Taking the feature and trying to find a 5 minute extracted story was probably one of the most difficult things I have ever done. But not only did I manage to get something close to what I set out to do, but found the experience helped me to edit my actual feature a little better. I got the film in under the wire and was truthfully surprised a couple weeks later to get a call that the film had gotten in!

Now here is where I have to be careful and not say too much about what I was asked to do, etc. but there was a "filmmaker" test I was given to do which in itself was another new challenge. I managed to finish it the way they needed and went in for the interview the following week. That was where they stick you in a chair and drill you for your most intense quality quirks. I walked out of there with a stack of about 50 pages of legal paper work that gave me pause. In fact, for a few days I had decided I was not really going to do it, but stuck my finger in the wind and dropped it in the mail.

Anyway, I didn't make it into the final 16 but felt unbelievably encouraged by the fact that this film of ours cut through nearly 5000 entries to the final 100. If nothing else, it gave me the kind of motivation I had when I first started production to finish the post work on a high note.

Which brings me to that last lap. The film is locked and on its way through the scoring and mixing and I hope to have a screening of the finished film sometime and May.

All in all, this was one of the best losses I ever had : )

I had a game, but under the weather Melanie Monroe make the morning to play the other role of the day. It was by no stretch of the imagination warm out there so that girl rocks in my book! Margot in her skirt was no less rockable. We even managed to be in the right place at the right time to get a train coming by and really lent some nice urban production value. I had flashbacks to Roger Corman, running out to shoot some forest fire and reworking my film around the event.

Got the footage digitized and of course, as with most steps in this film, there was a hiccup. As of this writing I have still not gotten the final word on if it is a small problem or a big one but it appears the boom audio is not on the tape...... Now, it looks as if only one mono track was digitized which indicates to me it was not a screw up during shooting and hopefully that missing mono track contains the boom audio. If not... well, I'll cry later.

It is really strange to be looking at a film for 6 months and then add scenes into the film that were never there before. It feels like I am making the sequel!

So, I am now moving ahead with the final lock edit. Hopefully within the week it will be off to the mixer and composer. I know from past experience, I have a hard time locking a film because I know that is it. No more changes (at least visually). It's like marrying off your kid I guess but just not as expensive.

I admit there is nothing more nerve racking to publicly show a "work in progress" with temp sound,music, etc. but to take whatever licks now rather than later when you can do nothing about it is the smartest thing a filmmaker can do.

I made an off line Mini DV copy of the film and upconverted it to HD to project. I was in shock actually how great the image looked as an upconvert from a digitized image! Shot on HD, 99% of the image was indistinguishable from film (if that is your goal). I have to say, Miami Vice (the movie) looked more "videoish" than this. Once again I was discovering the strength, beauty and cost effectiveness of HD. But it also helped me see the blemishes more clearly than on my small monitor. I handed out questionaires to get the reactions of the dozen or so people in attendence after the viewing. The comments do test your metal as a filmmaker even if you know you can actually do something about most of it. Most of it focused on the lack of clarity in a few key character decisions. Much of it I already agreed with so was nice to see there may be a way to fix the holes. Seeing what areas the majority focused on was the most interesting as it made me clear about what I may face with the film story wise when finished.

Anyway, all in all I think the experience has made me a much better filmmaker in one sitting. It may have also helped me to remove my ego from the work and approach it more objectively as we all know, when too wrapped up in a film from the start, it is hard to tell the forest from the trees.

So now I will get back to editing and see how the art of editing can bring about new story angles that are currently missing. Dig through old footage to find a shot or maybe a line of dialogue that may add some clarity to the areas in need of it. I will also try and decide what shots I will need to get in the next month that I cannot recreate with the existing material. So, to all those at that point in the process of their film - Preview! Show it until you get the response you need before locking the picture up on its final journey.

Well, from my lips to God's Ears has certainly not applied to my request for an editor.... The third (and I am convinced) final editor I have brought on to the project has dropped out. So, I am back to wacking away at my own project once again. Maybe there is something in there about maintaining control or maybe I'm being primed for my fall-back carreer who knows. But, I have had a nice break from the film if nothing else and should be able to give it a new shot next week once I wrap editing the DVD doc for our film Devil On The Mountain (AKA Sasquatch Mountain).

This time away is probably what is neccesary for me to go in and do plastic surgery on my child. Raising the eye brows and narrowing the nose is always harder to do on someone you care about than a stranger. So, maybe I can now approach it a little more from a distance to give me the needed bravery.

In the mean time, I have been screwing around with some poster ideas (minus the editor of course) trying to stay ahead of the film festival mad-rush to have promo material.

So, God's Ears is now at the time of year I was hoping we would be on the final mix but have yet even finished a locked edit. I have already decided to squeeze some of the post money into a day of pick ups as I have found places that I cannot edit my way out of some corners.

Back to the screening.... it was encouraging and humbling all in one. The audience in attendence was about a half dozen experienced editors in the business. After the two hour cut we all sat around and started breaking it down. There were some general agreements from the group on things I had to take into serious consideration, even though it was something I would have never considered before. You know how it is, a scene you wrote for the climax gets more kudos for being placed in the first 15 minutes and you would have never in a million years thought of doing it. But anyway, in the end one of the editors agreed to give it a weeks free spin at which I asked him to take his chances put in his thoughts. I can always reject what doesn't work in my opinion, but the objective eye could give me a lot of help as I have been in such control over this from the first word I typed on the script. So, I hope to have this thing finalized by the end of 2006 so we can have a screening and start the festival run with some confidence. I have already sent two rough cuts to two of the bigger festivals so I don't have to wait a year.

Keep ya posted.