Robin's studio was too busy to let me listen to the DAT tapes, so today I paid Harvestworks $20 for the use of a DAT deck and a pair of headphones. Robin had warned me that I might hear more than I bargained for with headphones on, and she was right--all sorts of frightening ambience clashes and camera noise that I'd never noticed before jumped out at me. I went home and put the VHS copy on, and with some straining I could make out the defects that sounded so dramatic in the headset. I have to figure out whether these problems will be audible in the finished film, or whether the headphones subject the sound track to unfair scrutiny.
I sent out three more festival tapes yesterday, bringing me up to 13 applications outstanding. I'm starting to get to the point where the first festivals that I applied last year are coming around again. If I'd guessed that the movie would take this long, I would have refrained from sending out those early tapes and waited until I had a polished product to present. But then, one of the reasons that the film has taken this long is that I didn't have a festival acceptance to motivate me and others to move quickly.
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