The photograph above was taken by Alex Harris, @thesouthinanewlight, at the Raymond Battlefield.

After a successful twenty day production, find out what’s coming up for our Civil War movie: 

Most moviegoers have some idea of what goes into shooting a movie. But the process that comes after (post-production) is a mystery. After all the scenes have been filmed, what’s left to do? Well, we’re still here working and you’ll hear from us once a week (every Wednesday) with a new post on the Facebook page until we get closer to the release (when you’ll hear from us a lot more!). In the meantime, here’s a little insight into the post process.

In many ways, the hardest work is yet to come. The film first needs to be edited into a rough cut. At the moment, we are planning on handing this endeavor to Tony Pellum, editor of Cornbread Cosa Nostra and Bride of Violence. This first, and often very rough, cut of the movie will be reviewed by myself and key collaborators for notes. We then go through a series of revisions and refinements leading to what we call “picture lock”. This means that the movie’s frames are set, editing is complete. But post-production is not near over!

Son of a Gun will move next into color correction, sound editing/mixing and the composition of the soundtrack. Believe it or not, this stage is as difficult as any other in the moviemaking craft. Whatever footage we captured on set, the way it is colored determines how you as the audience will respond to it on the movie screen. Every scene and shot is studied for its hue, exposure and contrast until the film comes together as a whole. Sound is another beast. No matter how good our production sound is, we will have to do a lot of cleanup to get it ready for you to hear it. This involves removing random noises like traffic, making sure all the dialog is at a good volume level, replacing any lines we didn’t get with ADR (dubbing), and much more. Without a good sound mix, a film’s quality will suffer.

A photograph by Konnor Megginson (Gaffer) from our first two days of filming.

In the final phase of finishing the sound, we place the score which has either been written and recorded by a composer or compiled from existing recordings (as we’ve done with Cornbread Cosa Nostra). Working with a composer is both a wonderful and challenging experience. This person must become in sync with our vision and capture the spirit of the film through music. We have had both good and bad luck with composers in the past. Our search has begun for the right one for Son of a Gun.

We are aiming for a premiere in early 2019, however unlike our previous films, we’re going to wait until Son of a Gun is 100% finished before announcing a release date. The reason for this is that we want to insure the film receives the absolute best treatment in post-production, that nothing is rushed, and that we deliver a film which lives up to its potential.

What can you do to help us in the meantime? Keep an eye out for our updates and continue to spread the word about our movie. Son of a Gun was a film made by a community and we need all of you to help us get the news out about this new Mississippi film!

Until the next update, thank you for your support.
-Travis Mills