Film Contest Update #5

The 18.2 gigabytes of footage has been parsed into take 77 files. Now the real fun begins. A bit under 18 hours remain.

We're 13 minutes behind where we were last year. Which is actually very good, because this should be an easier movie to edit, and this year I have my own equipment for exporting an SVHS copy, which will save an hour or more of last year's frantic, last-minute scrambling.

In true Kasparov style, I am removing my watch now. Up and over, boys!

Film Contest Update #6

The audio (so far) is dreamy.

The same microphone as before, the same boom techniques, but this time using a GL-1 with a professional XLR audio adapter. The room tone is the same from shot to shot, independant of which way the mic is pointing! I can just put random takes next to each other and the room tone matches. I can edit purely on what clips look good next to each other, not trying to optimize some very complicated looks-good/sounds-good curve.

I think I'm going to faint.

Film Contest Update #7

We have a rough cut (no credits). It is 9:04 long and took me about 8.5 hours. That is about 1.5 hours longer than last year, but I think this is much closer to a final cut. The audio alone makes it closer to a final cut than anything we've ever made before.

I clocked 1.05 minutes/hour tonight. I still have no idea what that number means.

I'm going to go take a nap now before I pass out.

9.5 hours remaining.

Film Contest Update #8

I'm (mostly) alive again.

The credit sequences are done, putting us at a grand total of nine minutes and forty five seconds, out of ten minutes maximum. Aw yeah.

We also have a title: The Grace of Tears. (Subtitle: A Passion Play.) After idly poking around for good quotes from the Bible or Shakespeare, I realized that I was forgetting one of my favorite -- and in this case amazingly relevant -- sources of name-phrases: the Malleus Maleficarum. ('Solemn Words' came from there, as well as 'By Means of Further Witchcraft', an unfinished short story.) It turns out that witches can't cry, because 'it can be said that the grace of tears is one of the chief gifts allowed to the penitent'. Woo! Sometimes you hunt titles, sometimes they ambush you.

I have a bit under five hours effective time left, which can all be spent polishing to my heart's content. Having production values kicks ass.

Film Contest Update #9

The Grace of Tears: A Passion Play is sitting on the desk next to me, contained in an S-VHS tape. It is nine minutes and forty seven seconds long.

There are fifty four minutes remaining in the contest. I am now putting my watch back on and heading out to the drop-off location. I'm about to turn in what might be Midgard Studios' finest work ever.

With some luck I'll even be conscious for some of tomorrow.

Film Contest Update #10

It is turned in. All done. Now we just wait to hear back about who made the top ten. Time to go veg watching shiny new season 4 Buffy DVDs and wait for my brain to shut off.