First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day!
During a recent racking of my current 2020 vintages a hose sprang loose and sprayed a regrettable amount of delicious Syrah onto my winery floor. While on my knees, muttering unprintables and wiping up the mess, I noticed a large drop of the wine had hit the floor in such a magical way as to splat into the perfect shape of a heart! I’m not kidding, this really happened. The photo below is pretty lousy—I shot it with my cellphone in low light. But it’s totally real and unaltered. The heart was about the size of a quarter and I took it as a sign that these 2020 vintages are going be really good. We shall see!
Now, let’s get on with the third and final installment of Making the Movie. If you haven’t yet read Part 1 or Part 2, you can find them in the Archive.
It’s all about the editing
Two years ago, this month, I shot the final footage for that “missing” winter segment of Tiny Vineyards. This included lots of rain shots, and even snow (!) on February 5th, the awesome Sonoma County Youth Pruning Contest on February 24th, and Sal’s group’s wacky racking session on the 27th. In fact, pruning and racking—two activities that are occurring all across wineland right now—pretty much made up the entire winter segment.
After shooting all of the above I was truly finished with my filming. All that remained was the final editing and postproduction. But the real meaning of “all” in the previous sentence was not as optimistic as it sounds. More accurately—all of the work was still to come, with the editing and postproduction. It’s fashionable for film buffs to say editing is the hardest part of filmmaking, whether they know anything about it or not. But you know what? For me, it’s true. Filming is fun, and exciting, and new. Editing is like watching the same movie over and over and over again, only shorter versions every time.
It can certainly be rewarding, like when you finally get a sequence pared down to where it really works, but that never comes without hours (days?) of work. And there’s nothing spontaneous about it. Stifle those yawns; you just have to buck up and hang in there. If ever there was an activity that encouraged the use of stimulants, legal or otherwise, it was film editing.
Of course, that’s the problem with trying to make a film like Tiny Vineyards with literally no budget. You end up doing it all yourself. And that’s what was happening as I got closer and closer to SIFF (Sonoma International Film Festival). Not its deadlines for submittal and delivery of films—I’d missed those marks weeks ago; I was now talking about the actual date of the film festival, as in the day and hour my film was going to show. March 30, 2019, 7:30 in the evening.
It was going to be that close.
I went into that “plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead” mode. I was amazed I could still pull an all-nighter, in fact several of them. Funny how fear of failure in front of new friends, in a new town, at a highly respected event can fuel even the most seemingly hopeless effort!
I also went into triage mode. What absolutely had to be done in order to show the film, which had now technically become a “rough cut?” Here was my list:
1) Finish editing the remainder of the harvest footage that was still untouched. And edit the new winter footage that had just been shot. Fortunately my shooting style, groomed from years of being a one-man-band filmmaker, provides for a certain amount of pre-editing. I visualize not only the shot but the entire sequence as I think it might eventually be edited, and I shoot everything in that order. And that works to some extent, reducing the actual editing time.
2) Write a voice-over script to tie it all together, find and record a really cool voice (I wanted an older “low country” or, possibly, Italian-accented woman) as the narrator.
3) Find some great royalty-free musical tracks to mix in, maybe creating some theme loops in the process. Then sweeten the sound and make a 5:1 recording of everything.
4) Do a final pass on the video track, proofing transitions and looking for dropped frame issues. Do any retouching needed. Color-correct everything.
5) Send it off to L.A. for a DCP (digital creative package) file, which allows it to be played on the large digital projectors now used in modern theaters. SIFF was one of those better festivals that can play a DCP and such a file usually gets you a bigger and better venue for your showing.
Yeah, right. No problem.
The home stretch
As February flirted with March I was really starting to feel angst. I still had some editing and postproduction to finish, but I was now also running out of time for getting the word out about the film. SIFF is great with their promotional efforts, but it was up to me to generate enough interest in the film to make an argument to Kevin McNeely, SIFF’s executive director, that it be shown prime time in one of the bigger, headliner venues.
