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April 26, 2009
lsgl: i have a rough draft!
by sven at 3:38 pm
A major milestone: Last night I finished assembling my first rough draft for the film!
Current length: 6 min 38 sec. I expect to hit 7 minutes as things get a bit more fleshed out.
I've watched the whole thing beginning-to-end a few times now, and I can see patches that need minor re-thinking… But the story and the overall structure is now locked in.
Psychologically, having a completed rough draft makes a HUGE difference. Everything from here on out is about improving what I have -- not trying to bridge chasms of the unknown through sheer force of imagination.
…Yay!
This feels like a good moment to re-state and clarify my intentions for this filmmaking journey. Here are my goals, in order of priority:
- work at a livable rate of 25hrs/week
- be done in 2009!
- submit to the H.P.Lovecraft Filmfest by the late deadline of Aug 15
- submit to the Platform International Filmfest (likely deadline Mar 1)
It's more important to me to take care of my health than to finish in 2009… It's more important to finish in 2009 than to make the HPLFF deadline… And if I fail that deadline, I'll still be very excited to submit to Platform. Poetically, HPLFF is about loyalty to the fest that spawned the project -- but Platform is about a future of making films that belong in the company of world-class animators.
It's also worth listing the things that I intend to NOT do:
- push myself to the point where health is endangered
- fail to finish this film
- compromise the quality of my film in order to meet an external deadline
- take this project into 2010 with me uncompleted
I'm on track to meet my 100 hour monthly quota for April. At 25hr/wk, I've got 225 more usable hours before Gretchin & I go on our summer trip to Wisconsin. After that, I've got roughly 100 hours more until the HPLFF deadline. So, 325 hours total.
Can I make the HPLFF deadline? It's so hard to guess. I could divide the number of hours I have by how many incomplete shots I have… Which might mean I've got 8-10 hours available per shot (just guessing)…
But given the massive technical differences between shots, that estimate's not worth much.
Anyway. Did I mention that the rough draft's done? Did I mention "YAY!"…?
posted by sven | April 26, 2009 3:38 PM | categories: let sleeping gods lie