Happy New Year Everyone 2012!

My Experience working on the feature documentary about the march:  Mic Check: Inside the nycmarch2dc/occupy the highway

Log Line (20 words max):

A chronicle of the first long distance march in the Occupy Movement shown through the multiple perspectives of the marchers.

Synopsis (50 words max):

On November 9, 2011 twenty-two OWS protestors left Zuccotti Park on a 230mile march to Washington, DC.

Mic Check is about a community formed by circumstance and reveals the camaraderie and struggle of group dynamics and decision-making through individual perspectives about the march, occupy, and why we need a revolution.

I hope everyone had a joyous New Year! Even though I was in NYC I missed the amazingness of New Year’s Eve at Zuccotti because I was editing all night. Editing what you ask? Only the feature documentary film about this very march! I want to update you all (or anyone still reading this) that I did finish the film and, as well as being supportive, Mike Machado made two amazing recordings for it as well as a few other musicians. I submitted the film earlier today to the Tribeca Film Festival, but I’m a little worried of the success of them taking it. Generally, I’m pretty proud of the film, but there are at least 6 (maybe a few more) errors (including misspelled title cards) that I really wanted to fix. I literally ran out time. I mean, I’ve only had the last month to edit and two people, one a filmmaker, signed on to help edit and log, but both of them flaked out so it was just me. What’s worse three weeks ago I got really sick with strep throat and an eye infection and lost five days of editing since I could barely breathe and swallow, and kept getting fevers and cold sweats (and no this is not menopause).

I am fully recovered now, besides being just plain exhausted, and I will continue. I went to Boston for three days (got back yesterday at 2am) to finish the film and compress it on a bigger machine since I had been doing all of the editing from my mac book pro, so I went to my former college, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and one of my old professors gave me a lot of help with the compression since the video is so big (we’re talking 127+gigs here in one compression). I noticed these errors and fixed them, due to a series of circumstances, I had to leave Boston before the second version had finished compressing. Down to the wire. Friday was the deadline and I started compressing the second version at 2:30am. My laptop managed to compress this first round, but got stuck on the second. I then sought out a friend with a pretty good machine for this second compression and then third compression/burning, but, wo is me, there was not enough time-the video still had three hours to go at 4pm and I had to make it to the Tribeca Film Festival office by 6pm.

Alas, I submitted the back ups because, personally, it was my goal, and also I wanted to make the attempt at least to get the film out to a broader audience that may have a lot of misconceptions about occupy and the march or may not have heard of the march, etc.

So…I have to wait to find out if the film, which I decided to call Mic Check: Inside the nycmarch2dc/occupy the highway (in which I actually forgot the word ‘the’ in the title card-these things happen when you haven’t slept more than ten hours in four days) and if it miraculously gets in the festival or they give me an opportunity to fix a few things and give them another disk, I cannot widely distribute the documentary until after the festival in April. If they don’t accept it then I will be putting it up everywhere I can find for people to request. The distribution process is still an ongoing discussion so if anyone has any ideas please let me know. I’m broke so I would at least need to charge money for the dvd’s and shipping.

I apologize for rambling and I also want to personally apologize to citizen because I accidentally cut two great scenes with him during my sleep deprived moments. I still have yet to sleep since my two hour nap from 7am-9am, and the 20 hour editing days I’ve been pulling off for the last two weeks (well maybe 20 hours for the last week and more like 12-18 hours for the two weeks before that);  and even though I was scared I made myself watch Mic Check from beginning to end tonight (this was the first time I was able to watch it all the way through because there was never an opportunity for m to take 2 hours ((the film is two hours)) to watch it since I was literally working on it the entire time) and I know this is the worse mistake to make; I watched it all in sections and saw how they connected and worked with the footage so much I  basically memorized everything, however, I was still missing that critical step, though it was fun to sit back and watch and not stop every ten minutes into it to edit. Overall, I’m happy with it and I think it’s powerful, moving, and honest. When I figure out how to get it to the marchers and supporters I hope you all will be too. I, of course, would be sending the cleaner version.

Occupy. March. Make Films. Its time we own our media.

kelley