Final Countdown

With just over four weeks remaining until the world premiere of Justice Is Mind on August 18 at the Palace Theatre in Albany, the last bits of post-production are underway. The film is edited, scored, the special effects have been built and two hours of sound mixing are complete. That just leaves that last fifteen minutes to mix then off to color correction with the last action being the pressing of the exhibition DVDs.

Earlier this week I was contacted by another sales agency that is interested in reviewing Justice for distribution and sale. As I mentioned in my last post, it’s really key to have a proper IMDB set-up as that’s how they found me. Now let me be clear on something, the number of independent films seeking distribution is staggering. Yes, every filmmaker wants the best deal for their project, but when a sales agency or distributor comes knocking you simply drop what you are doing and address the opportunity at hand. And don’t make it difficult for them to contact you. I promise you they have other films they are considering and will just move on to the next film. With five agents already reviewing Justice prior to our industry screening, participating in a film market or even showing at festival, I’m very encouraged by this early interest.

Speaking of this week’s activities, I was delighted to learn that my friends, backers and partners in Justice Is Mind, Mary Wenninger and Stefan Knieling were coming up to visit. It was so great visiting with them yesterday. When I showed them parts of Justice Is Mind on my laptop one of the first things they said was, “We really need to thank all these people for their work.” Indeed, as I have endeavored to do throughout the process of the development of Justice, you can never thank people enough for their work and contribution.

Producing a feature film is not easy and it takes long term view for anyone involved in the process. As I’ve said before I’ll say again, shooting the film is the easy part it’s pre and post that has the most challenges. Recently I was at the gym and someone walked up to me and asked “When is the film coming to theatres?” and “why is it taking you so long to finish it?” You know when I hear comments like this, sometimes I just want to scream. Instead, I launched into a filmmaking 101 lecture on how this business works that occupied at least fifteen minutes of his time. I didn’t care if his workout was being affected or if he felt insulted. He asked a question and he got an answer. To create a quality film takes time. By all accounts post-production generally takes about a year, we are doing it in less. More importantly, we haven’t had to reshoot anything.

The one thing that I believe worked for Justice throughout the entire process is that we had a locked script and the writer was on set (me). Where you see films get into “trouble” is when writing is done on set and suddenly a plot hole or continuity issue is created. With Justice there were a few occasions when I had to create a scene due to actor schedules or some other unforeseen situation that came up. But because the actors and crew knew the story so well, everything was pretty seamless. And as a writer, you also need to be flexible to make adjustments when needed.

T-minus 35 days.