Folie à Deux - released today on IndieFlix

Folie à Deux is released today on IndieFlix. This is a better quality version of the film than previous online releases, and this is the one you should watch. Go here to watch the trailer and the film, or cut and paste this link into your browser:

https://indieflix.com/indie-films/folie-a-deux-37791/

Photo: David Hamnett.

Folie À Deux - Now Available to Buy or Rent

The film is now available to buy or rent. Happy 2014!

World Première!

The World Première was last night, and I can happily report that it was a big success. We had a full house (almost) followed by a really good Q&A afterwards - half an hour of interesting questions and comments. People said they found the film moving, captivating, sensitive... all the things any filmmaker wants to hear, and I'm certainly no exception. The performances, music and photography also came in for praise. Heck, we even had a few psychiatrists in the audience! (I assume they weren't doing covert studies of filmmakers struggling to complete films.) The second screening will be this Saturday, 21 July. I will be there for that one - Sally has had to go back to Blighty.

Leading lady Sally Scott and director Sean Martin at the Maine International Film Festival, Waterville, ME, at the weekend.

Folie a Deux (World Premiere!) | MIFF 2012

Tickets for the July screenings in Maine are now on sale:

Folie a Deux (World Premiere!) | MIFF 2012

Maine Screenings Announced

Folie à Deux will have its first public screenings at the Maine International Film Festival in July. The first screening will be on Sunday 15th July at 6:15pm and then again on Saturday, July 21 at 6:30pm, both at Railroad Square Cinema. Myself, your long-suffering director/producer/blogger, leading lady Sally Scott and producer Louise Milne will be at the first screening, where we will either introduce the film or give a short talk/Q&A afterwards. For the second screening, it will just be myself and Dr Milne. We're delighted to be taking the film to Maine - it's a great festival run by real film enthusiasts, and it's one of my favourite places. Louise and I will be at MIFF for the whole festival, which we're looking forward to enormously, and it's so nice that Sally will be joining us for the first screening. I'm reminded of that Grateful Dead line, "What a long strange trip it's been". 

Over the last few days there as also been talk of previews in London and Edinburgh, probably in September/October. I'll post more details once I've spoken to a few cinemas in both places and see who can give us the best bar prices. Sorry! I meant to say screen hire charges...

Today I watched the master copy of the film all the way through, and it plays without a hitch. We now also have an uncompressed .mov. From these we can create - hopefully - a Blu-Ray of the film. As I have just found out, this is horrendously expensive, and was getting angry at the ridiculous quotes I was getting, until a saviour appeared in the form of a fellow Shooting People member, who has offered to do it for nothing. In order to do that, I now have to free up 700GB of space on an external drive...

Master Copy in Progress

This afternoon we started making the master HD copy at the Screen Academy. Took longer than expected, as we had to get all 443.57GB of Folie off our WD drive and onto their system. We took the opportunity to correct a slight mistake in the film: at 13.58, Lucas (Adam Napier) looks up to the cafe clock. The time shows about 1357. 10 seconds later, he looks up again, and the clock now shows 1351 (ish). We had to change these over, but the trouble was, the two shots are not of equal length. This is unusual for Folie, where we have a rule of making all cutaways the same length - 5 seconds, quite long - so that we emphasize their role in the film not as cutaways but as memento moris. So what we did in the end was Alex had to extend a shot of Chris Dunne to cover the gap. Just about works. No doubt I'll mention this in the Director's Commentary once the film is out on DVD!

It was also a great pleasure to see the film in HD again, after several years of seeing it as a lo-res Avid offline. Christ, I hate Avid. I'm not an Apple fan-boy, but by heck, FCP7 seems like the promised land compared to Avid. (And no, I'm not tempted to try FCPX - if it ain't broke, don't fix it, as the saying goes.) We have made a great film, I think. I am always moved by the actors, and I hope that being moved by my own film is not the same as laughing at one's own jokes - i.e. that it really is moving, and not just me entertaining a few wishful ideas. (In fact, the only person I've ever seen laugh at their own jokes was Spike Milligan, and I think in his exalted case, he had every right: he was possibly the greatest comic genius of all time.)

Getting all the material onto the Screen Academy's system took all afternoon, so I'm back in there tomorrow to do the play-out to HDCam, and then we make the Blu-Ray and DVD copies. First in the queue is, of course, the Maine International Film Festival, who will be screening Folie in July. It will be the film's first public screenings. Can't wait. After all this time, our work is getting out there.

Celestial Harmonies

We're now re-doing the end credits, for the umpteenth time. Only this time round, we miss the Transit of Venus. So - I'd rather be making a worthless film and ignore a celestial event? No. I'm off to look at it. 

Posters and Taglines

We have two promotional images for the film, below. Does anyone have a preference as to which we should use? (Or use both? Or a screen grab?) And which tagline should we go with? (Or come up with a new one?) Any suggestions gratefully received.

Not Dark Yet (but it's getting there)

2012 is not proving to be a good year for the old auteurs. Just 3 months after the tragic death of Theo Angelopoulos comes the very sad news that Jacques Rivette has Alzheimer's and seems unlikely to make another film. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to make Folie or indeed any of my other films, without inspirational figures like Theo and Jacques (and Béla Tarr, mentioned in a recent post). There really don't seem to be any great filmmakers left now. Someone turn out the lights, please?

