Reflections after the final screening

The film screened, as part of Split Pillow's Chicago360 v.5 documentary series, for the last time this weekend. Although I wasn't able to be there for the final screen, I do sincerely believe that those who saw it at Lincoln Hall were both educated and entertained (I call it the "spoonful of sugar" approach to documentary filmmaking).

Now to be honest, no one ever thinks their film is done, or perfect. There's always something you would change or do differently. I worried that I was too gentle on my cast, took too soft of a position on the issue of how best to deal with the Asian carp "invasion" and essentially downplayed the inherent dramatic conflict of this story. Partly because I internalized some early feedback on the final rough cut, which may not have been the healthiest for my psyche (in hindsight of course). And partly because the short format didn't leave me with much room to delve a bit more into the characters and their positions. I was holding on to that as the lights dimmed, the crowd settled and the result of nearly 1 year of labor on my part flickered and danced across the big silver screen.

I probably didn't exhale until the first round of laughter. Good thing that was around 0:45 seconds in!

One thing I was able to do this weekend, was watch about an hour of Jon Stewart's Rally To Restore Sanity on cable. (Thanks neighbors for letting me dog sit and enjoy your bountiful TV.) The feedback I got on an early cut, was that my point of view for the film came across in the end (good) and that it was essentially "this carp issue really isn't that big of a deal" (rut-ro?) so I have been obsessing over that in my mind for weeks. Now watching Jon Stewart lambaste the media for being inflammatory fear-mongers, I realized that's exactly the thesis of my film. It's not "hey, this isn't a big deal so let's not worry," but rather "hey, these fish are here, it's our fault, that's very real. but let's not panic and hype and scare to the point that we're paralyzed. cause if we do, then the terrorists win."

Thank you Jon Stewart for helping me crystalize that.

Prep, prep and more prep

OMG, i have plane tickets!! This thing is really happening!! Had a production meeting here in LA this weekend with my DP, the insanely smart Kevin Elliott, and my BF, skilled supporter of all things carp, to talk through packing.

Kevin is bringing his 1K chimera on the plane, I bought 2 1k chimera light bulbs from B&H Photo which are being shipped to my fearless associate producer, Allyson Nelson, in Chicago. Also bought a giant flashlight for unexpected dark moments, or filling in between the 1K and the lights that Split Pillow will loan to me. The camera we are using is also Split Pillow's, a Panasonic HVX200 DVCPro camera. It stores data on P2 cards, but sadly Split Pillow only has 8GB cards available for loan. The camera holds two cards at once for a total of 16GB of space. If we shoot at 720(HD), we can shoot for about 30 minutes. Given that I have interviews set up back to back with little downtime and by our workflow estimates, using the camera as a deck, the cards will download to my Macbook Pro at a rate of 1:1 (30 minutes for 30 minutes of data), I am looking into renting bigger cards.

Still need:

• more P2 card storage space
• an in-field sound recordist
• possibly a p2 card reader (so that we don't have to tie up the camera)
• a rental car and somewhere to sleep
• 2x1TB external hard drives for redundant backup