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Well
this didn't seem right... Why should someone
else have all
the fun? I wanted to do the surround mix, and all my research
pointed towards a consumer soundcard/speaker combo
that would let me do just that, for less than $1,000 what's more. I
bought them both, and surprise surprise, they
did.
Some friends offered to include the film in their
private
film festival at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, so I
decided this would give me a solid deadline that was, for once,
achievable - as well as providing a chance to gauge audience reaction
and assess the 99% finished film in a theatrical environment.
My
fears of an inadequate pixel resolution were put to rest after a test
run at the theatre. While the picture was clearer than
expected,
the sound wasn't quite as meaty as I'd hoped.
The
festival screening took place in November 2005 to an audience of about
170. It
was fairly successful, though it left me feeling strangely
numb.
Perhaps I had put so much time and energy into the film that
it
could no longer be adequately compensated for with mere audience
reaction.
Following
the festival I made some more colour corrections, replaced
some music and made some other minor adjustments, and came close to
running
out of money before taking on four and a half months of emergency games
employment. I exported the final soundtrack on the 16th of March, 2006,
marking the completion of the digital version of the film.
After
a failed Cannes submission (I found out afterwards that the DVD may
have been a dud...not that it would have made any difference anyway), I
almost
abandoned the concept of film
festivals, but
decided to give it one more shot. I lowered my standards and
focused on a more modest goal: the ACADEMY AWARDS. I
submitted it to the
LA Shorts
Fest, one of the final remaining qualifying festivals for the
year, and was selected. Now the race was on to get the "film" onto film
with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. One of the requirements for
Academy eligibility is that the film has to win its category in a
qualifying festival. Another is that it is to be screened at
the
festival in 35mm or a HD cinema format. Nobody seemed to have
facilities for transferring to
the latter, so 35mm it would have to be.
I
needed to get the audio fine-tuned for theatre sound systems as well as
have
it Dolby Digital certified (requiring a $780 licence fee), so with two
weeks
to spare I ran it through Soundfirm for a four hour mastering session ($1,000),
and then off to Cinevex for the
35mm transfer ($4,700). Total cost of the film excluding
living expenses: ~$20,000.
Mastering at Soundfirm, Chris
Goodes at the helm.
 The spoils
And there you have it. So was it all
worth it?
Well,
it was up to a point. Unfortunately I passed that point
somewhere
around year four, and after that the odds of any kind of worthwhile
return increasingly diminished. I tried to salvage the
situation
by piling even more of my eggs
into the one basket, and eventually I could no longer even imagine an
outcome that would
justify such a densely packed basket of eggs.
When I set out, my
goal was simply to improve my job prospects. I had enough
material for that within the first couple of years. After
that it was a matter of following through and finishing off what I'd
started. It became an exercise
in extreme patience and endurance, in which I pushed all my
gear (and some might say my sanity) to near breaking point. I remain hopeful that one day the film's
true purpose will be revealed,
but whatever eventuates, the simple fact is that I just needed to get this
thing out
of my system. I had
already seen the film before I
even started - I just wanted to show everyone else what it looked like.
Find
out what happens next in the ongoing saga that can
be found in the blog which I began shortly
before the LA Shorts Fest.
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