Crooked Mick enjoyed a lengthy time in post production. Starting right after the shoot in May and finishing around the same time an entire year later!.

The process started with the editing of the material by Melanie Annan. Melanie had the job of logging and organising all of the material before she and Phil embarked on the huge journey of trying to edit a film that was (literally) only half there. Sometimes there was nothing there because the shot needed to be completely digital. Like everyone who worked on Crooked Mick, this took a lot of imagination! At times, Melanie would have to choose several elements which would go to the compositor to make up a shot, so she had to keep immaculate records of what frames were needed where.

Above: Phil Smith working on the song scene

The EDL was then imported into flame, the shots were captured with handles and moved onto the digital media servers. Phil Smith, Anthony Church and Daniel Thompson then began building the world of Crooked Mick. They started with the song scene, building gum trees and old fences in Alias Maya. The song scene required a dense bush setting with lots of leaves, rocks and grit.

After achieving a great style frame for the song, the team spread out to tackle various challenges. Anthony modeled and animated the CGI cow which Sam lifts, while Dan focused on building the ferris wheel and tents at the fairground. Phil busied himself building the Drover's campsite and the Speewah environments.

Phil's main responsibility was to direct the film. So he had to give this his first priority. Because Phil is trained in visual effects, he was also responsible for the supervision and coordination of the visual effects team. He would do this during the day, then late into the night he would be working on shots which he was responsible for as a visual effects artist.

Above left: Early environment work on the fairground and right: Finding the right composition for the Speewah sheds

After finishing the cow, Anthony went on to model and animate the sheep on stilts before working on the set extension and camera tracking for the final shot. At the same time Dan was busy modeling and animating the giant kangaroo sequence. Kit Divine created an amazing dust storm over a Matt Urmenyhazi matte painting and the dust billowing around Crooked Mick as he thunders towards Gus and Sam. Mark Woszczalski came on board to assist with the elephant that shuffles behind the Dandy in the fairground, and Michael Tiong animated the backward flying crow and the collapsing water tank.

While this was being completed Michaela and Phil were busy finalising the compositing and balancing the colour for each of the final assembled shots.

As the digital media team were rushing to meet their deadline, the Sound Designer Luke Mynott and Composer Jonathan Dower were also busy conceiving and capturing the dusty sounds for Crooked Mick. Luke spent weeks capturing various sounds to create the bizarre soundscape of the Speewah. The film called for things like giant kangaroos, sheep on stilts and a howling dust storm which Luke had fun concocting. Jonathan also had a challenge in developing the musical voice for Crooked Mick. The film is very music friendly, and Jonathan came up with a beautiful range -in particular the song for Gus and Sam and the closing credits tune.

After handing over the last of the shots, the film was taken to Warren Lynch at Intercolour (who worked on the Lord of the Rings films). The film recorder was then fired up and the film was slowly printed to 35mm. Melanie then assembled the film, it was sent to the neg cutter who matched the cuts. The sound printmaster was then finalised at Soundfirm at Fox Studios. The film was then colour graded by Tony Manning at Atlab and was delivered to the school, days before the first screening on the 28th of June for the school's national screening tour.