strategies for Finishing Your Project”.

It could also be called, How To Think Like a Post Production Supervisor.

Peter is a terrific audio mixer, his wife Barbara a talented Dialog Editor. Their recent projects include the festival circuit’s acclaimed My Peristroika (nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year) and the upcoming You Tube Symphony Orchestra (it’s a doc commissioned by You Tube following musical proteges culminating in a gala symphony).

Mixing Light & Sound

Peter and I have been working together for over a year (we were introduced by our dear departed friend, Michael Vitti): He’s the ears of the operation, I’m the eyes (and our wives are the brains!). When comparing notes we found are clients are consistently confused by the same technicalities of the last few steps in finishing their projects.

The two of us decided it was time to get in front of producers, directors, editors, documentarians – filmmakers – and start answering all the questions we both get asked, day in / day out. Such as:

• How do your decisions to these (and many more) questions affect the finishing pipeline?

Our number 1 piece of advice: Begin at the end. You need to define where your project will most likely be seen. Once defined, your roadmap becomes very clear – and allows for unexpectedly happy detours (like, getting picked up by HBO).

We did our first free seminar 3 weeks ago. A total success. It ran almost 3 hours, an hour longer than planned. The group was small, 15 people. The questions came from all parts of the room. Tonight’s session is (again) a sellout. This time around we’re adding a ‘recommended workflow’ that should cover about 80% of the projects out there.

Building Out The Concept

We’re excited about this seminar and plan to take it on the road and evangelize these strategies. We’re  developing a website / forum specifically devoted to finishing strategies.

Our goal: Demystify the complexities of finishing picture and sound – resulting in educated clients making informed decisions in pre-productions saving them time, money, and frustration. Stay tuned for more details as the website goes live.

If you think you might be interested in attending one of these NYC seminars (we’re still developing the content based on how the early seminars progress), contact me and we’ll keep you in the loop. Or just subscribe to this RSS feed. Or Fini’s Facebook page… or…

- pi