Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted and it’s not because nothing’s been happening; much to the contrary, mainly non-movie stuff though.
So, obviously we didn’t make it into Sundance. While we are disappointed, in hindsight we aren’t entirely surprised. We learned a couple of things about the process though one of which I think is important to share.
We were extremely determined to finish
Brood in time for Sundance; so much so that I think it blinded us. Now we submit a cut of the film to Sundance, however there were a number of technical glitches in the submission. Now the documentation states even encourages filmmakers to submit their rough cuts to them. They state that they often receive films with missing titles, technical glitches, missing audio etc. They state that the reviewers are used to viewing movies in this state. They only ask that you provide a list of the issues along with your DVD so that they know that the loud POP at 3:30 is not intentional. We had our rough cut ready for Sundance about 3 weeks prior to the deadline. The only problem was we couldn’t watch it! We simply couldn’t get the film onto a DVD! We had watched the entire film in pieces through out the process, but had never rendered it to a DVD. About 3 days before the deadline, we finally got a version of
Brood on DVD.
Ken had finally burned it and sat down to watch it on 42" television. What did he see? Trouble! First, there was flickering through out various parts. This was a result of a problem the color correction applied to the movie. When previewed, it looked fine; however the render showed random flickering. This really wasn’t a show stopper based on the documentation from Sundance. We’ll simply add that to the list of things. Second was the infamous CLICK! I had recently re-scored a part of the film and when I exported the WAV file, I forgot to turn off the click-track. I hadn’t listened to the WAV file before I added it to the project directory and neither did Ken before he rendered the movie. Ken didn’t really know what to do. He thought that I was trying something different and while he didn’t like what he heard, he thought that the click was intentional, but WAY too loud. I was busy that weekend and since he though that the click was intentional; his only option was to lower the volume on the click and re-render the audio.
On Monday when we spoke I told him that the click was not intentional and that it was a stupid mistake on my part. While he was glad that the click was unintentional and that he didn’t have to tell me that my music sucks, he didn’t have any time left for a new version or even a re-render.
At this point we should have stopped and waited until Sundance 2009, but we were so close to the end that we were blinded by what we were reading on the Sundance website. Our thought was, we’ll just add the click as one of the issues and they won’t mind, they’ll see the film for what it is. A great story, and entertaining film, and a great accomplishment by two newcomers who made a feature length film for under $3000.
We were wrong. I understand what the people at Sundance were saying when they state that they are "used to receiving incomplete works." I don’t think they were trying to mislead or provide false hope. However, they did receive 8000 submissions this year. With that volume you have to base your decisions on more than whether or not the reviewer liked the film. They’d have to take technical issues into account. Let’s say that there were too films in the same genre;
Brood and "Something Else Similar". The same reviewer reviews both films and likes them both, actually he likes
Brood more. However
Brood was made by two inexperienced filmmakers and has technical glitches. "Something Else Similar" is glitch free. Does the reviewer take his chances on the
Brood and "hope" we fix our issues or does he take the one he likes less, but is glitch free. He really has no choice but to eliminate
Brood.
Now I’m sure that incomplete films were accepted to the festival. However they were likely multi-million dollar versions of incomplete works with an assurance that the film will be completed in time.
Sundance does not provide feedback or a reason why the film wasn’t accepted. Now I can understand that they don’t want to send out 7600 this-is-why-we-think-your-film-sucks emails. That wouldn’t be good to anyone. However, I’d have to imagine that reviewers must have some sort of checklist, form or review guide they have to fill out as a part of the process. This form likely has certain criteria, perhaps a rating scale for various elements. I can’t imagine that the review board takes all 8000 pieces of feedback in essay form and then deliberates on the merits of the essay. Perhaps there 204 reviewers, one for each film accepted, and they can only pick one film. If that’s the case, then a simple pass/fail technique could occur, but I don’t think that’s how it goes. It would be nice, if there is such a form or checklist that it would be posted to your filmmaker profile on the Sundance website. I’m sure they don’t want to be barraged with email from pissed off filmmakers, but it would be nice. I’d rather know whether the reviewer was simply bored, or if he had seizure from the flickering.
So you live and learn. I wish we went with patience as opposed to forcing it out the door.
We are now above the 900 word mark for this post and I think I’m going to stop for now. But don’t fret; I will have a new post in short order.
-Dan