Cottonwood Update #28: Rough Cut Complete!

After 54 days of editing, the rough cut is complete! A question I get a lot is how many hours it'll take to edit Cottonwood. Well now that the rough draft is complete I can estimate how many hours I have into it so far. I started editing 54 days ago on the 1st of September. I worked on it almost everyday for at least 6 hours everyday. Lets say I missed 6 days of editing. So 48 days of 6 hour edits equals 288 hours. That is totally just an estimate too. Some days I edited way more than 6 hours and some days I did less. It's a lot, nevertheless.

This is just the rough cut too. You may wonder what the rough cut is. Well it is all of the clips lined up with some basic audio and video effects. I do my rough cuts a little different though as I do all of the VFX as I am editing. So all of the hard visual effects are done. The next step would be to go through the entire film again and refine everything. I have a lot of notes in my rough cut to add or change things. I am headed home next weekend to do some filming. We also plan to get some extra coverage over Thanksgiving break. I am happy with what I am seeing and excited to show the cast and crew what I have came up with. They are the only ones who will get to see the rough cut.

I plan to release the trailer soon. I know I have been saying this for a while, but it was more important to me to nail down a rough cut before getting busy on a trailer. My cousin, Isak Hurlen, just finished the music for the trailer and he is now busy on music for the actual film. Everything is really coming together great and I am really excited to show you all Cottonwood in January!

Stay tuned for weekly updates!

Ethan Clerc