ZAP Zoetrope Aubry Productions

After almost 5 years of fundraising/​researching/​fundraising/​shooting /​fundraising /​translating /​fundraising/​editing /​fundraising /​and shlepping back and forth to Tehran, I never imagined my documentary film — Our Summer In Tehran — would ever find itself in «post-​production»!
This phase of production represents both the birth and the death of the film. The t’s are crossed, the i’s are dotted and there’s no going back. There’s a lot of pressure because a bazillion decisions must be made during a short, intense, and costly post-​production phase: whether it’s color grading, font choice for subtitles and text, graphics, layout for the credit roll, art for the main title sequence, animation, timing… no matter how bad the hangover, or how awful my period cramps –I will have these two weeks, and only these two weeks, to make these decisions, that I will have to live with, for the rest of my life.
When faced with such a profoundly daunting task, all I want is to find myself in a post-​production house that has my back, holds my hand, anticipates ‘issues’, organizes work-​flow and offers options. I want to be around people who are familiar with the terror I feel inside, and with patience, understanding and humor, embolden me to express my most clear and creative self.
Kim Aubry and Ri Crawford are a dynamic duo. Kim comes from a deep film culture and is always quick to provide a story from the field that puts my own situation into broader context. He patiently explains the complicated technicalities, so that I actually understand what he’s talking about. And whenever I am vexed over really dumb but very important things (like subtitle fonts, speed of the credit roll, how to graphically introduce the families) Kim and Ri patiently offer options. One of the many reasons I enjoy working with Kim and Ri is because I trust their aesthetic, their reasoning, their opinions. They respect my ideas, and always offer options that might better realize my vision.
Ri is a master at After Effects and at animation. To treat a scene in the film that plays clips from the TV travel show that I used to host, we looked at many possible TV sets in which to superimpose the clips. None of these TVs felt ‘right’. Ri solved that problem by animating/​creating a TV that worked perfectly; to more elegantly introduce the families that I meet in Tehran, Ri created an elegant montage of photographs with names written across the top of the photos; Ri and Kim patiently sorted through 40 paisley images to find the right one to ‘fill’ the letters that spelled out the main title sequence. These are just among the few creative and problem solving contributions that Kim and Ri made to my film. And because my film is crafted in a subtle and lyrical way, all these ‘little things’ add up to what I think is a much improved film.
I never thought I could actually enjoy post-​production, partly because raising the money to fund post-​production in this financially depressed economy, was (and is) very difficult. However Kim and Ri were exceedingly generous with their time, and the cost of post-​production made absolute sense to me. Kim is extremely clear about costs and overages. Money was never an uncomfortable topic of conversation.
Kim and Ri are a pleasure to be with, they are articulate and communicate skillfully. I never felt that I was in a grey area with ZAP. Kim always made sure to clarify what we wanted to accomplish with each day and what we wanted to accomplish moving forward.
I swear I’ll never make another film, but if I do, I’ll go back to ZAP.
Justine Shapiro
Promises Films