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Swamper Premiere Notes
On Wednesday night, Dan (our editor) and I got together to do a little last minute tightening up with plans to start the lengthy rendering process on Thursday. I then rushed to the airport to pick up a guest from Austin who came into town for the Saturday premiere.
Thursday, my friend Dave and I went over to Dan's office to add the opening credits and then hit the render button. About 5 minutes into rendering, one of the 500 gig hard drives containing Swamper started to make a clicking noise that was eerily similar to the sound the Millennium Falcon makes on a failed attempt to jump to light speed. Suddenly, the drive disappeared from the computer and kept clicking away. We tried several different fixes to no avail. I called the manufacturer of the drive for technical support and they immediately said, "It sounds like the bus is going out, which is a pretty common problem in these kind of drives - even in really new drives. Send it back to us and we will fix it and return it to you." I explained that I had half a feature film on the drive and that I needed the data immediately to begin rendering it. They told me that because of the emergency, they could authorize a specialist to remove the drives in a clean room and put them into another casing that would work. When I contacted the specialist, he said the QUICKEST he could get the drives back to me was Tuesday (3 days after the premiere was supposed to happen). It felt like somebody punched me in the stomach.
I grabbed the drives from Dan and started to drive home thinking about how I was going to have to pull EDL's from every scene in the movie and try to recapture all of the scenes from tape (a process that I roughly calculated would take at least 20 hours). I started to have visions in my head of standing in front of a crowd of 300 people, passing around 8x10 stills from the movie and having the cast read the script. Maybe I could even get Steve to stand up there with me and say, things like "This was a really cool steadicam shot".
Once I got home, I grabbed a few other drives (500 gig drives are a real specialty item, so I couldn't just run down to the store and grab one) and tried to transfer the files off of the 500 gig drive. A few of the files transferred, and then the drive crashed again. I restarted everything, let the drive sit for a little while and then tried again. Word started to leak out to the cast and crew about the problem and people started to come over to see Dave and offer their assistance. I explained that there wasn't really anything anyone could do, and the best thing would probably be to just go grab a drink somewhere. Nobody wanted to leave though, so an impromptu party started happening in my living room while I was tucked away in my office transferring files and babying the drive.
Slowly but surely, I was transferring the files. Every time the drive would crash, I would restart everything and start again. The drive was hot, so I put a fan on it and that seemed to lengthen the time in between crashes. Every few minutes, somebody would come into the office to see how everything was going and offer help. Finally, at about 6AM on Friday, all 500 gigs were transferred to 3 other drives. I hit the render button and went to bed expecting to wake up and be ready to go.
I had a really hard time sleeping, so I finally came back out at about 9AM to check on everything and found that the computer had crashed during the rendering. Not wanting to lose progress, I began rendering everything scene by scene. Once it got to the second cartoon, it told me that the rendering time would be seven weeks. It quickly went down to 5 weeks, then 1 day, then 5 hours, and slowed at about 3 hours. I showered and Dave and I left to walk around and put up some Swamper stickers. Mostly, I just had to get out for awhile. We got back at 2PM and it said that the rendering of the cartoon was about 30 percent done. Dan and I talked for awhile and neither of us were 100% sure how long it was really supposed to take to render the cartoon. I could see that it was taking a lot longer than I thought, but it was making some progress so I was reluctant to pull the plug on it. I decided to just let it go as long as it was making progress. At about 5PM, the cast and crew started showing up back at the house to check on our progress. Now, more friends and family were arriving in from out of town and they all stopped by to offer their help and stayed to nervously hang out in living room to watch the progress. The pressure seemed to really be mounting. At about 9PM, it was still making progress, but it was still going very slow. I decided that as soon as it was done rendering I would reconfigure the network a little. At around midnight on Friday, the second cartoon was finally done rendering (at least 12 hours after I started it). I daisy chained the drives where I could and got rid of the firewire hub. Like magic, everything started to render at more normal speeds and a cool rush finally came over me. It looked like it would take about an hour to render the entire rest of the film, so I queued everything up and we all hit a local bar. We got back at about 2, started to print it to mini-dv tape and then popped a bottle of champagne.
The Seattle Art Museum is only set up to play DVD or VHS tape (aside from 35mm and such). I didn't have time to make both a DVD AND a VHS tape, so I opted to go the safe route and put everything it on VHS (we have had problems with some players not playing DVD's). We all went to an early supper and everyone kept asking if I was nervous or excited. I was honestly just so relieved to have SOMETHING to show that it was the only emotion that was available.
