What Happened on the Fourth Date

Yep - the movie is done!

My mixer mixed, the composer and I listened and Declared It Good, and I passed the good word on to my hard-working, poorly-paid editor, who finished putting everything together and burned some DVD’s for me last night.  I picked up the DVD’s and my firewire drive from her today, and sent out the finished product to three more festivals/competitions.  I kept one to give to a friend to burn more copies on Sunday.

Now I just have to book time to have a digi-beta version for screening at festivals - but I think I can wait on that for a little bit for now.

The score makes such a difference - hurray for being done!

Just got another acceptance today - for the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival!

They even gave us a tentative screening date - will update that as the information is firmed up.

Whee!

And “What Happened on the Fourth Date” will be showing at…

*cue drum roll*

Yay - it’s nice to know that somebody likes you!

The score is done!  Woohoo!  Whoppee!

It is now being mixed.

Some of the bigger film festivals have deadlines coming up at the end of July and beginning/middle August, so I’m thrilled, thrilled, I tells ya, to have the film so close to completion.

I’m quite impressed with what my composer’s done.  Even though I’m fairly aware of what scores can do, it was still amazing to view my composer’s work (remotely, of course - that’s how it has to be done these days).  There was this one scene - it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t one of the stronger scenes, and Sameer recognized it.  He was able to put a little something in it that really supported it and made it great.  I was truly blown away.

At any rate, I’m awaiting the first few responses from at least two festivals in the next couple of weeks - wish me luck!

So my composer is now able to compose, since my editor put together the title animation sequence and end credits and sent it all to him on a DVD.  Within a few days, he got me the clip for the title animation, which was impressive.  In the meantime, I’m sending out what I call the “rough-ish” cut:  It’s got everything except the title animation sequence and the score (though there is a bit of placeholder music).  It’s been sound mixed and edited and color corrected.   So I’ve sent off the first one to a festival (using withoutabox.com, for the first time) and will be sending off another 5 or so in the next couple of days.  So I’m keeping my fingers crossed (feel free to keep yours crossed for me as well:-)

So - where are we now?

Color correction is finished - remind me NEVER EVER again to use red light in a room.

The hardest aspect was trying to make sure that my Indian-American actors (one in particular) were taken care of - my main actress, who is Caucasian, was, in the words of my colorist, “like a flower,” and didn’t need too much done.

The title animation is almost completed, and then the composer can begin.

I have a mixer/editor working on sound so that I can get rough cuts out to festivals with deadlines approaching quickly.

So…I guess things are humming along.  Not as fast as I’d like them, but like a local train at rush hour, at least we’re moving. 

Not exactly, I suppose, but that’s what it feels like.

We’re almost there.

I have a colorist and a title/graphics designer.

I have a composer.

And…I almost have a final cut.

Just a few more small kinks to work out…

a few more people to have watch it and give me feedback…

then it can be set, timecoded, and passed off to the composer.

Who will then compose, and we’ll go back and forth on that.

Before going to the sound mixer/editor, who will mix and edit. 

There’s just something about the whole process that feels so slow.

Of course, when I compare it to sending a play to a theatre company, waiting to get feedback, working on “developing it,” and seeing it up on its feet, this is going so fast it’s a positive blur, so I shouldn’t really complain.

Patience…is a virtue.  That I have to acquire, somehow. 

Really.  I went to my first editing session on Monday (previously, my director and I had been e-mailing our editor our comments, then she would put them into effect and upload the most recent version to a website) and watched while the manipulations occurred.  I am convinced it is MAGIC.  I mean, I saw it happening, and I still think it is MAGIC, and if you are a film editor, you are a MAGICIAN and should be treated accordingly. 

I also finally met with my composer on Tuesday, who watched the latest cut and really liked it (which will always score points with me:-).  It looks like the film is going to be finished a bit later than I would’ve liked, but I’d rather give people the time they need to do things to their (and my) satisfaction than rush them.  My director is ready to sign off on the cut, which is cool - I’m just waiting for a bit of feedback from a couple of others.  We’re also figuring out typefaces for title sequences.  And I need to find a colorist.

Who would’ve thunk a 12-minute film would take so much work…;-)

I’m finally meeting my composer next week.  In this wonderfully wired world we live in, I haven’t even spoken to him on the phone - just e-mailed, and pretty briefly at that.  He’s going to be watching the latest version of the film to get some ideas for scoring, which I’ll be very curious to hear.

I went to a lecture on film scoring…last week?  The week before? (It’s a little scary, how the weeks seem to blend together).  It was very interesting.  Two different composers each gave a talk on a “classic” film score and then showed clips of their own work.  The first composer, Peter Calandra, gave a short lecture on “Vertigo” which was scored by the late, great Bernard Herrmann (who was supposedly a crankypants supreme as well as a brilliant composer).   It was a lecture (and a score)  that contrasted nicely with the second talk, by Andrew Markus, who spoke about the score to “American Beauty” by Thomas Newman (cousin to Randy and from a dynasty of movie composers - I believe he referred to them as “the Kennedys of film score composition” or something to that effect).   With “Vertigo,” it’s such a beautiful score - there’s *no* way, in my opinion, that you can’t notice it - it’s a part of the picture.

With “American Beauty,” the score was also lovely, but it seemed to me to function more like a beautiful frame to a beautiful piece of art - it enhanced the picture, but you didn’t notice it *first* (I once worked as a custom-framer, hence the analogy.  You never framed a picture so that someone looking at it would go “Wow, look at that frame!”  The purpose of the frame (and the mat) was always to serve the art best). 

In fact, with the ”American Beauty” score,  you sometimes didn’t notice it at all, which sounds like a negative thing, but it wasn’t, it just *worked*.

The composers also showed clips of their own work and narrated some of their process, which was fascinating.  It was an evening well-spent, and yet another glimpse into my brave new world of filmmaking.

“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t.”

So…I showed what I’ve got of the film so far to a labmate who has mondo film experience and he had lots of positive things to say about it, as well as helpful comments to make it better - hurray!

It’s amazing how relieved I felt, after hearing that.  Lots of tension just drained out of me. 

Here is yet another big difference between theatre and film:  the audience, and the opportunity for rewrites based on audience feedback.  When I write a play, I usually get at least one opportunity for a reading in front of a live (hopefully decent-sized) audience.  And while I might be sort of watching the action on stage, I’m probably paying more attention to the audience:  Where do they laugh, where do they cough, stretch, shuffle, where do they look confused? 

Then I go back and rewrite.  And I can continue to rewrite, up till and even, if the producers and actors are willing, through a production.

There is no such luxury with film.  At least not with my low-budget film.  Big-budget films can go back and reshoot, writers can rewrite (or write new) material .  Someone at one of my jobs asked me the other day if I had to go back and reshoot anything and I had to laugh.  There’s no reshooting on my budget or in terms of the location in which I shot, not to mention re-coordinating everyone’s schedules (which was a minor miracle in itself). It’s make do with whatever we’ve got, which luckily, according to my recent feedback, is good (hence my massive relief).

I know - it’s a pretty obvious difference.  But I think the magnitude of it didn’t hit me until I was thinking to myself - “Hmm…I wonder what will happen once this gets out of the editing room and in front of an audience.  And what am I gonna to do if NOBODY LAUGHS?!”  ‘Cause there’s nothing sadder than something purporting to be a comedy that doesn’t get even one chuckle.