The most concerning problem was that the official program for the festival was just about to go to the printer, after which changes became problematic. And Kevin still had Tiny Vineyards scheduled as a short film to be shown in a small museum that could seat maybe 30 to 35 people. It was time to come clean with him about the true length of the film, and try to convince him that it deserved a bigger presentation. It wasn’t a conversation I relished having.
I had already stretched everyone’s patience way too far and I think the only reason I was even still in the festival lineup was because folks like Ken and Cynthia Wornick, and John and Gail Diserens, who were all close to the festival and had Kevin’s ear, had somehow convinced him to keep the faith, that the film was going to be good. But I was beginning to worry that even they might soon start to wonder if I could actually deliver.
Then I had a breakthrough idea!
SIFF was a festival with an obvious wine theme, right? It was supported by many local companies in the wine industry, who helped fund the event and supply it with copious amounts of great vino for all the parties and special screenings. Why not present Tiny Vineyards with one of the most unique wine tastings ever?! Let’s have all the home winemakers pour samples—right after the film ends—of the very wine the audience just saw being made in the movie. That oughta raise the interest level. And it did!
Nearly all of the home winemakers featured in the film participated, and bought big blocks of tickets for their families and friends. The Wornicks and the Diserenses formed a committee with some of the SIFF folks to work out the logistics of the wine tasting (which for legal reasons can be challenging) and to help lobby for a bigger venue. To that end, Stone Barn Farm (John and Gail Diserens) purchased the local sponsorship that SIFF sells for all of the larger-venue films—which I’m sure was the real tipping point with Kevin.
Suddenly we were now scheduled for Saturday evening in the Veterans Hall, the largest venue in the festival, with 375 seats and a big stage to accommodate the wine tasting. I landed a nice article in the local paper, as well as a local radio and TV interview.
Wowzer, this might actually happen!
Sliding across the finish line, totally spent
As painful as it was for the perfectionist in me, I had to accept that the film wasn’t going to be finished the way I had hoped. Time had simply run out.
I wasn’t able to do a final-polish edit, professional color correction or motion graphics, which no one but me would probably notice—unless, that is, they actually got to see a polished edit. Then it’s like seeing a whole new film.
I never could find the right woman narrator so I went with an ambient track of my own voice I had recorded for timing. I never had time to develop the background music beyond standard licensed tracks, and I never got to truly sweeten the audio or mix everything into 5:1 surround sound.
But I did finally have a rough cut of the entire movie (94 minutes) in hand, and there were still five days left before my showing at the festival. Only one thing remained—mastering my Apple ProRes 422 HQ file into a DCP file that could play on the big digital projector the festival had rented for the Veterans Hall theater. Normally I would FedEx my file to a postproduction house I use in L.A. that would make the conversion. They would charge me $400 plus shipping and would require a six-business-day turnaround.
Well, that was just too dicey, with the shipping going both ways, so I found another postproduction house in San Francisco that agreed to make it in time—for around $1,000—if I could drive it down early the next day. A bit expensive for a movie with no budget, but I also had no choice. I was on their doorstep at 8:00 a.m. the following morning.
Everything was finally looking rosy, and within a couple of days I starting to shed some of the uncertainty that had plagued me for the past few months. I even dared to enjoy the fact that I was about to premiere a feature-length documentary at a wonderful film festival. Then my cell phone pinged with a message. It was from the postproduction house mastering the DCP. It seem that during their first attempt at converting my file they had discovered that the film was encoded in a frame rate not conducive to DCP.
Just prior to shooting Tiny Vineyards I had finished a documentary shot for television, which required an AVCHD 60i (interlaced) frame rate codex for broadcast. And I had forgotten to change it back before encoding to the standard 24p (progressive) or 30p frame rates required for DCPs. I know, I know, it all sounds really technical, but it was a total rookie mistake on my part. And worst of all it had cost me valuable time when I didn’t have any to spare.
