Good News, and the MARLON To-Do List

Hey everybody. Wanted to spend a little time letting you all know what's going on. I've been so busy pushing papers and playing phone tag that I haven't had much of a chance to update the site (though I did add my personal shooting script to the Merchandise section).

So. I'm going to post my to-do list. Hopefully I'll be checking a lot of these off in the next couple of weeks. The movie isn't done yet, but every day it's closer than it was the day before.

1) Finish Color Grade with Bird (Test Pass, polish, blu-ray test, polish, FINAL)
2) Finish Credit Crawl, Title Cards, and Opening Credits (Add Ryan's Friends)
3) Piano and Vocals for "Ave Maria"
4) Piano Suite from Enron
5) Bass Parts for all songs
6) Release from: Subaru
7) Release from: Woodford
8) Contact Artist from Brandon's House: Release
9) Get all Location Releases Signed
10) Get all Cast and Crew Releases Signed
11) Lead Guitar Parts
12) Vocals for Last Two Metal Tracks
13) Soundtrack Final Mixes
14) Foley
15) ADR
16) Preliminary Sound Mix (polish, blu-ray test, polish, FINAL)

And that's that. No small amount of work, of course, but we're making progress. I meant to write about this some time back, when it actually happened, but I got so swept up in the momentum of the moment that I just kept working, instead of updating the journal: I've gotten in touch with Pro Impact Sports and the Chicago Blackhawks, and both have given me clearance to use their logos in Marlon! Every company that gives me the okay to leave the logo in adds a little more legitimacy to this odd little indie. Both organizations were lovely about the whole thing, and the people I worked with while obtaining the permissions were absolutely incredible. The feedback on Marlon from Pro Impact Sports in particular has been a major inspiration and motivator for me these past few weeks as I continue to slough through reams of paperwork.

As far as Location Releases go, most of them are signed. The FRT signed off immediately, and with good luck and wishes well. I've gotta say, all my cast and crew came from the University, and whatever my opinions on higher education in the United States, it really is a vibrant, creative environment if you look at it from the right angle (from the wrong angle, many of the writing and theatre students look suspiciously like pretentious, entitled, immature douchebags, but I digress). I wrote the script for Marlon as soon as I graduated, enabled in large part by my horizon-expanding education at the hands of such Educational Outlaws as Lisa Coutley, Austin Hummell, and Beverly Matherne. It is to these three that I owe almost all of my higher aspirations as a writer.

(All the sex jokes in Marlon, you'd never know I had any.)

Cast and Crew Releases have been easy. I can't cross it off the list yet, because I'm still waiting for signatures from a few out-of-staters who are dealing with digital copies, but everyone has gotten back to me and confirmed that signed releases are on the way. Hopefully I'll have that done in the next few days.

The rest is audio. And that is proving incredibly difficult. For whatever reason, I'm working way more than I usually do: Marlon was only possible because I've been in a situation for a few years now where I have had enormous flexibility in my schedule. Lately, that's changed, and my schedule is not only inflexible, but I'm working twice the hours I used to. It isn't that I have a problem with working: it's that Dan also has a job (go figure), and where I used to be able to say, "Fuck yeah, I can come over right now/tomorrow at 2:00 a.m./whenever you need me," now I'm locked in. Dan's availability and my availability are clashing in an incredibly counterproductive way, and that's been our major holdup in postproduction so far.

The man has been working like a maniac to find workarounds and small windows for us to meet, and every time we do, shit gets done. Making a full-length, legitimate film in your spare time is hard. Seriously hard. But if we do it right, maybe it all pays off, and we go get to make pretend for the rest of our lives, on-set forever. The reward outweighs the cost a hundredfold.

Now the trick is finding the time to pay the cost.

More to come. Right now I have to message a woman about dying on-mic, and add a few names to a credit crawl.

--Max Peterson
7 Days Before the Last Sundance Deadline