I know - it's been a dang month since I updated, but we've been cutting the film obsessively, every minute...okay, not every minute, but our goal is the SXSW November 5th and it took a mammoth effort by all to make it happen, and guess what? It's happening!
Tomorrow, Thursday, we make a last pass on cutting. Our intention (and it's a must) is to "lock picture" tomorrow, then prep the film for our sound mixer/designer, Richard Seitz, and our color correct/image correct guy, Charles. Both of these gentlemen are pros and friends of myself or Ryan, and they're giving us their services for next to nothing. I can't say enough how much it means to have such contributions. I've said it in earlier posts - people have been so kind to us, and it's continued through post. Rich and Charles will need roughly 10 days to finish their work, with no help from me, which is great news - we get a mini vacation from the picture. :) Maybe I'll go to a movie, or have a beer somewhere. I miss those little things.
We've been cutting sound and picture for 6 weeks now, and we're very happy with where we're at. The movie has a flow to it, it really moves. It's clocking in under 85 minutes! Our tagline will be "Come see our film and we'll have you home in time for Dexter."
We're also submitting to Cinequest, San Fran Int'l, and Durango - we love the city of Durango and it's close to ABQ. These fests share the same deadline as SXSW. This is our first round of submissions. We have a list of fests with submission deadlines over the next few months, and we'll hit them all. After the initial round of submissions, we're scheduled to take a month off from cutting, then make another pass based on our fresh perspective, for the next round of submissions. I expect that pass to be minor lifting at most.
Before being completely ready with this cut, we do have a few chores to complete. There's more music to collect and lay in. We have roughly 16 songs for our soundtrack, all contributed from artists we know. Angie has worked hard to collect these songs, meeting with artists, going to performances, pushing them into recording studios...she's handled the music portion of post. We also need to record a mock radio broadcast for the final sequence, which we have scheduled for Sunday. We then lay that into the film on Sunday night. We do NOT need to record score for this cut - we're submitting with a "temp score" and we've been in discussions with a few artists about scoring the film...including one major recording artist. Stay tuned!
We made the SXSW deadline and now we're keeping fingers crossed because we REALLY want to make it INTO the SXSW Festival. Either way, we'll get in somewhere out there, and we will certainly spread the word when it happens. Desert Rain will be coming to a film fest near you soon enough! :)
