Some More Death Grip Behind the Scenes Videos – Plus an Update

Color: 98% – Finish on Friday.

Sound: 95% – Finish next week.

Music: Done.

Behind the scenes featurette: 40%. Finish by June 13th. This is taking the bulk of my time right now.

DVD and BD authoring: 10% (art only). Finish by June 15th.

Commentary: 0% , but will only take a total of 4 hours. I’d like to do a more technical track with Rebecca while Drew is in town, and the track with my mom should be done in 10 days or so. I promise it will be hilarious.

Other special features: 90% . Just need to tweak the outtakes and export some deleted scenes. Original compound scene should be a nice feature, since it’s a big action scene that’s completely different from the final version. Plus there’s the extra fight with Johnny Yong Bosch that’s not in the final film.

There’s a chance the Blu-Ray version will have fewer features since it’s going to be single-layer, with the upside being it’ll have a gorgeous print of Death Grip. I’ll favor image quality over special features for that version. If you’re a special features junkie, the dual-layer DVD will be a good option. Or you can buy both!

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I’ve been knee-deep in editing the Death Grip making-of video. Like the Tour of Contourvideo, I opted for talking heads-style interviews with cutaways to behind-the-scenes video and film footage.

While shooting Death Grip I had at least one extra video camera on hand, one that was easy to use. We used a Flip Video camera, Flip HD, whoever’s DSLR we had that day, even crappy cell phone cameras. Some days Alex Ng would do very intense behind-the-scenes shooting, but when he wasn’t there I would just entrust someone with the extra camera to shoot stuff. We’ve done all the talking heads interviews, including one with J.J. Perry, so what I’ve got is something like 40 hours of footage. So I’m basically editing another feature-length film!

The first edit is going to be long, probably on the order of 3 hours in length, and I’ll pare it down to an hour or so. Then I’ll do some pop-up-video-style titles, overlay tons of behind the scenes and film footage, and package the thing up in time to get the DVD and BD authored, sent to press, and ready to sell by the June 30th premiere. The next month is going to be insane. Maybe I’ll take an actual vacation after that.

Here are a couple BTS videos I exported last night while taking a break from editing. That’s right, I consider exporting and uploading videos a “break”.

Painting the “Lair”, Benny Hill-style.

A stuntman is always a stuntman, even in his sleep.