The six year old's reaction

Today I showed Nathalie, her parents, and 3-year old and 9-year old brothers, the film. Nathalie has grown since the last time I saw her, at her 6th birthday last summer. Her cheeks have lost their baby fat and she's gotten more giggly. I was slightly terrified that the family would watch in expressionless-horror, think that I had created some horrible impenetrable art piece that used their daughter as a wooden doll. But no, they actually seemed to love it. Nathalie and her brothers shrieked with delight when they saw her face on the television screen. She laughed because she remembered filming the movie but would never have imagined that this is what it would look like. The parents thought it was beautiful and flowed well. The three-year old was far more interested in showing me the farting sounds in "Ice Age" than watching my film. So it was a nice little bit of encouragement.

I am basically in a holding pattern, the sound and image editing 95% done, now I need to send the film to festivals and look for money. I have a friend of mine who is going to try to help me with this but it seems quite hopeless. Plus, I spend far too much time looking at film festival websites and dreaming of sitting in crowded theaters in krakow and lisbon and edinburgh and portland, and far too little actually looking for funding and writing scripts and being a creative spirit. The internet is an addictive force that is pulling me into mediocre behavior. I believe only chocolate will save me.

Roadblocks

Oh happy new year dear blog readers. It seems quite strange that this blog is going into its 3rd year (is that possible? no!) on the same little film. To be honest, I'm quite tired of it. Not tired enough to abandon filmmaking, but definitely in need of a long nap. Just writing for a long while. In early December I managed to get this crusty old finance guy at my school to say, and I quote,"you have 950 euros to spend towards your project. I promise." Then I hassled two different labs until I miraculously negotiated a decent price with eclair for the beta master copy. Granted, this means abandoning hopes of 35mm blow-up, but it still is better than nothing and I need a beta tape to graduate. All this negotiating took a ridiculous amount of phonecalls and work. In the meanwhile I've been working on my sound and my sound designer is getting closer to giving me a quite nice sound mix. I have been plotting the cast and crew screening.
So today I head over to my disgusting, graffiti-filled, trash-dump of a school and present the estimate so I can pick up my purchase order, bring it to the lab, finish my film in the next few weeks, send it to festivals, and graduate before I start a job in London. All seems well. But then crusty old finance man seems to have completely forgotten his promise, claims the funds had already been used, there'd been some little mistake, ha-ha, oh well. I was not feeling ha-ha oh-well.
I feel set-back and deflated, but not end-of-the-world deflated. I read New Yorker comics on the train on the way back home and they made me laugh. I read the adorable "inspirational article" my friend Bronwen mailed me about picking yourself up when you fall down. I ate a delicious Belgium chocolate with a hazelnut inside that my dad gave me. I talked to my love on the phone.
So things are not all that bad. But not all that good.