1 Week Countdown

With one week until the Sundance Deadline and 9 days until the Screening, I feel like I have a semi-good handle on things...

After a messy couple of weeks dealing with sync issues in my Dolby mix, and a missing fade to black at the end of my film, things are just about finished...

I have to get my final print onto video so I can get DVDs made. The Sundance deadline is on Friday!

Screening Month

It's so close to the screening and I'm very nervous. Not so much about the screening because I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get all my ducks in a row for that. What I'm most concerned about is getting my film onto DVD so I can send it out to Sundance by the September 21st deadline.

Anyone have a grand or 2 laying around? I could use it to make the dvd house whip those up a lot quicker.

E-mail me if you're interested in donating a little more, K?

Just kidding... Not really... Just kidding...

Sam

Home Stretch

This weekend we finally completed the final mix of the sound. It has been a long process with a few late nights and technical problems. But both me and my mixer/ friend Raj are very happy with how it all sounds.

Which takes me into the home stretch. The movie is edited, sound mixed, and color timed, which means all of the major creative work is done. Now all that's left is the technical jive that gets the movie ready for viewing.

So the next few weeks are moving the film and sound from one production house to another, transfering and such, and then the screening on the 23rd.


But now my biggest goal is to raise a little more moolah, and get the film out to Sundance (The deadline is on the 21st of September).

Color Timing

I saw my film projected on a large screen for the first time today. I have been seeing it on tiny computer screens and low resolution DVDs for the past year. It was incredible. Every scene looks fantastic and the ones that I had been thinking "maybe it's too dark" or "maybe it's not warm enough" we were able to fix.

I'm very excited about finishing.

Sam

I'm starting to get excited about the screening in 2 months. This is what the poster may look like.

It also has the new tagline.

Screening Date

We've chosen a screening date. It's official. More official than the last time I said it was official...

Sunday, September 23rd!!!

Kisses,
Sam Lem

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

Close To Locking

For the last few weeks I've been showing my movie to friends, family, and faculty. I've gotten plenty of feedback, mostly good. I showed a cut of the movie to the class I'm a teachers assistant for. This enabled me to get responses from a group of people that had no idea what the movie was about. Showing it to this fresh audience was really helpful. There were things that people enjoyed and laughed at, and there were parts that were meant to be meaningful or funny and totally did not come across that way.

So my schedule says I should be picture locked my December 5th. This means I stop editing and start working on sound, music, titles, etc. I think this is a doable thing. I have to show the movie to about 3 faculty members at USC. This is a requirement. I think it's a good idea because these people have seen hundreds of short films so they know how to make a short story work in a short amount of time.

So the movie is going well. I'm really happy with how it's looking. I am nervous about starting to work on Music because all of the temporary music I've tried to put in hasn't really fit. But my mentor at school says I have to keep looking and trying new stuff. So I will.

Temp Music

I've begun testing out music in different spots of the film. I'm doing this for a few reasons. 1) I want to find out where score will go and 2) I want some form of music to be in the film when I start screening it for faculty and friends to give me feedback.

It's a fun yet annoying process. Some songs work and some don't. I really try to make a song work by fidgeting with where it comes in and where it goes out. But most of the time it ends up not working so I do all that work for nothing. But when I find the song that fits it feels great. But it takes so many tries! I'm testing mostly a variety of jazz music because you can find pretty much anything for any mood. Also, there are typically no words in jazz tunes.

I am hoping to be picture locked by the end of November so I can give the picture to my composer and my (soon to be found) sound editor. I'm looking forward to the screenings as well. Those should start in about a week.

Sam Lem

A good day.

The last week of editing has been rough. I've seen the movie too many times in the editing lab and I've grown bored and lost hope.

Maybe I'm just being dramatic, but from what most of my friends at USC have told me, there is a period during the cutting process where you believe your movie is complete shit.

Well today I got over that.

While sulking during the last week I have also been trying to figure out what is wrong. I've said to myself, 'The movie is too slow' 'I need to cut a scene' 'The movie isn't funny' 'The story doesn't work' 'This shot didn't turn out like I hoped.'

My editor Annie and I both agreed that the latest cut dragged so we cut a minute off making the running time 12 minutes... But that wasn't the answer.

Well, without revealing anything about the movie I'll just say this: Today I had an idea. We moved a piece of a scene to a place where I hadn't intended when I wrote the script. It made a HUGE difference. I am out of my funk and ready to move on.

I'm going to start screening the movie for certain friends and family now to start to gauge how things are playing to an audience. I'm nervous, but more confident than I have been.

The First Draft

Today I saw the first cut of my movie.

This morning I was really nervous. I've been having nightmares, daydreams, and all other forms of dreams that involve worrying about whether or not the footage would cut together, are the performances there, did I forget an important piece of information, etc.

SO

I saw the cut and it looked pretty darn good. It was the first time I had seen any of the footage with dialogue. I had previously seen the footage without sound when they were transferring the film to tape. So that was the first thing that was great to see. From there I saw the script somewhat come together.

I gave my editor Annie Lukowsi, notes about what I liked and didn't like and she had some questions for me about what I had intended. It was pretty fun. There are a lot of bits and pieces to work on now but I am more content knowing that the film we shot is going to work.

I'll keep you posted on the cutting process.

Status Of Post Production

A lot of people have been asking me "Where's the trailer!?!? I can't wait to see the trailer!!!" The truth is, that part of the website is just a placeholder for now.

As of the last week of August, my editor Annie Lukowski has just begun piecing together the footage from last month's shoot. The editing process will take about 3 months and after that, there's scoring, audio mixing, printing to film, etc.

Basically, it will be a long time before anyone sees a trailer so you'll just have to hang tight for a while. I'm eager to see the movie too and Annie and I are going to move as quickly as we can to get a good looking film.

I'll keep you posted!

Borderline Online!

Hey anyone interested...

You can check here to get updates on the progress of Borderline. I'll try to update it at least once every couple of weeks.