Vegas Finatic

Most people have seen the 1975 film Jaws, probably more than once. It annually tops lists of the best films ever made, and many people call it their favorite movie. But for some people, it’s more than just a great movie, it’s more than just their favorite film, it’s a bit of an obsession.

These people aren’t fanatics, they’re finatics, and documentary filmmakers James Gelet, Erik Hollander, Michael Roddy, and Jake Gove count themselves among their number. As such, Gelet and company knew of the Jawsfest extravaganza planned for June, 2005 to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the release of the film. Gelet and his filmmaking friends planned to attend Jawsfest on Martha’s Vineyard and film it, creating a documentary of the event.

When it came time to edit over 60 hours of footage into a three hour documentary, Finatic Productions turned to Vegas software. James Gelet explains, “The nature of this type of project really benefits from NLE and the Vegas layout. We had about 60 hours of footage before we started assembling any kind of thematic flow to the material. The flexibility of the Ripple tool and other Vegas features has really given us tremendous freedom to keep the project as organic as it needs to be.” Full story