Saturday, December 13, 1997 - Rounding 3rd...

Started yesterday by breaking down and renting a car, which was a very wise thing to do. Why didn't I think of it before? That allowed me to lug around the sound gear, take off at lunch to record batting cage wild track, get up to the city before Steadi Systems closed to buy Beta stock, get over to Portrero Hill to pick up script notes from Heather, go off someplace to eat somewhere and review the wild track I recorded, get to VFA by 8:30 for the editing session and to drop off the Beta stock, and not have to worry about having to wrap it up by midnight so I didn't miss BART and end up having to take a $30 cab ride back to Berkeley, the same price as renting a car. I'm starting to get a a hang of this scheduling business.

A very productive editing session last night. Bumped out a copy onto VHS to view over the weekend. I need to view it carefully because the changes will be the final editing decisions. In other words, I'll be living with any thing I do now forever. Can you believe that?

In parallel with this Karen is going through the current version to do sound balance and sweetening. Anything that can be done before taking it in for final sound mix. I'm meeting with David Nelson of the Outpost to see about sound mix. I can't afford for it to take too much time (i.e. $$$), but I'll see what their rate is and how long he feels it would take. A compromise is in order here. I definitely want the sound to be crisp and clean, but I can't afford to get too crazy about it.

Meanwhile I've figured out where music is a necessity and where it would be nice but not essential. The list is actually pretty short. Need to address this this weekend. Now would be a good time to start including music in the credits, starting with the compositions that I know will be in the finished film. So far there are four.

Now is the time to see about negative cutting, credits and prints. I'll start calling for prices Monday.

Sent in to two film festivals yesterday. The next date isn't until the 31st of December, giving me time to bump out the finished product. Good thing, too, since that takes up a lot of time. It's also a pity having to send in a previous version of what you have because you haven't had time to bump out the latest from computer. Everything is low res until the end, though, when we bump out the high res version, which should look sweet. I should call the fellow Zachary pointed me to, to get some feedback on festivals. I probably should have done this before, but if I had a nickel for each time I've said this from pre to post I'd have money to make another film.

Speaking of money I should start thinking about taxes.

-George