The Home Stretch

Filmmaking is exciting stuff.

I can’t tell what is working and what isn’t at this point. I am desperately trying to get every last thing  done to send out the film to festivals. The music seems to be working so far. I think two spots need to be either tweaked or redone but I’ll do that last. It’s not enough to hurt the film and I don’t want to spend time on it right now. I need to concentrate on the remaining visual effects. Mainly one big one which will be very complicated. I did a rough version of it for the earlier cut and that was hard enough. Can’t imagine what the final version will entail as far as complexity and even render time. The rough version took like 10 hours to render.

I know the film won’t be 100% done by the time I mail it out but I need it to be like 95% done. I know I will tweak the music and a few visual effects but overall it’ll be done. Enough so I feel good mailing it out as is. Luckily I am just sending out submission copies not screening copies so I do have a little time to work on a few things. However, I also can’t obsess over every little thing. At some point I need to walk away and just call it done. Otherwise I will work on it forever.

My main problem is I am pretty fried so it’s hard to determine what works and what doesn’t unless it sticks out a lot. My original goal was Friday to mail the film out but I do think I will take the weekend and mail it out on Monday (at a great expense especially sending it out to the Cannes Film Festival submission). I think the extra two days will help. Plus I can make my own DVD to test to see if there are any last minute things.

It’s been two and a half years since I started, in essence, PreProduction. I’m almost at the point where this will be out of my hands. The film will be out there and it won’t be mine anymore. It’ll be in the hands of the audience. No matter how much I tweak only they will decide whether it works or not. And whether my long journey to make this film will pay off.