Coda

Against what seemed like impossible odds, we finished our movie last night and turned it in on time – in fact, an hour and 15 minutes before the deadline, which I think is a record for us.

We were able to finish up so quickly due to new fast equipment, better knowledge of that equipment, smooth teamwork, and a really good story.

This year’s theme was “Wrong Turn,” the prop was a musical instrument, the location was a flagpole, and the line of dialogue was “You don’t owe me anything.”

I don’t want to give away the plot of our film before it’s screened, but I will post it here later on this week.

I felt sick to my stomach all Friday evening and Saturday morning, so I wasn’t much use to the team initially. I went to bed about 1:30 a.m. and left them to the brainstorming. I got up at 7 and began working on the props, which turned out rather well. I’m really glad that Kinko’s was almost deserted at 11 a.m. and they were able to print the posters I needed in 40 minutes. I felt better as the day went on, and was able to help out more and more. During some of the shooting, I was the boom mike operator (and I managed to keep it and its shadow out of the shots this year, lol). I also created the titles and helped a teeny bit with the editing.

Nate called me in the early afternoon to tell me that he was officially a daddy. Woohoo!

About 5 p.m. when we began capture of the film we shot in the afternoon, we realized that the tape had failed and all the footage had huge banded stripes across it. I dashed to Frye’s to get a tape head cleaner in hopes that it would help. In the meantime, the team tried to decide between throwing in the towel, shooting a “we couldn’t finish our film because…” ending, or scrambling madly to reshoot.

I’m glad they chose to reshoot. Doc stayed at the house and edited a rough cut of the morning’s footage while the rest of us went out to retake 11 scenes. Luckily our location was less than 2 miles from the house. We finished up in 45 minutes, shooting only one take for most of the scenes we needed.

It all came together beautifully. I’m really happy with the finished product, even though the quality of the footage we lost was largely better than our retakes. Our story fits really well with all the required elements; nothing seemed forced or half-assed. I’m not feeling the need to do a “director’s cut” this year. Thomas (our camera guy) is a good cinematographer, and Doc and Lori and I work really well together.

After we turned in our tape (10:43 p.m. officially! and the place was nearly deserted) we sat for a while to wait out the traffic getting out of the Music Hall nearby and spoke to Laura Nietzel, one of the directors of the festival. She told us that a few years back they had created a DVD with the winning movies that also included an audio commentary track by the teams. I think it would be cool to have a DVD like that but the audio commentary seems a little ambitious, which is probably why there hasn’t been a DVD since.

Today I’m tired but not as tired as I thought I’d be. Right now Doc and I are sitting on the patio under the umbrella with cold drinks and our new misting fan blowing at us. The temperature is in the low 80s and the fan makes it bearable, in fact very nice. We don’t plan to do much of anything today. Tomorrow night I am in a taste-test study for Chili’s restaurant. I’ll get a meal out of it, plus a $50 Chili’s gift card. I’m taking Thursday and Friday off work, and Friday a few of the girls from the office are coming over for a happy hour on my patio. Hopefully it will be a nice relaxing week.