Welcome to the the independence insider!
The visual edit is now complete and locked (meaning we will not be making any further changes). There have been some incredibly hard decisions to make over the last few weeks, but we are convinced that the movie we have is the best we can make it. The movie is now 1 hr and 41 minutes (before credits) which we believe to be the perfect length. The rough cut was 2 hrs and 2 minutes, so you can imagine how many things had to be cut in those 21 minutes.
There are many reasons why scenes (and moments in scenes) get cut in the editing process. These reasons include technical problems, pacing needs and storytelling decisions. Other things that get cut include dialogue that is repetitive or unnecessary. Sometimes, the visual image clearly shows what’s happening and makes dialogue not only unnecessary, but irritating.
The easiest cuts to explain are the ones made for technical reasons. Several months ago we cut one of my favorite scenes because cows were inappropriately wandering in the background, and the weather just wasn’t consistent with the other half of the scene.
One of the last scenes that was removed was an example of a scene that didn’t advance the story. The scene was great, the actors were great, the camera was great, but the scene didn’t prepare us emotionally for what was needed in the remainder of the movie. The scene made the main character less sympathetic by making her look too strong at a time when the story needed to show her becoming more and more vulnerable. When it was cut, the rest of the movie really seemed to fall into place.
It’s really fun to look back on what we thought we were going to have when we started and what we have now. We could never have known it would end up being what it is when we started, and we are very pleased.
We submitted our rough cut (without sound mix, music and before the last few visual cuts we made) to the Sundance festival at the end of September. We didn’t have much hope that it would be accepted in its rough cut form considering that it would be competing with almost 2000 other feature films for 16 competition slots. Including documentaries and short films, Sundance received 7459 films this year. Sure enough, we received an official rejection last week. While we had always hoped to be able to take the film to the Sundance festival, there are literally thousands of other festivals around the world and other ways to show the movie outside the festival circuit. And now we have some extra time to finish the work to our satisfaction, so that we can submit a quality movie to other festivals.
We are now hard at work on the musical score and the sound mix for the movie and will be recording the music with live musicians early next year.
We are still in need of funds and any donation you care to make will be extremely helpful. At this point in the process, your donation will most likely go to the musicians we hire. So as you’re watching the movie, you can say “Hey, my $10 helped pay for that violinist!”
Checks of any amount can be sent to our fiscal sponsor, Nebraska Independent Film Projects (NIFP) on our behalf. Because NIFP is a non-profit organization, all donations are tax deductible (what a great time of year for that!).
Please send checks to: NIFP P.O. BOX 80205 Lincoln, NE 68501 (www.nifp.org) Please be sure to write "Baby Lion Productions/independence" in the subject line so that your donation comes to us!