POST-PRODUCTION DIARY: NEGATIVITY
January 1998
It has been a long, long haul on Velvet Goldmine but finally it looks as if the end is in sight. We’ve just completed our sound mix, managing to work on both Christmas and New Year’s Eves. (The technicians just love us.) The movie has now gone to our London-based negative cutter.
The negative cutter is the craftsman who logs and stores the negative; pulls selected takes to make work prints for editing and early screening purposes; and finally cuts the actual negative together so that it conforms to the finished cut. Words like “cautious” and “methodical” don’t fully encompass the job’s requirements; a good negative cutter must have a reverence for that precious negative that borders on the mystical.
Todd Haynes and Maryse Alberti, our cinematographer, leave for London for the final phase—the timing of the print. I follow later, planning to stay just two or three days to make sure that everything is proceeding apace. I’m also anxious, after all this killing labor, to see the print finally in all its glory.
Alas, the lab is backed up, and I only see one reel before I have to return to New York. Still, it is magical. We watch it through several times as Maryse and Todd sit with the timer making color adjustments from shot to shot. I leave on a high.
Back in New York, I get a stunned phone call from Todd. He was timing reel four and he noticed that the print was frequently jumping at the cuts. The timer noticed it, too. They called the negative cutter. He assured Todd that it could easily be fixed. Then some disturbing facts came to light: the source of the problem was a faulty splicer. This means that the perforations at every “join” are aligned on one side but not the other, which manifests itself as a visible jump every time there’s an edit in the movie. It looks horrible. Beyond that, it signals potential catastrophe. Every time the lab uses the negative to make a print, we risk having the perforations catch in the processor—and rip frames.
They’ll see reel four again on Friday, hopefully all fixed. We’ll be back on track, on schedule.
On Friday, my phone rings at 6 A.M. I wake up and reach for it with a sinking heart; I know exactly what it is. And I’m right. Todd is shaking with anger: “I am so sorry, Christine, I just couldn’t wait…” Reel four is still totally fucked up—along with reels three and five! Worse, it now bears the wear and tear of being over-handled: there are visible glue splotches all over, along with dirt and dust. Our beautiful movie!
I hang up and immediately—at 6:30 A.M.—call my staff and everyone else I know to solicit advice and opinions. The first response of the negative cutter we use in the U.S. is succinct: “Oh my God,” followed by a deathly silence. Others say things along the lines of: “This is the worst post-production problem I’ve ever heard of.” Translation: “You’re screwed,” and “I’m so glad I’m not in your situation.” Those nightmare stories that make the rounds and become legend: we’re living one.
What are our options? We can:
So guess which option our insurers and the bond company insist we go with? D!!
Their reasoning is that no other negative cutter will want to be responsible for a mess like this and therefore will not accept any liability in case anything else goes wrong. Also, they say, it’s in our negative cutter’s interest to right the terrible tragedy he has caused. They seem to feel we owe him another chance! Needless to say, Todd and I are not convinced. The idea of putting our precious negative back in that bozo’s hands seems insane. We finally reach a compromise: we make an inter-positive and start doing optical tests on it in case the negative cutter screws up yet again.
February
Which, of course, he does.
We had been assured that the faulty splicer had been replaced before the work on reels one and six had begun. But when Todd goes to look at those reels for timing they jump like crazy—and show even more dirt and dust. In addition, the negative cutter has miscut a “join” on the optical track, which means it has to be entirely re-struck. Another insurance claim! It’s as if the guy has just completely given up. Finally, the bond company lets us move the film.
There is now no way that Velvet Goldmine will be ready for the U.K. spring release that Film 4 has planned. We move the date from April to September. Todd is beside himself. What if we can’t fix this mistake? What if we have to re-edit and remix the entire movie? What if the negative rips? I try to act confident, telling him we will work this out. Meanwhile, I’ve stopped sleeping.
March
The new negative cutter is very, very good. With hair-raising precision, he manages to fix the torn frames without having to re-synch, but the movie still has jumps—imperceptible to everyone except us, but still, maddeningly, there.
I once had a cast on my knee. During that time, strangers would approach me and tell me stories about how they had hurt their knees. Well, the same thing has happened now: I’ve heard virtually every the-negative-cutter-fucked-up story in the world, including one about an Oscar-winning film where all the splices came apart when it was printed—ripping some sections of the negative into pieces! The end of every story is pretty much the same: “And they fixed it.” That’s the end of our story, too, except we never got to see that first perfect print off the clean shiny negative. And our negative will always bear the scars of its ordeal.
I worked for two years to get Velvet Goldmine financed, then struggled through the most arduous shoot I’d ever done, then toiled through a lengthy post-production with production and bond companies screaming about swelling schedules and escalating costs. In the end, it all came down to this: a skinny strip of celluloid that some pinhead almost destroyed with a “faulty splicer.” It puts every other crisis in perspective. You can replace crew, equipment, set-dressing, even actors. You cannot replace damaged original negative. That’s your movie.