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Credits Locked!

As of midnight, I locked and rendered the final credits for Sita Sings the Blues. Finally! At last! I set up my machine to render the final reel of the film overnight and went to bed, exhausted.

Lying there, drifting off, I remembered I’d forgotten one name. Just one name. Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow? No! Must take hard drive to lab tomorrow! No time to re-render whole reel! So I got up, hit “cancel”, re-did the credits, and again set my machine to render reel 4 overnight. Sweet sleep at last…

Until I remembered another important credit I’d overlooked. You’d think with all the preparations I’d made, I wouldn’t have to wait until entering fugue state to recall the damn credits correctly. It’s now 1:18 am, and I’m rendering the credits for the third time in as many hours. I suspect I’ve nonetheless left out some important things and people. So, an advance apology to anyone or anything whose name is missing: I’m very sorry. I’ll correct it before it’s released, if a distributor ever picks it up. Mea Culpa.

On the other hand, the list of names and things that are included is pretty staggering. I used to joke about how short the credits would be, since I wrote, directed, produced, designed, animated, and edited the whole thing myself. But that was before “Re-Recording Mixer,” “Dub Facility” and “Dolby Sound Consultant” were even a twinkle in Sound Designer Greg Sextro’s eye. Happily, the longest addition to the credits is the list of names of generous people who donated or loaned me money to make this 35mm print. There’s like 160 of you!

Now it’s 1:30 am, and reel 4 is once again beginning its overnight render. Estimated Time: About 9 Hours. Good night!

Finance Report

Praise be to Laxmi!

Laxmi is both the eternal form of Sita and the Goddess of Wealth. I never really thought about her wealth aspect until now. Because my mind is so blown by the donations coming in for the 35mm master of Sita Sings the Blues.

Folks, you are kind and generous beyond my dreams. So far over $13,000 have come in. Some is from people I know in real life, but most is from people I’ve never met, mere electronic impulses from other synapses in this great hive-mind we call the Internet. I’m sitting here in awe and disbelief. I’m so grateful, so touched, so dazzled my little pea-brain can’t quite handle it. So it’s time for me to envision this as divine and offer thanks.

I thank all of you, I thank the Internets, I thank the Universe, I thank Laxmi.

Credits deadline extension

The lab making the 35mm print master of Sita Sings the Blues has been delayed receiving the requisite film stock, due to a delivery error. That means they can’t print the final reel – with the credits – until Monday. And that means I don’t have to render the credits until Sunday. Which means anyone who wants their name in the credits still has until 10pm Sunday January 27 to make a donation! All donors will be thanked in the credits, but donors of $1K or more get a credit of their choice (Key Grip, Caterer, etc.) in a larger font.

Your Name Here Presents

Big ups and mad props to everyone making donations large and small to Sita Sings the Blues. This is really our film, not just mine – a community project. Most films are financed by big corporations, perpetuating the top-down model of American entertainment: they dictate content from above, and audiences consume what they’re handed below. But Sita seems to be funded by viewers, individual human beings who want to see it get out there. The audience is financing this film! It’s not just touching, it’s thrilling to be part of this. Thank you!!

Everyone who donates gets their name in the credits. Donors of $1,000 or more (like lenders of $2K or more) get a credit of their choosing!

Update: Credits are locking Tuesday night. Big, big thanks to you amazing generous kind wonderful donors – a post of pure gratitude is coming soon.

Money needed, like, now

So the good news is, Sita is in the Berlinale. The bad news is, she’s programmed in a theater that doesn’t do Digital Cinema. That means unless I have a 35mm print by February, her one and only World Premiere will be on, well…video. I can’t let that happen.

The 35mm master will still cost about $30,000 – more if we do surround sound, which is much better audio. I still need to raise $20,000. I’m looking into bouncing credit card debt – you know, putting it all on a few credit cards, then continually applying for new credit cards and shifting the balances from one to another. It would be much better if some rich person just lent me the money. Or if some supernatural being just gave me the money – but honestly, a loan would be plenty. Big ol’ credit in the film, you can attend the Berlinale with me as part of the film team, my undying gratitude…

Here are Sita‘s Berlinale screening dates, just in:

11.02.08 17:00 Kino Babylon
13.02.08 11:30 Kino Babylon
14.02.08 19:30 Kino Babylon

Let’s give all those broken-hearted Germans who are seeing the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told on Valentine’s Day the real 35mm experience!

Tax-deductible donations (not loans) can still be made here.

Render Unto D-Cinema

So I haven’t raised enough money to make a 35mm film print (yet). But I did raise enough to make a Digital Cinema Package, because the Stuttgart International Animation Festival offered a deal. And I borrowed enough to buy a new computer to re-render the entire 82-minute feature at a suitable higher resolution.

See, when I started Sita Sings the Blues, I couldn’t afford the processor power or disk space to work at the ideal resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels. Instead I compromised at 1280 x 720 pixels, which in spite of being half the ideal resolution looks almost as good. The 35mm film test I did of Battle of Lanka looks great, anyway. But film has a natural grain, plus film floats around the screen a little, a result of analog frame registration (aka sprockets), both of which mask and “warm up” digital flaws. D-Cinema, however, has rock-solid registration and no grain, making it potentially less forgiving than film. Meanwhile computers and hard drives have gotten predictably cheaper since I began the project, and December is a “lost month” in New York anyway, it’s not like I’d have any freelance gigs or make any headway on promotions, and everyone gets lazy at work or leaves town, so… here I am, watching little blue progress bars for hours and days on end. Boring? You bet! But it will make the movie look infinitesimally better, so it’s all worth it. Also, D-Cinema supports 6-channel audio, so my sound designer is planning a super-duper surround-sound experience, which will make the picture look a lot better.