Closing in... the final countdown

Well it's exactly one week away from the debut of FAMILY TIE. I'm busy wearing about 10 different hats right now trying to get everything ready in time including a postcard mailing. Speaking of which, if you or anyone you think might appreciate FT, would like one for yourself, shoot me an email at matt@familytiemovie.com with your address and I'll include you in the batch. Yay! A souvenir!

I briefly considered going back and tweaking some of the edits since the last output in Dec 2004, but with all the stems already mastered (stems are basically the complete mixes of dialogue, music, FX as separate stereo mixes) I'm not changing a frame. Color, however, was another matter altogether, so I've gone through and changed "the look" (if you want to call it that) of the film in terms of color intensity and saturation; now it's more desaturated and muted, giving it a slightly grittier, '70s feel, which I'm quite OK with. It just feels like the right thing to do, given that the film's photography isn't exactly its strong point (a role I regrettably undertook alone, but whatever, it's a glorified home movie with some fantastic gore).

Now I just need to tie (no pun intended) the closing credits into the final sequence and start outputting it for web. When I say "start outputting" it means that, that too, is a process and will take some trial and error as I try to make it hold up as well as possible in its transition to the world wide web. I've been doing this encoding gig at Vividas for over two years now and I'm still figuring out what looks best (short answer: it varies).

Then there's all the marketing fun, like organizing the postcard mailing and, then, more importantly the mass email which will go out next Wednesday to finally announce that the film has gone live. It all feels somewhat pointless sometimes, as if anyone is really going to care about this thing, but then I also feel like it's something I have to finish out. To finally say, "you may or may not care, but it's done" and not second-guess the status of the project ever again.