finishing the edit

Four months after finishing principle photography on Stomp! Shout! Scream!, I can see the light at the end of the post production tunnel. There’s a fine-tuned rough cut, completed and delivered to soundtrack composer John Ceretta, a long-time Atlanta musician who’s compositions for the Center for Puppetry Arts’ productions have won him tremendous accolades. John has about 6 weeks to deliver his music and at that point I’ll “lock the picture.” That is, I’ll stop messing with it and call it essentially done. Another exciting prospect in the works is having the opening titles animated at Radical Axis, the company that animates Adult Swim shows. Radical Axis principals Scott Fry and Craig Hartin have been great supporters of this project since the beginning and I’m trilled that we’ll be able to work together.

One major goal I had for the film was to be able to show it in theaters, but generally films with small budgets can’t afford to get a negative cut and strike prints. I'm still trying to work out the details, but it looks like I’ll be able to transfer my 35mm negative to High Definition video tape, enabling the final film to be seen big and beautiful. More and more film festivals and theaters are using HD video projectors to show low budget films, and television has developed a voracious appetite for anything HD. These are excellent prospects for getting Stomp! Shout! Scream! seen by as many people as possible.

The next 2 months will be spent putting the final polishes on the film and, like most of the film making process, it’s pretty tedious and not at all glamorous (and, therefore, these journals may not be as frequent). I hope to have a finished film in May, start submitting to film festivals in June, and premiering in the fall. That sure seems like a long ways away, but I’ve been working on this project since January 2003 and it’s no time to get impatient. The time and effort spent over the next few months is some of the most important in the production of this film. A film like this-- a beach party rock and roll monster movie-- has a built-in audience, but also a limited audience. By putting in that extra bit of energy into the fine-tuning of this film, by polishing this thing until it’s the best looking, best sounding beach party monster movie it can be, I can hopefully push Stomp! Shout! Scream! beyond it’s built-in limitations.