seven days till film week
Most days after I come home from work are spent pouring over IFP-related homework for Film Week - there is a lot to prepare for… and it’s not uncommon for me lately to crawl into bed at night feeling a bit overwhelmed, defeated and confused.
I would like to think that my operating on a strange kind of hyper-home-movie mindset, during these last years of writing and editing, has helped keep me grounded to the very personal aspects of For Thousands of Miles; there are so, so many decisions when writing and editing that can lean towards: 1) what does this mean to me?, vs 2) what does this mean to an audience? Both of which are important questions, and, in many cases, the end result may be the same on a question-to-question basis, but I tried, as much as possible, to make decisions on what things meant to me personally - as I didn’t want to get too far down the road of making decisions in favor of an audience.
The point of all this being, with Film Week less than 5 days away till we leave LA!, I’m struggling to shift years of habit and approach, to find just the right internal-balance of an unfamiliar-business-world, with the more comfortable hyper-home-movie mindset. It’s easy to be scared by things we don’t understand, and when I read through the details regarding sales agents, equity financing vs gap financing, prebuy options, minimum sales rights, finishing funds, on and on…
I can feel myself becoming almost defensive, but I know it’s only because I don’t know exactly what these words mean, I mean, I know what they mean, but I don’t know what they mean for the film; and so I swing too far back to home-movie mindset. I’m trying to imagine myself and Erica sitting across the table from someone from SXSW, from Tribeca, Sundance, Rooftop, HBO, NYFF, POV… and I try to imagine myself being confident, smooth, witty, charming, but… I know myself a bit too well to let that fantasy play out too long. I know everything is what I make of it - so I keep reminding myself that these next two weeks could mean the difference between these last stages of post-production taking a matter of months vs years.
Close eyes. Deep breath. Insert something here about a blue whale.
