Robin let me into her editing studio today to listen to the DAT tapes of the sound track. I can still hear a number of problems, including a few that we created in yesterday's mix session.... But I'm still going to call it a finished mix and move on to the next step. With some luck, the problems I hear will be too delicate to register on the optical track, with its relatively narrow frequency range. Anyway, I just can't face standing still any longer.
The coming of fall makes me remember that I thought I was almost done with the movie this time last year.... Last October's rush to get a rough cut ready for Sundance was the last time when I was able to put a lot of continuous work into the film--since then, every phase of post-production has been marked by endless waiting and snail-like progress. If I'd been able to make other people work on my schedule, the last eleven months of work could probably have been collapsed into three months, even with me holding down a full-time day job.
I got a rejection letter yesterday from the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival, which I had somehow hoped would look more favorably on my film than other festivals. I'm still waiting for word from four or five other festivals, but at this point I think I might stop applying until I have a finished film and a nice-looking VHS copy to send out. A polished product might not make any difference to the festival committees, but then again it might, so I may as well maximize my chances. The idea of waiting another year for these festivals to roll around seems less daunting now than it did last fall, when I still hoped that things might happen quickly.
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