THE ASSEMBLY

Blake Logan (Simon Kraus) and Daryn Kahn (Evan Maxwell) on set.

I had the pleasure of watching our Assembly Cut on Friday. We wrapped the film on December 21, and after a couple of years of intimate association with everything related to Simon Kraus, I stepped back to let our talented editor, Eric Carden, work on assembling the footage. So, it was quite the experience watching all of the elements of the film come together after my hiatus. I've done plenty of short films (narrative and documentary), but watching a feature for the first time was an entirely different experience. Simon Kraus no longer exists on the page, nor in the minds of our cast and crew, but is alive and growing on its own. Editing it will be a matter of letting Simon Kraus evolve into the entity it wants to be. Our job is simply to help it along its way.

Our goal is to have the first cut done by the first week of March. Yesterday, Eric and I poured over the assembly, and began the painstaking process of rearranging elements to create a sense of form and style. On set, I emphasized to Marco Cordero (Cinematographer) and Ian Hernand (Production Designer) that the film needs to have a very sarcastic and understated handling of all the dramatic elements, punctuated by highly stylistic, romantic (not in the boy-meets-girl sense of the word) vignettes of Simon's perception of reality. Eric and I have begun by tackling the vignettes, and we're very pleased with where they're going.

-Mike