The cast and crew got together at The Alibi Room for an early supper, which was fantastic, but I had to leave early since I was supposed to get to the Museum at 6PM to meet with the A/V guy and make sure everything was working properly. I had a little trouble parking and finally made it in at 6:15. The A/V guy was nowhere in sight. They told me that he would be there soon and not to worry. I started to greet the guests. At about 6:30, Steve said that the A/V guy was looking for me. As it turned out, it was one of the security guys. He told me that the A/V guy was on his way. Apparently, he was double booked across town at a wedding. Finally, at about 6:45 he showed up. I explained that I wanted to talk to the crowd for a minute and introduce the film and that we would have a brief Q&A afterward. He gave me a wireless mic and said he would wait to start the film until I gave him the go ahead. At about 7PM, I was greeting the last of the guests and all of the sudden, I heard everyone cheering inside the theater. Steve grabbed me and said, "Did you know the movie has started?"
I ran up to the projection booth and sure enough, the movie had started. The guy said, "I thought you wanted me to start at 7." I was exasperated, but figured we couldn't stop the film now that it was well into the opening scene. I rushed down and the will call guy was still trying to find everyone on the list. I told him to just let everyone in and I made my way to the front and sat down. I put my hand on Jessica's leg and she was shaking. All of the sudden, I realized that I was nervous too.
The picture quality from the VHS tape made me cringe a few times, especially where we used color filters. But, once I heard the audience reactions, I started to settle down a little. There were at least three times where the picture would suddenly freeze for 3-4 seconds. They were the longest 3-4 seconds of my life. I think this probably happened as a result of my rendering the film scene by scene instead of rendering it all at once. There were a few times, when the audience erupted in applause and the reactions got better and better as the film went on. It was over as soon as it started.
The closing credits started to roll and the audience was applauding. I didn't want to start the Q&A yet because I wanted everyone to see their names in the credits, but some people were starting to leave, so I jumped up and grabbed the mic. Everyone that was leaving stopped and I explained that anyone who wanted to get a jump on the after party was welcome to go. Nobody left though. The audience applauded the cast and crew and we took about 10-15 minutes worth of questions. The best question asked was, "What does your mom think about this movie?". I said, "I don't know. Mom, what did you think?". From the back of the theater, she said, "It was interesting.." Everyone laughed. Then she said, "But, we still love you". That was great.
After the Q&A, a ton of people came down to say, 'Congratulations'. I think Racquel was a bit disturbed to see milk squirt out of her breast (the miracle of special effects), but she was a great sport. Jacqui and her husband also came down and brought me a small can of Sophia Coppola champagne. I had no idea that they made champagne in a can, but it was GREAT! Jessica Thorton's father came down to talk to me. To my surprise, he didn't want to punch me. He and the whole Thorton family (including her grandma) were incredibly supportive of her and the entire team. They did tell me that Grandpa Thorton may not have been as supportive. As it turns out, he used to be the mayor of a small town I have driven through hundreds of times on the way to WSU. I think I will be extra careful to keep my speed down when I drive back for football games 
I finally made my way back to the premiere party. The turnout was way more than we expected. The Alibi Room was completely packed and really hot because of all the people crammed into it. It was like a wedding, New Years Eve Party and Dance Recital all rolled into one. We got a ton of compliments and it was fun to hear everyone talk about the movie and all the characters. Lots of people kept saying they wanted to help with the next movie in all kinds of different ways. Lots of people were throwing story ideas at me. The compliments were nice, but I found myself more interested in talking to the people that were comfortable offering critical feedback. Some of the story ideas were funny (especially from the 2 drunk guys that kept cornering me and pitching their life stories to me). I was a sweaty mess by the end of the night, but it was one of the best nights ever. I finally made it home and crashed from exhaustion.
Sunday morning, we woke up and had a brunch with Jessica's parents and my parents to celebrate our engagement. We had a wonderful day around Seattle. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I didn't really think much about Swamper. That lasted for exactly one day. Now, I hope to get everything tuned up a little better for the film festivals and then we will see what happens.
We also just learned that Team Swamper has been selected for Portland's 48-hour filmmaking contest. In case you don't know what this is, on Friday August 20th the teams will meet in Portland and three things will be drawn out of a hat: 1) A genre 2) A line of dialogue 3) A prop. We will then have 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a film to turn in. The winning films will screen at SXSW and other top festivals around the country. We are going to all take a different role for this project than we have done for Swamper (Kevin Gilbert will be directing, Chris McBride will be writing and I will act or edit), but I am sure the technical problems of the past few days are good preparation for working under the gun.
Thanks,
Clint
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