Last weekend saw the Tupilak team’s final day of postproduction workflow with genius editor Ashley Hughes and maestro composer Jordan Dobbins joining me in London for a combined grading and mixing session.

We were delighted with the film as we had screened it in the amazing basement space of The Hoxton Cabin back in February, when we had graded for the projector down there and mixed the sound on the morning of the screening to exactly match the acoustics of the room and speaker rig. Our initial plan had been a rapid turnaround of that cut to get it online. That was before Covid-19 happened, and since then we have all been working at a distance (and around the clock on our other jobs) which is a challenge on a film edit. One unanticipated lesson we have learned is the huge difference in colour range and saturation between monitors even within the same product family: a grade done by Ashley and watched by Jordan and me remotely looked completely different on each screen. We knew there would be some variance, but this was something we only truly appreciated when finally able to work on monitors side-by-side.

The postproduction day reminded me why I love this part of the filmmaking process. Another opportunity to revisit the story and source material, a reminder that we have full control over the direction and mood of the story through the edit, the power of the score and what you can do with sound. For a few hours, Ashley worked in one room of my apartment on the visuals while Jordan worked on the audio in another, and it was great being able to watch both work their magic.

Jordan also pulled together a Spotify playlist of the soundtracks he has been using for inspiration, which you can check out below.

You’ll find the film up here tomorrow, and we’re hoping to follow it soon with some commentary on the score, the shoot and more. Enjoy.