then it was on to the hospital, during the weekend of february 21 and 22. that was definitely the most grueling weekend we had, including the 5-6 hours we spent outside the front of the hospital in the freezing cold that first day. in one shot of wendy running from her car into the hospital, we shot it so many times that actress linda hetrick's nose turned all red from the cold, but it actually looks like she was crying. exactly what i planned!

blocking the entrance of the hospital also caused quite a stir there, and resulting in one of the supervisors on duty yelling at us. we got past that okay, and then took over the main reception desk for another couple of hours. the interior of the hospital was really perfect for what i was looking for -- lots of long, confusing, empty hallways. the terrible directions given by the receptionist (played by amy willis) didn't help wendy find her way around any better...

so that was it to the shooting. even though we started the editing process on a flatbed, we abandoned that sometime in april, when gigi de roux (the editor), through her new friend adam litwinski, secured a great deal with tree-time productions to edit on their avid.

we since ran into some serious problems with the avid output being in the wrong format, and some other serious technical problems that could have been avoided by the editor, but unfortunately were not. so hundreds of dollars and 3 months later, the film is finally at the negative cutter (thank you, nick dibenedetto and n&d films) and being assembled.

after recently having viewed the successfully-shot credits, which took duart's optical dept. seemingly forever to process (okay, it was only 2 months), the film is just about ready to have its answer print completed. "7 to 10 business days," as they told me in late January.

that might have been true, except the duart sound dept. called me a couple of weeks later to say that the master soundtrack DAT tape i had was all distorted. now i had heard some minor distortion on the video copies, but i guess i (naively) figured it was just a video limitation. nope, it was far worse on the original DAT tape. my editor/sound mixer (done on the avid back in august) had recorded everything way too high, and many lines of dialogue (not to mention the final song over the end credits) were significantly distorted. there were also considerable background hissing noises in some other scenes. sooo, i spent about 2 weeks (and about $1000 for those of you counting) working with steve syarto at duart sound, reconstructing the sound to about half the film. we re-recorded the tracks from the original sources and laid them back in at acceptable levels. he also was able to significantly minimize any background hissing.

so now, the film SHOULD be ready in the next few days.

well, with the screening date already set (and only a week and a half away), one would think that the film was completely finished. well, one would be wrong... after viewing the first "answer print" at duart, i noticed problems with every conceivable part of it: first, the soundtrack was out of sync by about 2 seconds. secondly, i noticed about 8 "jump cuts," which could be related to problems with the negative splicing. and thirdly, the "color timing" was off, my notes regarding specific lighting instructions went ignored. SO, duart began working on a corrected answer print, which ended up being completed on thursday, march 25 (only 1 business day prior to the premiere screening). talk about cutting it close! i almost had a heart attack by then...

this page last updated on august 16, 1999

script supervisor gigi de roux raises up lights at the restaurant in preparation for shooting. sound recordist david harris attends to other matters, while actual patrons continue to dine in the background.

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director john tranchina discusses the scene with restaurant hostess elise molinelli .

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well, i decided to go ahead and have duart make me a corrected print. i figured if i didn't do it now, i never would, and those minor flaws would always annoy me. so i asked for the changes, and they were done. i was back in new york/new jersey memorial day weekend, so while there, i viewed the new print and found that one shot i wanted changed STILL was not changed. the color timer made a shot i wanted lighter even darker than it was before!

so duart graciously agreed to make me another corrected answer print at no charge. so i had to send the old print (the one screened in new york on march 27) to the temecula valley int'l film festival.

the new print is now finished, and my good friend john russello picked it up for me, and it BETTER be right!! i think it will be; the color timer certainly seemed to understand what i wanted this time. but we shall see. once i confirm it's okay, i will then finally make the 'good' video copies.