Finishing the movie

It only takes one or two bad screenings to fix a movie that you know is close. In this case my mom, Mary Bonner (an actress in the movie), Lily (my girlfriend), and Dom Bartolini (the future sound designer) all had the misfortune to see the work-in-progress. Immediately I knew there was something wrong. The moving parts were all there, but it lurched. The scenes moved and looked right to me, but there was still something unclear about it, and I could see it as my viewers watched with blank faces. It was clear there was still work to do.

So back to the drawing table. There were problems with the beginning, just getting the movie off the ground, and with the end, pulling it all to a close. I focused on the basketball scene, at fives minutes the most challenging film editing I've ever done. I spent more time on it than any of my previous movies, and quite clearly, it didn't work. It was too long, too much basketball. The two hours plus of footage with two cameras yielded choppy results, a movie in of itself. I decided to table the second half of the scene and see if I could put it back in later, as a flashback. I did the same with the other scene at the beginning of the movie, a scene in a cafe, pausing only to introduce the characters and what they faced.

No movie can be too good out in the real world when you lock yourself in a room and stare it for a long time. But you gotta do that to know your movie, to find it, I think...

I set up a camera with a shotgun microphone and forced myself to read voice-over for an afternoon. I wrote and re-wrote, I made stuff up. It is amazing what a rolling camera does for your creativity. It forces the issue. I watched the movie, I drank beer and wine, I watched it more, and drank coffee. It started to come together. I started to see it.

When you get to the point where you can add credits, it's actually pretty fun. You are there.

It feels good, like there's a weight off my back. Today I made 40 VHS copies of the cut and sent them out to friends for some final feedback. We'll go from there... Anybody up for a drink?