Where It's At: Part 14b

So I've just noticed it's been about 10 months since I've written anything on this blog.

Blimey.

It's been a frustratingly slow year in places. Two planned shoots have fallen through - the first, for the 2nd Sincerely, Psychopath film was due to take place around June time...but after meeting with the actress who was super keen with the role, I decided I didn't want to be buried prepping another film when both Stranded and Creak were lying annoyingly unfinished...so that was postponed as I concentrated my efforts on getting those two finished.

Unfortunately Stranded took much longer than expected - after its hilariously bad piecemeal preview screening fuck up at the final Son Of Movie Bar, I had hoped it would have only taken another couple of months before it was done. Not so. Getting the final sound mix out of John took longer than expected, due to our constant logistical nightmares to see each other...and on one stupid occasion I made it over to his flat only to presume I had brought the wrong music edit over and went home with my tail between my legs...only to discover later that it WAS the right sound file. Sheesh.

And then after all that there was some lip flap at the end of the film which I had never really picked up on but should have done and asked John to try to fix as best he could...

The grade also proved to be problematic for Darren and Terry - Terry's efforts to fix the overcast aspect of one day's shoot didn't work out. Darren told me there just wasn't enough information there to save, so did his best with it and to try to match the footage with the ice cream scuffle. He did his best, but it's still noticeable. What can you do?

So with all of this, it was June when I finally had a completely finished copy of the film, I think almost 4 years since I started casting it. It's been sent to about 15 film festivals, had a few knock backs already...we'll see...

With a desire to at least shoot something this year, I turned my attention to Pick-Ups, an idea I'd originally had to shoot with Mark in Copenhagen as a daft one day affair. I described the idea to Terry while we were editing Stranded and he seemed to really like it. So I quickly wrote a draft of it, intending it to be a 3 minute film and, like Creak, a "disposable" one day shoot. Slowly pieces came together but then to cut a long story short there was a change of lead actor, who then fractured his ankle, and with the birth of my 2nd child looming closer I was reluctant to recast and shoot closer to the due date. So that one was been postponed until the New Year, meaning I won't have shot anything new this year...:(

Goodnight, Halloween will hopefully be moving forwards - the footage has now been passed to Mark Tew, quality film maker and all round nice chap who lives in Worthing. After a delay for him to get some super snazzy computer to handle the heavy load of the HD footage and the usual bloody Mac/ PC driver shenanigans getting hard drives and footage to show, then downloading updates etc he's finally got the stuff. He's just shot a fun short called "House Trafalgar" that I featured in as an extra and he's planning on editing them both in parallel, taking a break from one to look afresh at the other. It's still a long way off, I reckon the middle of next year at the earliest, but good to know it's moving forwards and with someone who is a strong editor and can cast a real critical eye over the footage and film.

Gettin' Some has finally had some movement, after starting the year with a full head of steam that slowly dissipated. I was probably slower than I should have been with Mark and I watching the last cut of the film together while discussing it over Skype, but eventually we got through it. I recently went back to it, got the film down to 65 minutes, watched that and went back to it removing more footage and putting some back in, some which had been removed since my original assembly edit. It's still around the 60-65 minute mark, but I think if I tidy the titles I might be able to hit the magic 60. It mostly shifts along with some pace now although the edit has finally opened my eyes to the fundamental flaws in the film. The ending also feels a bit messier than the mess it originally was, as if the film just stops...but it doesn't feel like there's a great deal of leeway of what to do about that.

As a result of this edit my episodic plan has had to go out of the window - one for timelines, but most importantly due to the change of running times for each episode - one episode in particular has gone from around 12 minutes down to 5. It probably makes more sense to just get it out there as an hour long film. So I've got a bit of a plan on the back burner for a Winter premiere onine.

So the only other incomplete project is Creak...which was finally premiered last night. But that's for a different post.