Chapter 75: Post-Production
[Chapter 75: Post-Production]
After wrapping filming and lining up, the crew announced on the spot that they were disbanding, but the main actors still needed to participate in dubbing later, with specific times to be notified.
Linton and the production team escorted the film reels back to Los Angeles the next day. Due to the time difference, they only arrived in Los Angeles at 10 a.m.
Normally, this time marked the city's peak hustle and the busiest business hours. However, looking at the utterly devastated downtown, everyone felt as if they had arrived in a third-world country.
In less than a month, Los Angeles had turned from the thriving second-largest city in the U.S. into a scarred and deserted place. There were hardly any pedestrians on the streets, and very few construction or repair sites.
This showed just how deeply the recent riots had harmed Los Angeles, with the citizens still lacking confidence.
The efficiency of City Hall was equally disheartening. Politicians were busy deflecting blame, accusing each other, and scrambling to divide the massive profits from the city's reconstruction, without thinking about speeding up the organization to resume production and revive the city's economy.
Even 20-plus days after the riots, the city still looked desolate and lifeless.
According to official reports, the Los Angeles riot lasted four days (April 29 - May 2), resulting in 63 deaths and an unknown number of injuries. Direct property damage exceeded $1 billion. Considering the devastation on the streets, indirect losses were even more incalculable.
During the riots, about 600 arson cases occurred, and roughly 10,000 people were arrested, directly casting a shadow over the Republican election campaign.
The hardest-hit area was Koreatown in Los Angeles, where more than 2,000 Korean-owned businesses were looted, set on fire, and damaged, with losses exceeding $400 million.
Only by the time the riots barely touched Hollywood did the situation improve. Although the streets were not as bustling as before, they regained some liveliness, and shops along the streets were mostly open.
Hollywood was indirectly affected though, suffering significant losses as all commercial activities halted during the first two weeks of the riots. Except for essential goods stores, everything shut down, including filming crews working in Hollywood, which still hadn't fully returned to normal.
Thinking of this, Linton felt lucky to have finished filming in Los Angeles before the riots began; otherwise, the losses would have been huge, and it might not have met the summer box office release timeline.
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Per the agreement with Universal, the crew rented Universal's editing rooms and an editor. Since Linton Studios fully financed the film, Universal did not interfere with the editing, so Linton retained final cut rights.
Universal did require the film's running time to be no more than 100 minutes.
This request aligned with Linton's intentions since it's a youth idol dance commercial film -- considering theater scheduling and viewing experience, the original version was just over 100 minutes.
With the original as a reference, Linton only had about 350 minutes of footage, but trimming that down to around 100 minutes was still a significant task.
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Universal's editing room at Universal City provided an experienced white female editor named Juliet.
In her 40s, with over 20 years of editing experience, she communicated smoothly with Linton and understood his intentions well.
The actual editing was handled by Juliet; Linton only gave her his requirements and the desired effects.
"Linton, let me confirm the main plotlines with you one last time. If no issues, I'll start editing."
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Every movie has a main storyline. For Step Up, the main lines were clear: an inspirational story and a love-dance storyline.
Inspirational storyline: The male lead Tyler and his best buddy were aimless young men hanging out on the streets, occasionally hustling to make ends meet. But Tyler and his buddy both had dreams and talents -- Tyler was into street dance, his friend into basketball.
In the end, both overcame themselves: Tyler returned to dancing and found love; his friend went back to the court, fighting hard for his dreams.
The love and dance storyline: One night, Tyler, his friend, and his friend's younger brother were playing basketball on the street when they accidentally broke a window at a nearby arts academy.
Tyler was punished by working as a janitor at the school, where he met the female lead.
He became her dance partner, and gradually sparks flew as they practiced together more and more, ultimately leading to love.
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The first day's editing was slow; even for rough cuts, Linton was very cautious. Every time Juliet finished a segment, he reviewed it to ensure all his intended shots were kept.
He wanted the final cut to closely adhere to the original film because this was his first movie, and perfection was a must.
In Hollywood, editors worked a strict 9-to-5; no overtime was expected. At quitting time, Juliet packed up without delay.
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Linton returned to his estate in Beverly Hills that evening. Fortunately, Beverly Hills, famous for wealthy residents, was untouched by the riots, which lifted Linton's spirits.
His housekeeper, Amy, even decorated the estate to welcome him back. The recent riots and his absence had left everyone on edge.
Luckily, Linton called early to have security mobilize. Seeing several guards fiercely loading rifles atop the estate walls quickly stabilized the place.
The riots were over, and the owner's return marked a joyful moment.
Linton had Amy gather all estate staff for a meeting to announce the end of the riots, encouraging everyone to resume normal work and life.
He enjoyed a rare home-cooked Italian meal and savored the warmth of home.
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Hollywood brought together film industry talents, and even an obscure editor provided by Universal proved highly professional.
Five days later, Juliet completed the rough cut, keeping the runtime at 150 minutes. Linton watched it all, confirming all needed footage was retained and that it already felt like a finished film.
Next came the fine cut, which had to be trimmed to no longer than 97 minutes, keeping the total with opening and credits under 100 minutes.
Referring to the original film in his mind, Linton slightly trimmed unnecessary shots and sped up pacing. After four days of work, they finished the final cut.
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Film post-production involved seven major steps: rough cut, fine cut, color grading, dubbing, effects, music scoring, and final master.
Step Up didn't involve effects, so that phase was skipped.
After fine cutting, Universal's colorist handled grading, and Robert notified main actors to attend dubbing in two days at Universal Studios.
Two days later, Linton gathered the main cast in Universal's dubbing studio.
Most of Step Up's audio was captured live; only a small part with poor recording needed re-dubbing.
Given the small workload and everyone's cooperation, dubbing finished in under three days.
The film's music composer was William from WMA, part of the post-production team.
Universal Music had finished the official soundtrack for Step Up, and William composed professional scores per the story's needs, completing music in three days.
Compared to the original, the end credits featured the song B What U Wanna B, reinforcing the inspirational theme.
With this, post-production was basically done. Remaining tasks were adding opening and closing credits and film rating, which weren't urgent now.
The current focus was gathering relevant personnel, especially Universal's distributors, for a screening.
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