I got a job from an established Museum out of Denver who hired me to document their experience into the depths of Black Rock city for last year’s 2007 Burning Man festival, if thats what you want to call it….either way, I was completely ecstatic to score this gig and hoped it would a good opportunity to further my career. I don’t want to stray too far off topic but for more information on Burning Man then cruise the official site HERE. This is where that old saying comes to mind, “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong”…lets just say this was the most challenging project I have ever participated in my life (mainly due to the harsh conditions of the environment), but what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, right?

6 months of post production and just now am I seeing the light at the end of the tunnel…what went wrong? When I wrapped the production, I left the festival with my head down, knowing very well that while everyone was packing up getting ready to go home having completed their mission, my job was only beginning…the world of post-production.

I run and operate a Final Cut Pro, Mac based editing suite for High-Definition content delivery and from previous experience I could make a decent living off of post (edition etc), if managed properly. However, if you don’t plot your course to take you all the way home then you are setting yourself up for disaster. Ever find yourself with all the right ingredients but cant quite bake the cake? Try and take a step back and see the big picture and avoid spreading yourself too thin as I did. Film production is a collaborative effort so dont be afraid to staff up and bring some fresh perspective to the table.

Often times Indie directors like to cut their own material and while there is nothing wrong with that, your decision making is some times clouded by your marriage to the project…saying to yourself for example, “I can’t cut this sequence out because it took an entire day to shoot this material” when a third party editor has less emotional involvement with the material and therefor has no problem tossing shots away that do not actually benefit your story.

Fortunately Burning Man is all eye candy so that is not the precise case. I would like to thank Patrick Sarni, writer producer, for stepping in on this project and helping me wrap things up with have a fresh take on an old project.