Now Cut That Out!

Timing is everything. Literally. It seems that a lot of topics explored in our movie have recently been in the news, e.g. gay marriage and the UK's Civil Partnership Act (Elton John's wedding, endorsed by Donald Trump), assisted suicide rights (first Terri Schiavo, and now the Oregon law being upheld by the Supreme Court), the legalization of medical marijuana, and more.

Although we all had a lot to say in our film... we, as filmmakers, have decided that less is more. So we've been going through the painstaking process of "killing the baby" (no, that is not an abortion reference). In editing, the phrase refers to losing dialogue and/or scenes that either slow down the pace, bring it to a screeching halt, don't move the story along, or are redundant. As such, we have now refined the piece down to a crisp, tight, insightful 85 minutes. Yes, we had to lose the special effects and car chase sequences, but there are enough movies giving you that anyway. We wanted to give you something different... and we believe we have.

Another part of the delay in getting this movie out has been its entrapment in computer hell. We had been editing it in FCP HD on our Mac setup. For some reason, certain sequences became corrupted. (How did those politicians manage to infiltrate the project?) There were audio pops that mysteriously appeared. Troubleshooting that took months of research, attempts and failures until conquering those little bastards. When trying to export the project, sequences with motion or filters were uncooperative, again, hindering our attempts to get the damned thing done. Since before the shoot, this project has been an aberration, a comedy of errors, a thorn in our side, and many other cliched metaphors... and yet we refuse to admit defeat.

What our movie has to say is relevant, forever timely, and worthy of consideration. Therefore we will continue to plug along with the goal being theatrical distribution, DVD release, and hopefully positive cashflow toward another socially conscious project. Even though our attempt to get this movie completed did not prevail before the 2004 election and somehow the nation re-elected Bush (please explain that to us!), the beauty of the political process is that there will always be more elections. There will always be corrupt politicians. There will always be social issues that need reform. And there will always be filmmakers and people like us who believe that our voices can - and will - make a difference.