Okay, as the deadline for completing get …

Okay, as the deadline for completing get near I figured it was time to throw my baseball cap into the WGBH blogging ring.

As to updates on the project and such.

– In our initial submission we’d titled our piece, THE DECISION OF WHETHER & HOW TO VOTE. Yeah, it’s a moutful and just too straightforward, not really reflecting the style of the piece you’re going to watch. So, once we were selected to make the film, we’ve been letting the ideas in our head circle around like birds and see if any of them would fly off. One did, VOTING SCHMOTING, and that’s the current working title, as we liked how it conveyed some of the underlying humor that we’re trying to capture in the subject. That is, voting is a respected, serious thing, but like most things in life, there is always some underlying comedy to the complexity of life and we’d like to capture a little of that.

– Since this piece involves reappropriating an older interview we did, a lot of the work we’re doing is on the graphics end of things, so not a lot of shooting in the field for this piece, other than for the odd still photo and such. Not a bad thing, but it’s nice to not just be in the computer all of the time. Alas, that is what a decent amount of filmmaking is though.

– However, using that older interview has proved to be a bit problematic at the moment, as when we first did that interview with Gordon Tullock, we didn’t have him sign a release form. Very careless of us, because while he consented to the interview and was supportive of the project, having that paperwork is something that for delivery one often needs to get your film broadcast. We’re usually so good about getting signed releases, but in this incident we just got distracted and now we’re doing extra work to fix that. Right now Professor Tullock seems to be on Summer vacation, so he’s been tough to get a hold of and whether we’ll get the signed release back in time is uncertain, so hopefully WGBH legal will sign off on using the interview without it.

– Other thoughts. The audio on the rough cut is rough, as we exported the cut with the shotgun mic, not the lav, so ignore the roughness of the rough cut and if you have suggestions about content, those would be the most helpful to us.

Also, the ideal running time for the Open Call is 3 minutes and the rough cut is at 4:30 minutes, so suggestions on how to trim it down would be fantastic.

Okay, that’s it for now, but we’ll be looking forward to your comments on the rough cut and finishing this thing up.

Chris & Josh

http://lab.wgbh.org/open-call/election2008/rough-cuts/voting-schmoting