When editing a film, you work towards a stage where, even if the audio and music aren’t quite right, all the video clips are finally in the correct order and cut together as intended. This stage is known as ‘picture lock’.

The point of picture lock is that the media can be handed over to a bloke who knows how to balance the colour across all the individual clips so that the entire film has a consistent look. This is known as colour grading, and it’s quite an art. During filming, I’ve learned that you can point a camera at an actor, shoot a scene, move the camera a few feet, film again, and somehow the colour in the two clips ends up looking completely different. The colour-grader’s job is to fix that across the hundreds of shots that make up the entire film.

Picture lock also means that the media can be handed over to a professional sound engineer, who will level out the audio so everything has a consistent volume. He’ll clean up the soundtrack, removing unwanted noises and adding effects where needed. I can provide the full version of the film to the music producer as well, giving her something to inspire her to create a masterpiece.

Last week was spent editing, and on Saturday morning, Angela and I watched the latest cut from start to finish and made notes. Happily, there weren’t too many this time. I made the tweaks on Monday, fixed the last glitches, and by Monday afternoon, we had the picture lock.

I am happy to announce that Jamie Dickinson will be handling the colour grading, Alistair Lock the sound and Carrie Higgs the music.

There’s still plenty more to do. My job now mostly involves asking Jamie, Alistair and Carrie: “Is it done yet?” I also need to find a cast and crew screening venue, research film festivals and start looking into distribution.

I started writing the script for Automatic more than two years ago, and we began filming almost exactly a year ago. It’s been a long slog, but I’m beginning to think I might get my life back one day.

One last thing. I helped in a small way on Ewan Gorman’s feature film, High Water, which is now available on Amazon Prime. If you’re quick, you might spot my hand banging on a car window. Please watch and, if you enjoy it, leave it a good rating.