Films are not released….

…they escape.  So says Ben Burtt, editor and master sound designer.  And he is absolutely right!  If you’ve ever made or worked on a film, you know what he’s talking about.  There’s never any area that goes exactly as you planned, or completely perfect.  It takes on a life of its own, running along at breakneck speed, while its poor director tries desperately to hang on.

Sometimes I think they do it to me on purpose.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing the past few weeks.  And even though it’s going very well so far, better than I could have hoped, it still feels like I’m frantically chasing after it.  I wrote the script months ago, and my super-talented, artistic sister and I have been working on storyboards (meaning, she drew, I dictated).  Then there were locations to be found, costumes to plan, and a dolley to build.  My very sweet, dedicated actress came up on the eighth and ninth to film, and we got everything shot.  “In the can,” as they say, even though we don’t use film any more, so technically, there’s no can.

And I didn’t even mention the ADR, scheduling, rehearsals, highlighting my actors’ lines for them, capturing, sorting and organizing the footage, and everything else that’s gone into it so far.  Trust me, you don’t want to know.

Next up is editing, then the film will be sent off to my composer, a Christian gentleman from the UK who has very kindly offered to score the film for free.  After that, I’ll finish up the color correction, design the DVD, and burn.  Hopefully before my June first deadline!  Not to mention the audio editing and cleaning up that has to be done, a few pick-up shots we need to film, more ADR, title and credit building, video deinterlacing and deshaking, and maybe even some compositing.

So the next time you hear someone talk about a film being “released” — you’ll know they don’t really mean that.  The producer is only saying that to make it sound like he’s in control of the thing.  But you and I and Ben Burtt know better, because films are not released — they escape.