Soooooo close...

I haven't been able to spend much time blogging lately. Life has gotten busy since I took over as Director of the Film & Digital Media program, not to mention I also go up for tenure this semester, and, hmmm... I think I was also working on a little film project, wasn't I?

Oh yes, that behemoth that is known as Endings... As the title of this post implies, we are quite close to completion on the film. So close that I'm actually starting to do things like make a list of festivals in deadline order...

Here's where things stand, in case people are interested:

• The music is almost done. The composer might disagree with me on the phrasing here, of course, but my perception is that we lack only a few pieces of music, and there are a few others that we still have to tweak.
  
• The animation is almost done. There are three shots left to animate. When you can count the remaining items on one hand, that's a good thing. Of course, two of those three are among the more important animated shots in the entire film, but I don't want to quibble about details.
  
• The sound designer and mixer are already hard at work trying to get a "festival mix" done (that is, it won't be the complete and final sound mix, but it will be done enough for festival submission).

And that is it. Those are the last remaining steps.

Well, we do have to get all those things merged together. Animator has to send fully rendered high resolution clips to editor (they are both in L.A.) to put on the film timeline, replacing the temporary non-animated shots. Composer has to upload mastered tracks to me, which I then upload to sound designer and mixer with specific location and mix instructions.

They have to get the final mix (or the temp mix, in this case) to the editor to put on the timeline, replacing the original sound (which has not been 'cleaned up' and which has very few sound effects added).

Editor then has to take all of that and export a high quality video file and slap it on a DVD. (I say that as though it happens quickly; it does not. Exporting out 97 minute DVD-quality video file is a long process, as is burning a DVD made with that file).

Then editor will Fed Ex the DVD to me for approval. I will approve it (one hopes).

I will then make dubs of the DVD before sending it out to festivals.

Specifically to Sundance, whose deadline is fast approaching.

Can you tell I'm having a stressful week. Maybe I shouldn't have written all this out. It's stressing me out more.