Back to the Salt Mine

So I am back to work tomorrow. Exciting stuff. Lots has happened in the month and change since I wrote about being laid off.

We achieved picture lock! Yay, woot, cheering, etc. Editing was a long process, but it was definitely worth it. I am now waiting and working with the rest of the post production team; Christy on the score, John on dialogue editing & the final mix, Beth with the sound design, and then of course the million other little things Christopher and I keep doing to polish up End and get it ready for public consumption. This is seriously cool stuff, but it’s also exhausting.

Dave left for England a few weeks ago. I am sad to see him go, but Dave seemed pretty excited about heading back to the mother country. I believe that Pearce is headed back to Canada as well, and Regan is starting an exciting new job that’s taking him away from the local color. All in all as I look back over the people and events that led up to making this movie last summer I am truly in awe – there were a lot of cogs lined up to get End made in the short amount of time that we did.

What’s weird is that by this time I thought I would be so over my anticipation for End to be finished, but the truth is that I can’t wait. I am just as excited as an audience member to see what our final product is going to look like and sound like. I can’t wait for people’s reactions and I am incredibly excited to see where we can get this little film into.

Destiny?

I don’t want to jinx us or give anyone a false sense of destiny, but I can’t let this story slip between the cracks. Megan and I are people of faith and as such we believe in divine intervention and fate. If that isn’t what’s happening right now then I don’t know what is?

Megan got her job back. Yeah, you remember the one she got laid off from on the 27th of January? Apparently the company she worked for realized they made a huge mistake and as a result she’s going to be back at her desk Monday morning like nothing happened. How crazy is that?

I think I’ve mentioned several times that all great independent films have great stories to go along with them ala EASY RIDER, CLERKS, EL MARIACHI, etc. While I am in no way trying to put END in remotely the same universe as those classics you’ve got to admit there have been some pretty great stories that have come out of the production so far and this is yet another one to throw onto the pile.

Think about this for just a minute. Megan was laid off at the EXACT time when we really needed to ramp up post-production and trying to work a full time job and complete a movie all at the same time would have been more than a little taxing. So what happens? She gets about 6 weeks off work with pay (Thanks to the severance package) to devote all of her time to getting END ready to put in other people’s hands. Just as we get END to the point where we can start giving it to the people involved with sound, music and so on (All of which don’t require quite the same time commitments form the Director and Executive Producers) and right as that severance money is going to start running low Megan’s former / current employer calls her out of the blue to inform her they’d like her to come back from her paid vacation. In essence Megan was paid to work full time on the movie so that we could get it to the stage where we need it to be.

If you ask me all this is more than coincidence. This is all more than just a fortuitous spate of random good luck. I’m a writer and there’s no way in a million years I could have scripted this fortuitous, darn near fairy tale type story.

Is END destined to succeed? Is it in the cards or whatever other metaphor you want to use that END is the movie that’s going to break all of our careers wide open? My parents always taught me the negative effects of putting a cart before a horse, counting chickens before they’ve hatched and so on so I’m going to heed their advice and shut my big trap. I will say this though; all this has got to make you think doesn’t it? Stay tuned because I can’t help but think this is going to get a lot more interesting before it’s over.

Post Update

Wrap Cake
Originally uploaded by mrbosslady

I am very happy to say that we have a composer! Christy Carew is the lovely new addition to the End crew. Christopher and I are very excited to see the touches she is going to add to the film.

We are entering the home stretch now. We achieved a picture lock on Saturday, so now my time is being devoted to creating the credits and overseeing the rest of the elements that are going to polish off End - sound design, dialogue editing, color timing, score and the final sound mix. I have many, many balls in the air right now and I am truly wishing we were a big budget production so I could have a post production coordinator instead of coordinating everything myself! I guess I will just have to add that to my list of things I want when I have a big girl budget for a movie.

I have also been working on getting all the elements for the press kit together and been waiting on a poster draft from Kevin. I am confident that it is going to be phenomenal because the photos Regan took for us at the photo shoot were absolutely amazing.

I know that I (and the rest of the post-production crew) still have a lot ahead, but I am finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and that is a very nice feeling. I am really looking forward to showing off the finished product to the crew and trying to get it to festivals and garner interest in the film. I am hoping and praying that End will be the start of a great era for everyone that helped make this movie.

I Like It Rough.

Holy shit! I’m not the kind of guy that likes to count his chickens before they hatch but I’ll be damned if we don’t maybe have something here.

I’ve mentioned multiple times that no matter how hard I try I have this latent fear that no matter what this whole endeavor, this whole movie isn’t going to work. Well, I saw the first rough cut of the film the other night and it doesn’t just work, it REALLY works! It works so well that there was more than one occasion that I forgot I wrote the darn thing. I don’t want to get too into it now since the movie is still in very rough form but I was pretty much floored by everything I saw, even in its very rough basic form.

From day one I’ve felt that there are certain things, certain elements and scenes that simply MUST work. If not no matter how good everything else might be audiences won’t buy into the film. They won’t allow themselves to be engaged by it and as a result the film will reap us the benefits we are hoping it will.

I could not be happier to report that those scenes, those moments and things that are so integral to the very essence of the movie don’t just work; they excel in every possible way. At one point I had to stop the footage and allow the goose bumps on my skin to go down and my breathing to return to normal as I realized we NAILED it.

Like I said I’m not trying to get people too worked up yet or cash a check the movie can’t write but I am a very happy man right now. As a writer, producer and simply as a dude that’s been working his ass off at this for a long time now… well, I couldn’t be more ecstatic. As I told Megan, we’re gonna need to start looking into frequent flyer miles, cuz we’re gonna need them.

Zombie Zin

Zombie Zin
Originally uploaded by mrbosslady

I showed Christopher the first rough cut last night. I think he liked it. While we were watching the cut he had us break out his bottle of Zombie Zin that I got him for his wrap present.