Picture Lock!

WE ARE ALL SMILES BECAUSE WE ARE OFFICIALLY PICTURE-LOCKED!

What does that mean? Well, to be honest, we're calling this "picture lock lite" because all of the elements are in place, but Duncan and his brother still have some animating to do for a couple of scenes and *then* we'll see what picture will really look like, so we're far enough along to move forward with other post-production teammates but not *100%* finished. This means that our composer, Mike Sempert, is finishing our score and we've handed off a Drive to our post-production Sound Mixer/Foley Artist/ADR Recordest/All-Around-Bad-Ass, Tim Griggs, to get cracking on our sound mix. We've been dabbling in color grading/correction (as seen in our last update) and now that we know what picture is really going to look like, we can also start nailing that down.

You may remember from our last update that we had a Works-In-Progress screening in partnership with Austin Film Society scheduled for the beginning of August and we're happy to report that it was an extremely productive night for us.

We went in knowing our cut was too long but had been staring at it for too damn long to figure out where we could cut and having these trusted, fresh eyes on the movie made for some incredibly insightful, constructive feedback. We're now sitting at a happy 83 minutes before adding credit sequences which we think provides great pacing, clear character arcs and a relationship that will resonate (personal favorite feedback from the screening: "Barry and Phyllis' relationship felt real and moving - it made me miss my girlfriend. *HEART EYE EMOJI*!!!!). We also feel strongly, as people who have been working for and attending local film festivals for the past several years, that 85-ish minutes is the perfect "festival length" - it puts your run time + q&a under 2 hours with some wiggle room in case it gets started late or the q&a runs long - and we're hoping that is among the many things the festivals we seek will find attractive.

We are now also officially on IMDb! Check out our page and our cast and crew pages to boost our STARmeter ratings to keep those smiles on our faces as we get closer to fest submissions.

The Future Holds:

-Duncan and Will finishing the 3 animated sequences

-Completed Score

-Completed Audio Mix

-Completed Color Grading/Correction

-Poster & Marketing Materials Design

-Sundance Submission: Sept 14th

-SXSW Submission: Sept 20th (official deadline) or Oct 18 (late deadline)

-More Festival Research (we have 75ish festivals on our list beyond the two big dogs I just mentioned so it's now time to really hone in on what we want to spend our submission dollars on, so, if you have any favorite festivals you've played or attended, I would love to hear personal anecdotes!)