The high of calling “cut” on the final shot of Wild Boys was incredible.

We did it, we actually shot a feature film!

And the best part, we were on schedule, on budget, and hadn’t missed anything crucial.

Then things changed.

Today I want to share my journey with taking Wild Boys into post and why it took me five years to complete the film.

Let’s roll.

When things go quiet

The previous six months had been a whirlwind.

We had gone from idea to completed production faster than most people write the first draft of their scripts. Every single step was carried forward with an unstoppable momentum.

And that’s exactly what we had been: unstoppable.

But once I plugged in the giant hard drive with all our footage, and the spinning fan was the only sound around, the momentum was gone.

The hustle and bustle, the noise and chaos, that had been ever present until now was no more.

It was just me and the timeline.

And I went at it with the same gusto I’d tackled every other step of the project, bringing in footage, organizing, and watching dailies. But it quickly became a chore.

Soon I couldn’t even bring myself to open the editing project.

I was burned out, depressed, and couldn’t stand the sight of the film we’d just shot.

What the hell happened?

What was I thinking?

To give some context, I’ve worked in post production for over 10 years now (a little less back then) and I started playing with editing at 12 years old.

I was confident I could handle the editing part of Wild Boys on my own.

There was also a financial concern. We had spent everything we raised on the production of the film. Which meant there was no money to hire an editor, or any other help.

With my experience and the lack of funds, I was the obvious choice to shoulder the burden. We’d basically get post for free, and I could work on it whenever I had time.

I also felt terrible about the prospect of asking another editor to do the film for free. Knowing how much work it would be, I didn’t have it in me to ask for help.

The logic was sound, but real life had different plans.

Stacking the deck against myself

Looking back, I see the mistakes I made and the traps I fell into, but in the moment, I wasn’t able to see any of it.

The first thing I needed was a break.

I’d been going full gas for six months, while working a full-time job, not taking a second to stop and rest. It’s not at all an uncommon story in film production. It’s more like the most common story. But working that much takes its toll, and at some point you pay the price.

I paid it when we started post.

I wasn’t the kind of burned out that I couldn’t get out of bed, but mentally I didn’t have the energy to edit my film. Had I stopped, taken a few weeks off, and rested, I would probably have been able to come back to the film and start editing.

Instead, I tried in fits and spurts, and when I didn’t make the progress I hoped, I got really mean to myself.

Which leads us to mistake number two: a noxious combination of guilt and pride.

I felt so guilty for not editing the film, but at the same time, my pride prevented me from asking for help. Pretty dysfunctional shit, to be honest.

The third mistake was trying to have a passion project that used the same skill set as my day job. I’d spend my entire workday editing, and when I finished a long day of work, I had zero desire to start editing again. My work responsibilities also changed to a more supervisory role, and I was the most miserable I’d ever been in my career.

Instead of seeing Wild Boys as a creative escape and counterpoint, I roped work and passion into the same thing.

It was all a big ol’ mess of negative emotions.

The result was months and months of me not even looking at my film, and it was a real danger I wouldn’t finish it.

So how come I have a finished film today?

Digging myself out

The truth is I wanted to finish the film.

I desperately wanted it to be done. I thought about it and talked about it all the time. To the point where my wife was like, "You need to finish this thing; I don’t care what it takes, just get it done."

It was the kick in the nuts I needed.

I’d become one of those people who talked about doing stuff instead of actually doing stuff. So the first thing I did was focus on progress. At first, my goal was to open the editing project every day.

That’s it.

That led to me doing some cutting, and soon I got some of the momentum back. I started setting goals of finishing a scene each day, or doing a rough cut of a larger sequence. Still small steps, but they added up.

This slow, pondering pace paid off. I got to a rough cut of the film in a month or two.

Once there was a movie to look at, things became a bit easier, and I started chipping away at the details and honing the edit.

It took me almost two years to get to my director’s cut.

When we finally locked picture, and I was ready to hand the film off to our composer and sound mixer, it had been two and a half years since we finished shooting the film.

What I learned

I have three big takeaways from my journey of editing Wild Boys. The first is to not ignore post until you're knee-deep in it. We made this mistake on Wild Boys, and I’ve seen it over and over again in my professional career. If you want to succeed with your film, you need a plan for how to finish it, and that starts with a solid plan for post. Make the plan before you shoot, set aside money for the costs of post, and treat it exactly the same way as you treat prep and production.

It will come back to haunt you if you don’t.

The second is the power of small steps. Making a film is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s way more powerful to take small steps forward consistently than to try to go flat out until you run out of steam and burn yourself out in the process.

The third big takeaway is the importance of asking for help. I was awful at it when we started post on Wild Boys, but I'm working on improving. Recognizing that it’s okay to ask for help and support, and actually being brave enough to do it even when it makes you “look bad” or feel like a failure is crucial.

There’s a saying that goes, “if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together.” Filmmaking, and especially indie filmmaking, is rarely a solo event. You and I have talked many times about how filmmaking is a team sport. And to take an idea all the way to a movie theater screen, you have to go so frikkin’ far.

So don’t be a fool and do it alone.

I want to end today with a recommendation that’s helped me a lot with this last part. It’s a book by singer-songwriter, Amanda Palmer called The Art of Asking. I listened to the audiobook and loved it. She also has a Ted talk worth checking out about the same subject. https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking?subtitle=en