Not only did I finish all the tweak editing I mentioned earlier, the momentum picked up. I worked on the pacing of some dialogue scenes, changing some breaths/gaps and taking out a few tiny lines here and there. It makes a noticeable difference (noticeable if you’ve seen the movie a hundred times; otherwise, it’s just smooth.) I was a little wary, though, since I just read an interview with Soderbergh Filmmaker Magazine. Talks about The Limey writer Lem Dobbs, who “fumes at Soderbergh for gutting his script to such an extent that Dobbs was blamed by critics for the thinness of the characters and the lack of backstory.” [It’s in the DVD commentary; buy it yourself and find out. I did.] Then I redesigned the credits, added some parentheses to the title. (It’s been Souvenir (November 2001) on a few submissions lately.) For good measure, I made a few audio level adjustments, pulling up some lines that could get a little lost.
Everything went well, smoothly. Output my new master and slave DV copies, WHICH WERE BLANK when I got them home for dubbing. Apparently, FCP didn’t recognize the camera. CHECK YOUR TAPES BEFORE YOU LEAVE. Now I’ve gotta make an emergency run Fri. morning to re-output it. It looked good, though, and it felt good to be squarely in the “making” process again, even if it’s only for a day
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the making of, by greg allen