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POSTING INDIE FILMS www.postmagazine.com 28 POST SEPTEMBER 2016 the vendors in New York was a big help. While I was working on producers' notes, Chris might be in color upstairs. If I had a question about the conform, I could go take a look. It streamlined everything." Ian Stynes and his team at Great City Post in New York performed audio post. "Sam Bisbee knew them from com- mercials, and they did a fantastic job — there's a lot of music in the film," says Scott. ADR was done near the producers' LA offices at Outlaw Sound, which also came highly recommended. "There's always going to be romanti- cism about how things used to be done in production and post, about what's been lost in the artistry and the process," says Scott. "Ultimately, [filmmaking] is still an art, while technical efficiencies and con- nectivity enable us to get to market faster, and that's a big benefit." Although Gettin' Rad Productions will post its next feature in LA, the Scotts hope to assemble some of the same play- ers with the goal again of "sending a cut to Sundance — for an indie film, that's the brass ring." BLUE JAY Produced by the Duplass Brothers, Blue Jay is a comedy romance premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival this month. It marks the narrative feature debut of director/DP Alex Lehmann, who previously helmed the documentary, Asperger's Are Us. It stars Emmy-nominee Sarah Paulson and Mark Duplass as high-school sweethearts who reunite by chance in their California hometown. Editor Christopher Donlon cut the film. He had previously edited the Duplass Brothers' feature Creep and episodes of their HBO series Togetherness, and done some finishing on Lehmann's documentary. Lehmann's wanted Blue Jay to be in black and white, so the film was shot with Canon ME20F-SH cameras and recorded to ProRes 422 with Convergent Design's Odyssey LUT system. "We developed LUTs to get the look of black and white and knew how to apply them to the dai- lies on (DaVinci) Resolve during produc- tion," says Donlon. "That meant we could edit right away in black and white." Donlon worked solo alongside Lehmann in Crestline, CA, manning an Apple FCPX system running on a Mac Pro. In a "streamlined workflow," he processed and synched the dailies and applied the black-and-white LUTs with only about a day's delay behind production. "The goal was to keep things simple. Strip things down to the people and the feeling, keep the story unadorned," says Xan Aranda, a producer and post pro- duction supervisor on Blue Jay. "We shot with one or two cameras. The Canon ME is low light, high sensitivity, so we didn't have to overly-light the sets, and we could stay intimate with the characters and the crew. We had one editor — Chris — and no assistants." Editing Blue Jay was straightforward from the technical side, says Donlon. "It's a different sort of film, not as plot-driven as many. It concentrates more on the perfor- mances and pacing to keep you engaged." The film is "partly improvised," he adds. Lehmann "gave the actors room to play with the script a bit. We got a lot of really great moments because he gave the performers that freedom." During editorial, Donlon sifted through the improv sequenc- es in a "discovery process" to find bits that helped "drive the story and felt natural." Donlon was excited to edit in black and white: a first for him. "I think black and white helps focus on what's happen- ing in the story," he says. "And it gives a nostalgic feeling" to the couple's chance meeting. "It was definitely the right choice for this film." Cutting in black and white was essen- tially the same as cutting in color, but the process "had a more poetic quality to it, along with the music choices. Alex (Lehmann) created a certain tone using color and sound." Once production wrapped, Donlon headed to LA, where he completed the first cut and Lehmann joined him soon after. The director oversaw color grad- ing at FotoKem in Burbank with colorist George Koran on Resolve. When Lehmann had to leave to shoot a documentary series, Aranda supervised the finishing at FotoKem with Alex Sanchez, also on Resolve; title design with Celia Cho Igawa; and audio post with mixer Zach Goheen at High Lonesome Sound. "With indies you always know a percentage of the budget will go to surprises," says Aranda. "But it's our job to anticipate everything. With Blue Jay our goal was to keep it simple. Two actors, five locations. No explosions, fire or water. It's not a period piece. The production was very tight, and we knew what we needed in post." Partially improvised, Blue Jay was shot using Canon cameras and edited in FCPX.