Picture Locked & More

I've finally finished editing BORDERLINE. I'm happy with the movie, though I could have said, "I'll edit just one more day" for the rest of my life. The final cut is about 9 minutes and 30 seconds and will be about 11 minutes once the credits are done. That's a good short film length. From what I've heard, a lot of USC shorts usually turn out to be 15-16 minutes and they don't get into many festivals because festivals like to put a bunch of 8-12 minute shorts in a program instead of just a few 15-25 minute shorts. So I feel good.

But now a new door has opened and that is the post editing process:

negative cutting
sound editing
titles
scoring
color timing
printing a print to screen

All this shit is new to me and all of the above tasks rely on each other to finish. Timing this process is so tedious and confusing. However it's a GREAT learning experience and I'm very happy to be doing it. A lot of money that has been sitting in my Borderline account is now being spent and it's almost all gone. But it's going to things that I have never known much about and so it's ok to see the money go.

POSSIBLE SCREENING DATE: END OF MAY/ EARLY JUNE

My co-producer and I are both finishing our thesis films at the same time and we're planning on screening our films at USC for friends/ family/ faculty/ and other people some time in late May/ early June. I will keep those interested posted on this website and once we lock a date, I will be sending out mass e-mails and snail mail invites.

In other news I was in Berlin last week because a very good friend of mine from USC got his thesis film accepted into the Berlin International Film Festival. In Europe the top 3 film fests are Cannes, Venice, and Berlin - So this was a big deal and I went to join in his festival experience while visiting Germany. His film won 2nd place (The Silver Bear) and he got a lot of press and attention. It made me very jealous, but also made me excited about getting Borderline done so I can start sending it out into the festival fray.

That's all for now.

Sam Lem