So we just locked picture on Fair Game, which is why I haven’t blogged in a while. Locking picture means just that, you lock the edit. The movie is done. I can breath a sigh of relief because not only is it done, it’s good. No reshoots by the way — this is my first film since Swingers that didn’t need reshoots.

There are many times during the process when I say “we’re done.” I said that when we finished shooting and I’ll say it once more when we actually finish the movie. What remains is about 5 weeks of very long days. We start mixing the movie next Monday. I’ve been working with my composer John Powell off and on since the fall, but now we need to finish every last cue in the movie and he has to record them, mix them. I really put John through the ringer on this movie but he and I both recognize that our collaboration results in truly original scores. Matt Damon recently told John that his score on Bourne Identity was responsible for Matt’s career, and I probably threw out ten of John’s attempts on that movie before we arrived at the one you all know.

I’ve also been working with my visual effects person, Joe DiValerio since the fall, but now it’s game time. He has to deliver 100 photo-real visual effects shots in the next three to four weeks. Joe and I started working together on Mr and Mrs Smith, after I approached the visual effects professor at NYU and asked who the star student was and he referred me to Joe. We’ve been working together ever since.

During the making of my movies I struggle with a fundamental question – what is the movie about. This is a different issue than what is the plot of the movie. I answer the question at different points during the process. On Swingers I answered the question during prep (plot of movie is Favreau and ex-girlfriend – but movie is about male friendship). On Smiths I answered in prep as well. Go, Bourne, and Fair Game were answered in post.

I could not have arrived at the answer on Fair Game had the writers not flown to NY on their own dime to help me finish editing the movie. I’m not superstitious but it seems like I’ve had an angel on my shoulder. Jez and John Henry’s arrival in NY could not have been better timed and then last week when I was in LA, meeting with producer Mike Lobell at the Beverly Hills Hotel, I ran into a federal judge my brother had clerked for. He told me he was in LA for an intellectual property conference and I said “Oh, we have an intellectual property issue on my movie.” I explained that we have news clips cut into the movie that we can only use if we can invoke Fair Use doctrine. I asked the judge if he had ever heard of “Fair Use.” His response: “I should hope so, I wrote the opinion the Supreme Court upheld that defines Fair Use.” The judge has agreed to help us and has put us in touch with his former law clerk, who assisted him in his most important Fair Use opinions, and who now practices law at a firm in LA. So now I have an all-star legal team helping me.

And if that wasn’t enough good fortune, I decided this year that I wanted to make my own maple syrup, which involves tapping maple trees. Not a big deal but difficult when you’re trying to identify a maple tree in March with no leaves on the trees and you grew up in New York City. I was using a printout from the internet with pictures of bark when, out of no where, a man in overalls drives up who just happens to be an arborist, and in about five seconds points out all the sugar maple trees. It’s a good thing too because the one tree I had tapped so far was in fact an oak.

With the emotional part of Fair Game now behind me, all that remains is the technical challenge of finishing the movie. That frees me up to get serious about figuring out my next movie. We also have our spy TV series, Covert Affairs, which is about to start shooting as well and which will consume much of the next month or two for me. So I have many things to keep me busy.

See ya, Ninjas

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• Doug Liman Blog: Baghdad in Pictures
• Doug Liman Blog: VFX Shots and the Amazing Combustible Producer Avram Ludwig
• Doug Liman Blog: What I Learn From Sherlock Holmes, My Dear Ninjas
• Doug Liman Blog: Fair Game and Covert Affairs Collide in DC
• Doug Liman Blog — Complete List Of All My Fair Game Posts
• Doug Liman Blog: Screening Fair Game for the CIA, and Why Cheney Is like Jaws