Nail House - Train Car locked cut

Pages 17–21 of Nail House have been filmed, and the cut is locked.

When we say “locked cut,” we mean this version of the edit is now the foundation for the rest of the post-production process. Realistically, the edit might still change slightly—heck, we were tweaking We’re All Gonna Die even after screening it at SXSW.

But from this point on, we can’t just change things willy-nilly. That’s because a whole lot of other people are now working on this thing. This is the cut that gets sent to the "vendors"—sound, music, visual effects, and color. If anything in the timeline changes, that change has to be communicated to everyone, and the edit has to be reconformed. So, for the sake of everyone’s sanity, time, and budget, you don’t lock a cut unless you’re pretty darn sure it’s pretty darn close to the final version.

This cut was finished last Friday, and we’re currently exporting all the necessary files and materials for the vendors. We’re excited to have Maxton Waller on board for the music. Our longtime sound collaborator, Kevin Senzaki, is handling the sound design. And Nathan Sam—who created the spike and did a ton of VFX for We’re All Gonna Die—is doing the visual effects for this sequence.

Anyway, we’re really excited about this cut. We can’t wait for the polish in the sound and visuals to start bringing the action to life.

Right now, the locked cut has no color, no sound effects, no visual effects—a few slugs for inserts and just a couple of sloppily placed temp tracks. Honestly, action scenes usually don’t feel this good to me at this stage. Sound and VFX do so much to pull it all together, so it’s been pretty wonderful to feel this good about the sequence already.

Hope you enjoy a look at the roughest this sequence will ever be!

—Matt