Exhausted.  It’s been a couple of days since we shot, and I still feel exhausted.  I’m not in ideal shape physically, but I (thankfully) dropped 10 pounds in the month leading up to this, so I know I’ve been in worse shape.  The crew and most of the people who stopped by seem to feel that it turned out well; we did get in every shot we planned on; getting multiple takes on nearly all of them.  Two-thirds of the way through the process, I’m still not quite in a celebatory mood just yet.  We’ve made a film, the film I set out to make; still doesn’t mean it’s a good film yet though.  The standard I hold myself to is extraordinarily high, but if you know me personally, or even if you’re a regular visitor to this blog, that won’t come as any surprise.

So, moving forward.  The editor is putting the first rough cut together, using the script, and some guide music I had in mind that will be the temp track.  (Should I tell you what song I used while writing it?  Nahhhh….)  I’m on the horn with my composer, giving him some feedback and ideally getting him a copy of the rough cut so he can score me something nice, that fits the tone of the story.  You know this consciously, or you know this subconsciously, but music can easily make an okay film good, a good film great.  It may not be the best example for this particular argument, but I just watched Rocky III again a couple weeks ago, and I’ll be damned if I don’t start smiling and shimmying as soon as I hear “Eye of the Tiger.”  Yeah, that’s not the most epic piece ever, but I think you see my point…

I’ll jump back into that boat to approve the ‘final cut’ but I also need to think about the future of the project, namely distribution.  After months of plotting just to get the story shot, now I can put my energy back into who I want/need to see it, and how they get it.  There’s the festival circuit, there’s my various friends and associates in the Biz.  Even though this is a short film, people of color handled it in front of and behind the camera, so it also fits quite well into one of my larger ‘Missions’ if you will.  I’m being a little coy here; I do have a gameplan in place.  My real first step is to polish the feature length version of the story that this short is supposed to be a ‘Prologue’ for.

Exhaustion is kicking back in.  But another chapter has been written.  The story’s far from over though…