And Miles to Go...

Sleep is not coming any easier to me, but I think it is just because my pattern is totally screwed up from going to bed in the wee hours of the morning for almost a week. Then I wake up when I have to, do things I have to do, then somewhere in the afternoon I can't keep my eyes open, fall out for an hour or two... I wake up refreshed, yes, but then I can't go to sleep until 4 or 5am again! This is getting me a little nuts.

It is nerves, too. I picked up the burned DVD from Charlie (God bless 'im) this afternoon and watched it straight through to make sure there are no surprises. There was only one word of dialogue that wasn't on there, and I am sure it is something that I accidentally deleted or pasted over while I was editing and is not a big deal at all.

I don't really know how to describe how I am feeling now. I feel like I should be saying things like, "relieved, happy, satisfied," etc. And I am certain I am all of those things, but I don't really feel them. I think I am just spent, an empty vessel, and I have to relax and wait for my reserves to fill back up.

Watching the movie on a 42" screen was way different than watching it on my laptop. I was afraid it was going to look worse, but it was actually more forgiving.

I write this blog because I want to be able to read back on my own experience later (because it is way too much to remember now), and I also want to give people who are interested in maybe doing the same thing, or just interested in hearing about the process, an inside look at how it all really happens. Sometimes I have committed the sin of omission about some of the bad things in order to keep the peace with people, or not be overly discouraging, or just because during the process I didn't want certain people (like my investors) to worry that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I'm having one of those moments where I am considering censoring myself, but I think I'll go ahead and speak honestly, because several people I consult with regularly promise me that what I am feeling is normal and natural (and because the movie is really, truly in the can now, and it all worked out just fine).

The truth is, when you have spent literally several hundred hours poring over about 50 hours of footage - think about that, approximately three THOUSAND minutes of footage - and have to narrow it down to (currently) one hundred and three minutes... pardon my french, but you get pretty freakin' sick of looking at it. Think of your favorite joke, or song, or, hmm, scene in a movie, and then repeat it, listen to it, rewind and watch it at least 50, if not 100, times. Is it still funny, poignant, touching, or whatever you used to think it was? I think the word I am looking for is, "desensitized".

So I was pleasantly surprised when I watched the movie straight through today, and in the immortal words of my dear friend Tom Kyte, thought to myself, "This does not suck." Still needs a lot of massaging, but I am confident I am not going to embarrass myself, anyway. But I am still pretty sick of looking at it. And now I don't have to for EIGHT WHOLE DAYS! I am very excited about that.

I think why I am not dancing with joy, though, is because I am ever the hostess, and I will not be able to relax until next Saturday when I see with my own eyes that everyone who says they are coming to the screening actually arrives, and then see that they are having a good time and enjoy the movie, and then come to the reception afterwards. It is just the way I am. I know that all of those things will happen, but I won't relax until I see it with my own eyes.

It will. And when it does, I am going to DRINK my FACE off.

Mmmm, sexy...

I have spent more than 18 of the last 36 hours editing. I am on the verge of carpal tunnel syndrome and by tomorrow night (I have probably 8 to 12 more hours of work to do tomorrow before I turn it over to Charlie for him to compress, render, and generally wave a magic wand over the whole thing) I am certain my right hand will be nothing more than a shriveled claw, and I think I have developed a shoulder hump from sitting in front of this computer for so long. Yea baby, I am going to look damn hot for that screening at the Creative Alliance, lemme tell ya.

Painting Myself into Corners

I am allotting myself only 20 minutes for this post, and only because I got up earlier than I had planned to. I'm up at Mikey's cabin in the Poconos at the moment, and I am picking him up from the bus stop (conveniently located in the parking lot of the local beer & liquor distributor - one stop shopping!) at 6:45pm this evening. From there it is dinner at Louie's Prime, so the evening will be shot as far as working, but I am really looking forward to seeing Mikey. He couldn't coe down last time I came up, so it has been about 2 months since I've seen him.

Editing is going very well, though it does contain some very frustrating moments. There are a few scenes I am dreading working on, one that I don't have nearly enough coverage on, another that is an exterior and we were battling clouds all day, and at least one more extremely long scene. I've already muddled through a few of those. I have several scenes that are 3 to 5 minutes long, which in movie time is REALLY long. But they are scenes where people come and go, so it is actually like 2 or 3 scenes in one. I don't think it will be boring to watch, but goddamn is it boring to edit! It takes me about an hour to edit each minute of film (sometimes more), because I am green but also because I am very picky. So for the long scenes I am spending 4 to 5 hours editing looking at the same location, faces, dialogue... I am an instant-gratification kinda girl (don't ask me why I'm making a movie, then, I've been asking myself that very question quite often lately), and have a lot more fun editing 1 to 2 minutes scenes and having something to show for it relatively quickly.

I have a total of almost FIFTY minutes of movie roughed out, which is pretty awesome, because that's about half the film! 14 or 15 minutes of that I did on this trip so far, plus about 5 hours worth of labeling video clips, about 16 hours work total, and I've only been up here a day and a half. If I can get a total of 30 minutes roughed out while I am here, I will have met my goal, if I can get 35 done, I will be ECSTATIC.

