The Final Seven Days
So my "On The Lot" short film is due in exactly seven days from one hour ago. A five-minute short film really is a whole world harder to make than I realized. Yea, it's been easier and faster than my 2002 short film, "Imaginings", which was far more ambitious. Five years later, the whole process is a lot easier: I know more, I've got my own filmmaking equipment, and I've been making a simpler film requiring a fraction of the talent and time. But it still takes time.
Mainly, I'm mad at myself for waiting this long to make the film. I've known about On The Lot since the middle of 2006 but I've let the project slide because I wanted ideas to simmer within my head. Once my car broke down in December, it made filming impossible. Now, in the eleventh hour, I'm finally making leaps and bounds. It's a shame I waited this long, but I only have myself to blame. What matters now is getting it done quickly but still being happy with it. I've been told not to sacrifice my artistic vision just because of a deadline.
But fear not. I'm fully expecting to be done days in advance. Here's where things stand right now- Last Saturday, my skeleton crew and I filmed the movie. This week, I've been pushing the video to my computer and editing the unusable footage out. I took 60 minutes of total footage and got it down to the useable 22 minutes. From there, I had to sort the footage and compile the movie, shaving away more excess footage. This afternoon, I completed that process and turned a 7.5-minute "rough cut" over to Ryan in Fargo so he could write music. Completing the rough cut is a huge milestone. At this moment, anyone can sit down and watch the movie. From a storytelling standpoint, the movie is finally linear and should make sense to someone who hasn't read the script. While you could sit down and watch it, it is in a very rough form and none of the audio track is final. It is a very early version of the film.
Next up is polishing and more editing. The submission requirements state that all films have to be shorter than five minutes. So fully 150 seconds have to evaporate. This is where things get tricky because there's only so much I can cut out. Once I get the movie below five minutes, I have to polish and color-correct the video, add transitions, add titles, add the movie's only digital effect (Erasing traffic on a freeway), re-record all the dialogue for the film and add sound effects and background noise. The last step will probably be adding Ryan's music.
Wait, no. The VERY last thing I have to do is film a short interview video for the submission. This is where I get on camera once more and talk to the producers (Or whichever poor intern they force to watch submission videos) to give reasons for why I deserve to be on the show. I wonder what I'll say to them...
Mainly, I'm mad at myself for waiting this long to make the film. I've known about On The Lot since the middle of 2006 but I've let the project slide because I wanted ideas to simmer within my head. Once my car broke down in December, it made filming impossible. Now, in the eleventh hour, I'm finally making leaps and bounds. It's a shame I waited this long, but I only have myself to blame. What matters now is getting it done quickly but still being happy with it. I've been told not to sacrifice my artistic vision just because of a deadline.
But fear not. I'm fully expecting to be done days in advance. Here's where things stand right now- Last Saturday, my skeleton crew and I filmed the movie. This week, I've been pushing the video to my computer and editing the unusable footage out. I took 60 minutes of total footage and got it down to the useable 22 minutes. From there, I had to sort the footage and compile the movie, shaving away more excess footage. This afternoon, I completed that process and turned a 7.5-minute "rough cut" over to Ryan in Fargo so he could write music. Completing the rough cut is a huge milestone. At this moment, anyone can sit down and watch the movie. From a storytelling standpoint, the movie is finally linear and should make sense to someone who hasn't read the script. While you could sit down and watch it, it is in a very rough form and none of the audio track is final. It is a very early version of the film.
Next up is polishing and more editing. The submission requirements state that all films have to be shorter than five minutes. So fully 150 seconds have to evaporate. This is where things get tricky because there's only so much I can cut out. Once I get the movie below five minutes, I have to polish and color-correct the video, add transitions, add titles, add the movie's only digital effect (Erasing traffic on a freeway), re-record all the dialogue for the film and add sound effects and background noise. The last step will probably be adding Ryan's music.
Wait, no. The VERY last thing I have to do is film a short interview video for the submission. This is where I get on camera once more and talk to the producers (Or whichever poor intern they force to watch submission videos) to give reasons for why I deserve to be on the show. I wonder what I'll say to them...