Finishing touches.

There is something very discombobulating about finishing a project that has been gestating for so many years.
My son was beginning secondary school when I began working on this project, this week he did his final years exams.
Animation is a glacial process ,where we have time to carefully craft every aspect in slow motion and yet it seems to whiz by all too fast and in the end the schedule and budget must be respected and we have to draw a line somewhere.

Yesterday Paul , Colm and I worked with Ben and Marie on the final mix of the last reels.
We still were making adjustments, improvements and trying things out  up to the very last minute.
Someone once said we don't really finish films, we just release them.
For me as a co-producer as well as a director its especially hard to let go, but I am well aware that there's a point where money and time run out and we have to wrap up.

I didn't sleep much last night as I still keep getting ideas or little doubts about things we could still maybe improve, but its time to let go.
The film works and I think it actually works really, really well.
The culmination of so many talented peoples work and passion for the project has led to something far, far greater than I ever imagined at the beginning of this journey.

So as the international mixes are being done, and the lab works on the film prints and DCPs over the next    weeks I'll be trying to let go and focus on new horizons.
Then we will go back to Paris one more time to check the prints and the DCP and it will be a wrap!

Here are some photos from the past days at the mix taken by Marie Doyeux - one of the mixing artists.