Actually, that wasn’t the worst of what it would cost me. Sure they could fix it and still get it to me in time, but it would cost $238 to conform the file from 60i to 30p, then the DCP mastering with a quality-control screening in their theater would now cost $2,475 due to the shorter schedule, and there would be an additional 50% rush charge of $1,187 since they would be moving me ahead of other jobs already in the pipeline. The grand total was $3,900, which really should have been more like $500 if I had had my act together from the beginning. I was speechless, and remain so today.
So, on the evening of March 29th, a mere twenty-four hours before my movie was scheduled to show, I finally handed over the finished DCP to the guy from SIFF who was in charge of all film traffic. I’m pretty sure I could hear him tsk-tsking under his breath as he drove away in search of the projectionist who would pre-screen the DCP to make sure everything was in order.
The festival!
The next day Deb and I walked around the festival backlot and got to experience a little bit of the gaiety other filmmakers and festivalgoers had been enjoying for days. I had resigned myself to all the expensive screwups and schedule meltdowns I had incurred and was now just trying to fully engage in the experience. A whole lot of the sting suddenly vanished when we stopped by the ticket office to get our credentials and discovered that Tiny Vineyards was a hundred percent sold out!
When we arrived at the Veterans Hall that evening the line for Tiny Vineyards was already out the door. Unbelievable! The mood was wonderfully festive with all the home winemakers setting up their tasting bottles in the front of the theater, and folks clambering for their spots in the bleacher-like seating. My son Penn, and his girlfriend Lia, had driven up from San Francisco, which was a special bonus for me.
Only one thing detracted from a perfect evening, and that was that SIFF had decided on screening two shorts (which weren’t all that short) prior to showing Tiny Vineyards. They were both about the recent wildfires that had devastated the area, and hence were quite depressing. By the time Tiny Vineyards was finally queued up it was nearly 9:00 p.m. and the audience was getting restless. I figured it was just my penance for what I had put the festival through, and took my lickin’ good-naturedly when Kevin finally introduced me with a rather long-winded but justified recitation of all my sins.
But then the lights went down, the music came up, and Eve entered the Garden of Eden, which is truly Sonoma. People oohed and aahed, and laughed in all the right places, and I think at least those who were still awake actually enjoyed the film. To me, it felt too long, the audio didn’t sound quite right, the images seemed a little washed out, and who the hell was that narrator?! But that’s just me.
When the film ended a few folks scooted out but the majority swarmed the wine-tasting tables set up in the front and suddenly a new dynamic ensued between a bunch of very personable home winemakers basking in their newfound celebrity and a lot of very receptive wine samplers who now knew a thing or two about the wine they were tasting!
Postscript
Six months later Tiny Vineyards had its theatrical debut to another large audience at the famous Sebastiani Theatre on the plaza in downtown Sonoma. Only this time the film was a few minutes shorter, the video had been optimized, and the audio had been sweetened and completely remixed into 5:1 surround sound by the amazing Victor Giordano of V Audio Inc. A professional musician, Victor also added several original tracks of his own, bringing beautiful new dimension to the film. And within that mix was now the voice of Sonoma actress Monica McKey, who truly was the perfect woman narrator. All of this was delivered in a new $500 DCP to the Sebastiani Theatre… with several days to spare.
But the very best thing was that, once again, the home winemakers featured in the film poured their original fermentations to an appreciative audience who actually had some agency with the wine. How cool is that?!
Tiny Vineyards would go on to be selected at three other film festivals across the country, winning Best Documentary Feature at one of them. It continues to screen at the Sebastiani Theatre at Home, where half the proceeds go to the theatre to help it defray losses caused by the pandemic.
Later this week I will send a special post to all paid subscribers with a private link and password enabling you to screen the entire film at any time.
And once again, my sincere thanks to everyone who helped in making and promoting Tiny Vineyards. I hope I have you all listed correctly in the final credits of the film. A special shout out to Kevin McNeely for believing in its destiny with the festival, despite all signs pointing elsewhere! And my undying gratitude to both of you Diserenses for being the first to allow me in your vineyard and for the very real support you’ve shown ever since.