Maine Screening Confirmed

Folie will screen at the the Maine International Film Festival in July. At the current time, we are still waiting for exact times and dates. I will be there, along with intrepid co-producer Louise Milne. Leading Lady Sally Scott hopes to be there too. More news soon. At last, the film is getting out into the world.

Heroes

When you make a film that has taken a long time to get finished, you inevitably look for someone else who has been through the same hell. Here are some people, in the photo below, who have been through hell.

Film Finished!

Yes, you read that aright - Folie à Deux is finished, at long last. We are doing the end credits in about half an hour, and then I'm going to burn a DVD, check that it works and then get it off to a film festival in the US. All that we have to do in January is make masters (on HDCam, probably) and possibly do a few sound tweaks, but, essentially, it's done. And once those things are taken care of, there will hopefully be preview screenings in London for cast, crew and creditors.

We've been discussing whether to do more ADR, or to trim the film, but we've decided that it should stay as it is - none of us can face any more tinkering on the fucker. Sorry, film. It's been far too long in the making, but has turned out better - and different - to the film that I originally intended to make. But that's how the cookie crumbles, usually: you have to make the best of the material you've got, rather than trying to force your material into being someting it frankly isn't and can never be. 

There will of course be a long list of things to do in 2012: website, edit a trailer, festival submissions, previews. I've even considered writing a book - how to make a micro-budget feature film, experience far more difficulties than one originally envisaged, but somehow find ways to overcome them and come out the other side, if not smiling, then at least with a finished film that is good enough to show the world.

During the utter nightmare this film has been, I've also considered giving up, but as I've been writing this blog entry, I've just had a text from a producer asking me to pitch him a few ideas. And earlier this morning I had an email relating to what could be my next project, a documentary about the writer David Lindsay. (Another film, another blog...)

Anyway, I'd better work on my pitches for said producer, and then spend the p.m. making DVDs of Folie. When the trailer is up, probably in the New Year, I will blog again. Until then, have a very merry Yuletide and Hogmanay, and see you in 2012:-)

Folie a deux | Sponsume 2

We have just set up a new Sponsume campaign to raise the final £500 needed to complete the mastering. More info on the link!

Folie a deux | Sponsume

And Steve Dineen in... Oldham

In another so-late-it's-almost-not-worth-posting announcement to promote Folie's actors, Steve Dineen is appearing in a new production of Equus at the Oldham Coliseum. As with Sally's play, this ends tomorrow night (08.10.11.), so get your skates on if you fancy an evening in Oldham. More info and tickets here.

Sally Scott on stage in Salisbury

Sally Scott is appearing in a production of Alan Ayckbourn's Way Upstream at the Salisbury Playhouse. Reviews have been very good! The show ends tomorrow, so if you want to see our leading lady tread the boards, you'd better book a ticket straight away. More info here.

The film is nearly finished

We've all had a fairly bad summer, for various reasons. Julien had his MacBook stolen, which had the closing credits song on it (amongst a lot of other music), while I've been trying to raise the remaining money. My luck was just about summed up by an old friend offering money to help us get the film finished... and then dying (not suicide, I hasten to add).

However, things are now looking up again. Money is on the way, no thanks to Sponsume and IndieGoGo, both of which have proved completely useless. Julien, Jake and I met on Friday to discuss final delivery, and I should be getting the files on Thursday. (Julien is re-recording the song in the week.) If no more remixing is required, then all we then have to do is marry the mixed sound onto the images, get our master copy made, and then probably promptly collapse into an emotional heap on the floor. Who'd have thought it would have taken this long, heh?

Folie à Deux | Sponsume

We now have a campaign up and running on Sponsume to get Folie finished:

Folie à Deux | Sponsume

The amount now needed is only about £1,000, due to monies coming in, which I am very relieved about and can postpone my own suicide attempt. Please help if you can.

I would very much like to become risk averse once this project is done. I'm tired of taking risks. I'm tired of all my money - what there is of it - going into the black hole of filmmaking. I want to be... a lumberjack!

IndieGoGo

At the suggestion of a fellow filmmaker, I have started a campaign on IndieGoGo to get the remaining money, as it seems I will now be a pauper for the forseeable future. You can read more and even donate here.

95% finished, and another funding crisis

The film is now almost finished, and it looks like we are about to fall at the last hurdle. Some investment I was expecting has suddenly not materialised, leaving us high and dry. We only actually need about £1400 (yes, fourteen hundred, not fourteen thousand) to get Folie finished and out there into the world at last. (A bit more would be helpful, to pay for marketing materials and film festival entry fees, to be honest.)

I had been expecting all of this to come from some documentary editing work I've been doing for a new age loony, but she has now announced that she is not going to pay me. Totally unbelievable. (I'm also on strike - that's the problem with rich amateurs - they have no conception of how much work is required to make a film, and think that it's a privelege to work for them.) So if anybody feels like going to the cash machine to help us out, please let me know. Right now, I'm going for a long walk.