The movie at this point consisted of shots filmed totally out of sequence. The ten mini-dv tapes and five minidiscs are transferred into a nonlinear edit workstation and cut together using Apple's Final Cut Pro software. The video was transferred through firewire and the audio was transferred through the computer's USB port. No additional hardware was needed. One could also consider the use of SDI (Serial Digital Interface) to transfer footage in and out of the computer without compression. These technologies incrementally raise the bar on quality, but mostly raise the bar on cost. It is refreshing to know that one can still shoot and edit footage without these additions and still compete with the best of them.

There are moments in the film when Emily visualizes her feelings by interacting with her younger self. These moments are void of all color except the green plant life surrounding the scene. This effect was achieved by having the computer distinguish the primary green color in the scene and any shade of green as well. Then, the color selection was inversed to identify any other color but the green colors. Finally, anything outside of the color green was desaturated into black-and-white.

These scenes also felt ethereal. They seem to move in slow motion, even though they play out in real-time. The sequences were first truncated to a third of their length. Then the sequences were time-stretched, with frame blending, back to their original length. The frame blending process makes the motion between the frames smoother by dissolving the new computer-generated frames into one another. These sequences also went through a series of other filter effects to create the impressionist painterly look.

3D animation was also integrated into one of the surreal wide shots of Emily Dickinson and young Emily. In the shot, a 3D butterfly flutters from left to right. First, the wings are hand-drawn and painted in Adobe's Photoshop and saved out as an image file. Then they are used as a background template to model the 3D wings of the butterfly in NewTek's LightWave 3D. After modeling the wings, legs, antennae and body, the 3D butterfly model is transferred into LightWave's layout. The image files of the wings are mapped onto the 3D wings and assigned numerical parameters to react realistically to light.

Many other effects were integrated into the film, such as the elaborate motion graphics in the opening montage and title sequence, and the black-and-white flashback sequences glowing with an umbra of light reminiscent of Hollywood films from the 1930s. Yet, the effects were designed to enhance the drama, not to overwhelm it. Emily Dickinson is a poet, whose creativity was so original and brilliant, it was hard for many to understand and read into the abstraction of what she wrote. In MY LETTER TO THE WORLD, Alex found it a creative challenge to extrapolate meanings behind the poetry and Emily's private world using a visual medium, "Words were so important, so visceral to Emily, I tried to do them justice with sight and sound."

Once the fine cut was complete, the film was exported with the dialogue track as a QuickTime movie. The movie was then handed to the music composer, Kevin McSweeney, who used a combination of audio tools on his computer to run the film in sync while scoring the soundtrack. Director, Alex Lugones specifically asked to have the music composed of instruments popular during the Victorian era. A Kurweil K2500, a well-liked musical sequencer in the music and film industry was used because of its very realistic sounding instruments. Debussy was an influence at the time, so many of the instruments were composed of cellos, french horns, bassoons, violins, flutes and piano. Kevin kept the music subtle and powerful. There is an early American feel to it, without sounding old and unoriginal.

The post-production work took nearly three times longer than it took to prepare and shoot the film. The editing, sound, music and effects are very important elements. Without them, a good script can go bad. Editing creates a rhythm and builds meaning between shots to help the story flow. Music is meant to set the mood, it should make us feel a certain way before one word is even spoken. Special effects can act as the proverbial icing on the cake. A film's harmony ultimately depends on the smooth integration of the above-mentioned elements.

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