White Wolf

The first rough cut of White Wolf did not look great.

That sounds bad, but honestly, it was also encouraging.

For the first time, I could see the shape of the movie. I could see what was working, what was missing, what needed to be cut, and what needed to be fixed. It is rough. Very rough. But it is there.

Yes, there is AI slop

I have come to hate the term everyone loves right now: AI slop.

Unfortunately, in the case of this rough cut, I also have to be honest.

There is some AI slop.

Not in a way that makes me worried about the movie. More in the way that makes me look at the timeline and think, “Oh good, so I live here now.”

There are shots with AI blur. There are character details that need to be cleaned up. There are objects that appear, disappear, or become suspiciously confident about being the wrong shape. There are frames where facial features need help. There are moments where something is almost right, but almost right is not good enough when it cuts next to a shot that actually works.

The cleanup pass

The next phase is going to involve a lot of cleanup across Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, and DaVinci Studio.

That means character cleanup, object removal, AI blur removal, frame painting, fixing distorted features, smoothing continuity, tightening cuts, and getting the footage to feel less like a collection of generated clips and more like a real film.

It is going to be time-consuming. There is no way around that.

But I am not scared of this part. This is the work. This is where the movie either gets better or stays rough, and I am not interested in leaving it rough.

Sound might be the fun part

The part I am weirdly looking forward to is sound.

Playing guitar and recording what I play has made me appreciate sound engineering in a completely different way. The more I have learned about tone, space, texture, EQ, timing, and feel, the more I respect how much sound shapes emotion.

I am hoping the color, lighting, and cleanup work does the same thing for me visually. I already know I am going to come out of this with a completely different understanding of editing and post-production.

If nothing else, after all of this, I may accidentally become employable in the film industry.

That was not the original plan either, but apparently this whole project is now powered by surprise life skills.

The rough cut gave me a map

The first rough cut was not great.

But it showed me what the film needs.

That is progress.

Now comes the long, annoying, necessary part: fixing it until it feels like the movie I know is in there.

Still moving. Still learning. Still finishing it.