Mausams journey is getting more and more interesting by the day and this time it has got to do with editing! So here is the history first:
a) I did a fair bit of editing in the beginning as I was shooting, just so that I could finish up as and when I shot.
b) But then my eyes started to crumble under the strain and was tearing every now and then and I was having a hard time managing it.
c) That's when my film maker friend in UAE, on his own, offered his services as an editor for Mausams! It was like God was listening to my prayers!
d) But then there was the issue of how to get all the footage to him, because there were 35 tapes (35 hours of footage) that comes to a good 700 GB of data. I didn't want courier all those materials over.... too risky after all that work!
e) That's when his brother and family, who also stay in UAE, decided to make a holiday trip to Singapore and suddenly that issue was solved! I sent all the materials through the brother all the way to UAE!
f) Then the edit was done and for totally personal reasons of his own, the editor moved from UAE to Mumbai. I happened to visit Mumbai on work around that time too! So we met up and he showed me the first cut of Mausams edit - which was really really good and got me terribly excited! The effort was praise worthy considering that he and I had not had even a phone conversation prior to that, and he had based the judgement of the edit solely based on his understanding of the script and some chat conversations with me!
g) I came back to Singapore, went through the edit in detail and started to give my big and small feedback. But that turned out to be a nightmare... because without the video reference in front of us, it was difficult to really convey what exact changes I needed. So I did an edit on top of his edit to be used as a reference for the second cut and sent it to him. Then it was his turn to edit that into a high res file and make more changes and send it back to me.
And then I realised that the whole process was turning out to be a nightmare! Every small change I want to make would mean a few phone calls, work on his part, rendering of the file, sending it to me, me viewing it, then sending another file with changes required, more phone calls etc. etc. etc.... that's just a slow, painful process!
But looks like it doesn't have to be slow or painful after all! Because things fell into place somehow and now the editor is making a trip to Singapore for about 10 days, just to work on Mausams! How exciting is that?! He has decided to make spend that much time and effort solely for the movie and that would means wonders to the film!
He will be here in two weeks time and I am very excited about finally getting to work with the editor of the film in the actual way it is supposed to be (surely, virtual director-editor working is not efficient)! And this also means that by the time he leaves Singapore, Mausams edit will be locked and loaded. From the first frame to the last. Yes!
630 more to go.
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