um... we're done.

almost. pretty much. basically.

there are a few shots to pick up on saturday before the wrap party - mostly joe driving around on various freeways.

we pretty much went out with a whisper. the last full day of production consisted of myself, joe, alicia, and lucy in salem shooting scenes in which joe was mostly in a single room, had no actual interation with other characters, very little dialogue and a lot of repeated shots. it went well and was a reasonably short day. no major issues or concerns or weirdness.

and like that [poof] it was done.

(at least for most of the other people. joe and i still have a lot of work to do (me: editing; joe: music) and we'll still have to call on our friends mike johnson and lisa wells to fill in a few gaps (mike for music/lisa for adr (we had some microphone failure in one of her scenes)). and, of course, there's the building of the ambient soundtrack as well as securing the rights to source music (most of which we're hoping will come from our good friends parks & recreation... but we won't know exactly what we need until the cut is assembled (unfortunately, we are no martin scorsese). then there's all the business of film festivals and publicity materials (and, oh yeah, we've got to try and arrange cast photos before anyone else changes their appearance too drastically) and trying to find a way for people to actually see this movie.)

but for now, we can give ourselves permission to breath again. most of us have our weekends back. and the work becomes much calmer and almost meditative (at least, the editing seems that way). they say that every movie is written three times - once in script form, once during production, and once in the editing. the first time, with the script, was fantastic - mostly joe and i sat around in bars and argued over the details and thought of things to make ourselves laugh (then i went home and typed it). the second time was (to borrow a term from the poetess, b. spears) chaotic, but fun, but still crazy and too fast and too slow and stressful and brilliant. and now we're back to beer and laughs. hopefully.

sorry... do i sound pessimistic and/or "bummed out"? really, i'm not. i feel great about everything and the scenes i've cut together so far look terrific and i'm excited to see all the moments that we worked so hard to capture all lined-up and playing off of each other. it should be a lot of fun. really.

(maybe this is the whole post-partum thing flaring up. and i wasn't even aware i had a birthing canal. (sorry, is that too graphic?))