TAG | post-production
On Saturday night, I hosted in Dallas the first of what should be numerous rough cut screenings of Life’s Waltz, which we’re now experimenting with a new title: The Mayor. It was a major milestone in the progression of the documentary project, because in order to have a film worth screening, I needed to edit the film to a point that it was worth seeing! This actually entailed editing all day on my birthday (January 28) and all night, getting only a few hours of sleep each night leading up to the screening 
It took me back to the good old days in film school, haha. At any rate, I had finished a first cut back at the end of October, which had clocked in at about 2:15 hours. While it had its own strengths and weaknesses, I suggested something radical, which may not sit well at first with some of y’all reading this: what if we focused this movie on just one character? For the longest time, we had been operating and filming under the assumption that we were making a documentary generally about “life in old age, inside of a retirement community”. But as we knew deep down, the strength of film lies in the characters and their stories. There was just so much material that had already been left out of the first cut, and it was still so long, that we decided to go in the opposite direction for the next cut. And voilà!
The second cut of the film, clocking in at 1:32 hours, was almost like a new first cut in terms of having to completely re-envision the approach, the story, and the narrative. Let me clarify: this doesn’t mean that there’s only one character in the film at this point; in truth, there is currently one main character, Sam (known as “The Mayor” of TVN), and two featured characters, Dorothy and Ceil. In addition, plenty of other people appear in the film, and going forward, I will work to incorporate other voices into the film. It has been the right approach to try to make the film very focused, about just one man, and then to build out from that core, rather than the original approach, which was to try to include everything and everyone. Moving forward, we will try adding more voices to the core of the film. In fact, this was the overwhelming demand during the discussion at the rough cut screening. We haven’t forgotten about the other characters, it’s just that there’s so much material at hand that it would be easy to make a really diluted, topical/conversational film. But if there’s one thing I learned in film school, it’s that film’s strength is in its emotional impact. In order to carry emotional weight, to reach out and touch an audience, you have to let the audience get to know a character, get involved in their life, and go through a journey with him/her. So this is the current plan. I will continue to refine the film, probably expand it out some to more voices, and I will post more later on specific directions, characters, and scenes.
I’ll aim to have a trailer done by the end of this month that everyone can enjoy and start getting excited about. I realize that it’s been a long journey and you haven’t gotten to see any of the actual film yet, but we thank you very much for sticking around. Because there’s so much amazing material that will inevitably not make it into the film itself, we are considering releasing a lot of content online and as DVD extras. We want to get as much of this material out as possible and tell as many stories as possible; we just need to take it one step at a time. Stay tuned!
P.S. If you are interested in participating in future rough cut screenings, be they in Dallas or LA, please let us know!
Jared gives an update on Life’s Waltz in the editing room from the frontlines, 7 months into the assistant editing and editing process. Full rough assembly complete!
I originally drafted this post on April 14. I updated it to reflect more changes that have occurred. To put it concretely, this is our plan that will guide us (and may change) over the next few months as we continue to edit:
As you can see, as I post this, it’s much later than 2 or 3 months after we started the entire project in late November, which would have had us finishing the project and saying goodbye in February or so. That’s how long we originally intended to work on the project. But when we first started realizing that we’d be shooting and then editing instead of both simultaneously, we shifted back our sights and told people we thought we’d screen the film at TVN (where they intend to do a big red carpet event for the whole community!) in late April, early May. This is no longer realistic either. In fact, it’s not even close, considering that it’s now August, and we’d have to time travel to make that deadline. We’re looking at December 31st, 2009 for an end-date to the creative aspects of the project. In other words, have a finished product on our hands by the end of the year, February at the latest. That’s a full year later than we originally thought. But, it’s in line with what all the pros told us: they’ve never edited a documentary in less than 6 months to a year (and that’s just editing).
Now how does that sound? Things have definitely changed, but it feels good. We both feel good about this, despite any issues or grievances that have arisen like in any relationship. We’re on course and trekking forward. Look for less frequent blog posts but more substantial ones when they come, though we’ll still give the occasional post-production status update via vlog.
Since I last began writing about The New Deal, even more has changed. Ashley’s now back in Oregon doing producing work, while I’ve stuck around in Dallas to continue editing. My goal is to have a rough cut of the film done by September 1 (may be pushed back a couple of weeks because I just got back from that long in NYC), and Ashley’s goal is to raise money for finishing funds (such as for titles, graphics, removing all those damn reflections in people’s glasses, and DVD mastering, authoring, and replication). In addition, Life’s Waltz has taken on an intern (volunteer?)! He’s already been doing a lot of assistant editing work and has even started cutting some Old Stories. Finally, to give y’all sense of direction, we received some excellent advice from Mark Harris (Producer, Darfur Now), whom we met with when we sojourned to LA a couple of months ago, to try to aim for a premiere at SXSW – South by Southwest – the now-famous Austin film and music festival. That’s in April, and submissions are likely due around the end of the year, so that puts us on an interesting and healthy timeline.
We’re excited, we think we have a much better grasp on the realities of what we’re doing, and barring unforeseen acts of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we’re in it for good for the long haul.
Ashley gives us a producing update from Oregon!
