Self-Aggrandizement: Log Roll

While most people realize - at least in the odd moments they give it thought - that the reality of filmmaking is far less glamorous than the ideal, they still tend to underestimate wildly the sheer, endless tedium that underlies much of the movie-making process.

This weekend, for example, nearly twelve hours each on Saturday and Sunday, I sat in my living room with Colin Spoelman, logging footage for Underground, the Kentucky-set, lost-in-a-cave thriller he recently wrote and directed.

Logging, essentially, is the process of transferring video from DV tapes to massive harddrive, of notating, scene by scene, what's on those tapes and which parts of which scenes work, and of otherwise setting things up to pass a film along to its editor.

We ended up in my living room largely because I was equipped with the two key tools for logging: a fast computer running Final Cut HD, and large quantities of Woodford Reserve Bourbon Whiskey.

By now, it may just be the Bourbon talking, but even after twenty-some hours of watching it roll past, the footage Colin got looks really, really good.

Log Roll Filed Sunday, December 18 2005.

Log Roll
Filed Sunday, December 18 2005.