There is a lot more to do after that, mostly smoothing out the sound, a very fine and delicate art. Charlie has offered to help, once I get the rough cut completed, to finesse it with me. The speed bump in the path to timely success is, of course, the holidays. My brother is coming up from Florida the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and he'll be with me for a week. Within that week we are going to Pennsylvania to see my Mom and some old friends, so really I can't count on getting anything done during that time.

But I really only started editing (not including labeling clips, which took an additional 2 days) on November 2, and I got 50 minutes done in 10 days. If I can keep that pace for the next 10 days, I should have a VERY rough cut done before Thanksgiving, and be on track to start smoothing it out at the beginning of December, which will be perfect.

I just found out that the deadline for submissions to the Maryland Film Festival is December 19th, when all this time I thought it was in January. I had already painted myself into a corner by promising cast & crew to screen a rough cut on December 27th, and now I have 8 days less to work on it!

But that's all right, I am on pace to get it done by then, if I don't slow down, or, you know, SLEEP. Plus then I can have that weight off my shoulders and enjoy Christmas.

Damn it! 10:33am. Gotta get crackin'. I can't get much of an internet connection up here, so may have to save this as a draft and post later. Isolation is the best way for me to get things done, though. And thank goodness that today it is pouring outside, and supposed to rain all day. Yesterday it was sunny and gorgeous, and it was SO difficult to stay inside in front of my computer screen.

The Baby

I managed to get the rewrite done in time to ship off the script to a screenwriting contest right here in Baltimore. The prize money is not a lot compared to some other, large competitions, but to come in the top three would lend the project some good cred and help me make some more local contacts.

I have accomplished a LOT in the last 10 days, some of which I can't go into quite yet. I'm having, "a moment," though. Probably just sleep deprivation with a touch of PMS, it will pass. I have lined up a lot of my ducks in the last week and a half. But there are a lot of them still waddling around aimlessly, and I want them all in place RIGHT NOW!!! But you know how ducks are.

The handful of people who have read the script are all telling me the same good things, and with each rewrite, fewer not-so-good things, so that is encouraging. I've chosen these people carefully, so that I have a broad critique. Some are people I know will look more at the structure than the emotion of the story, my "Mr. Spock"s. Some are cinephiles who see way more movies than I do and therefore have an incredible basis of comparison. A couple are people that I based certain characters on. And some are people in the industry. Those are the people I get the most notes from, as they are the people who know if what I am visualizing in my head will come across on the screen.

Those in the business of making films, whether they are writers, producers, directors, actors, crew, they all use the same jargon, and the phrase I hear most often is, "the Baby."

The Baby can refer to your script as a whole; for example, if you don't produce the film yourself but sell your story, and the people who buy it make so many changes that it is nearly unrecognizable, that's when they, "take your Baby away from you." Or the Baby (also sometimes called "your children")can mean your own(as the person who wrote it) favorite scenes, the scenes or lines that you feel are the funniest or most touching - that sometimes never see the light of day, let alone the darkness of a movie theater. If it doesn't move the story along, it has got to go. Cut it out, chop it up, lop it off.

So that's what I did, one of the many things I did, this week. There was a scene near the beginning of the script that I thought was pretty funny, and everyone who read it thought so, too. But the script was 20 pages too long and this three-page scene, funny or not, was two pages too long. Two of the main characters visit a character we never see again in the film. The cameo character does help set up some of the subplots, so I didn't want to lose her altogether. But in the original version, the audience learns quickly that she is a bit nuts. She says something strange. Then she says something absurd. Then she says something completely delusional. They were great lines! Okay, maybe they were just good lines. But people who read them remembered them, people who read them laughed. I didn't want to do it, but...I could get all the information I needed across in one or two lines and actions, not two pages. So. CHOP, there goes a finger, CHOP there goes a toe, HACK HACK HACK, come on now, the Baby doesn't really need both arms when one will do, right?

And when you are done, you think, "That's it," you think the script is as best as it can be, you think you couldn't possibly cut another line or scene. Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. But you need some time to accept that reality. So you set it aside for a month or so and get some other things done to keep yourself on the path, you wrangle a few more ducks into single-file, you have a couple more people read the latest incarnation of the screenplay, you get more notes...and then you go back and do it again.

The Baby is, indeed, keeping me up nights. I've never had much trouble with insomnia until now. I worry about the Baby constantly. How am I going to pay for the Baby? Will I be able to make sure the Baby is truly mine, will it look and sound and express itself like I would? I know it will be influenced by a lot of factors along the way, and it won't truly be mine alone. But can I keep it from ending up as an ugly bastard? I have met and continue to meet so many people who are being so very generous and helpful with their time, their experience, and in some cases even their cash. I know I am going to meet so many more, it makes me wonder if among these people, one, or more, of them come to the forefront and end up being the person or persons that let me crush their hand in mine and coach me through those little "Hee-hee-hoo-hoo," breathing excercises when it comes time for this thing to finally pop out there into the world.

But as much stress as the Baby causes me, it is already bringing me great joy. People who know me well have commented on this, they see an energy in me that has been dormant for ages. On the days after I'm able to get to sleep before three a.m., I think I might even glow a little bit. Today is not one of those days. The Baby kept me up all night. But I managed to check a few little things off the list today. It's been a big week. I'm going to take the evening off. The good thing about this Baby - no danger of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome :)