Production update (audio interviews complete – round one)

Hi supporters, fans and other folks. This is Berkun here with the latest update.

Things have been rolling along here at WMS HQ (we don’t have a HQ of course, but it’s fun to say) and I have some news on the production of the film to share.

As mentioned in the past, I’m building the audio for the film first, using interviews local creatives and entrepreneurs. DP Dan McComb and I have completed 5 interviews to date (officially known as: round one). Here’s a photo of interview #4, of me interviewing Jesse Smith, star of the local Deep Prep cooking show.

Some people have asked me how we chose who to interview and the process was simple. We built a huge list based on all of your suggestions (more than 70 people) and I worked it down to 15 by listening to audio of those candidates speaking on youtube or elsewhere. Being amazing and having a great Seattle story is one thing, but for a film this is casting. And since I’m focusing heavily on audio I framed my list on people who have a voice for radio and energy that comes through their voice alone.

Step two was to build a short list of diverse people, by gender, background, and profession. Step three was to ask who was interested and try to schedule something. The first 5 that worked out are the first 5 interviews we have. 

Step four is now, where I review all of the interviews and start building a cut list to put together a single narrative that can be the spine of the film. With 5 completed interviews I have enough audio to work on a rough audio track.

Here’s me in Final Cut getting busy:

Once that rough version is complete we’ll have a creative team meeting and work out next steps, including a shooting plan and possibly more interviews if there are gaps in structure or tone that would best be filled by other voices. We might even need to reinterview some folks to fish for specific quotes I’m looking for. 

We’ll be posting profiles of all the people we’ve interviewed, so stay tuned for that. Cheers and thanks for your support.