Patrice Hamilton’s short film of the above name is pretty much completed. It is at the point now where one must decide when to stop polishing it – a process that could go on forever. My role in her project was as photographer, editor, and sound designer working in collaboration with her just about every step of the way.
The running time of The Long Weekend is about 16 minutes and we recently did a quick calculation to determine how much time was put into pre-production, production, and post-production per minute of screen time. The ratio of running time in minutes to production time in hours comes out to 1:4. I am sure that if we did a more accurate log that included writing, re-writing, casting, costumes, props, rehearsals, and reshoots the ratio would probably expand to 1:5 or even 1:6. An additional factoid is that we shot a little over 4 hours of footage that edited down to 16 minutes of screentime or a ration of 1:16 of minutes used to minutes shot. Even then there were addtional setups that I wished had been done.
The craft of filmmaking is a model that new media is based upon: a combination of text, images, color, sound, and movement integrated into narrative structure involving the collaboration of several people. In hindsight, after a project such as this, it is always amazing to me all the planning, prepping, and patience that goes into it. The project began in earnest last September with choosing the story and writing the script. The cast was selected and rehearsals ran from October into November. Principle photography was done in January and editing began in the late spring. If all of us didn’t have lives, this time could have been compressed a great deal but as it is the project ran almost a full year. Making a film is all about the manipulation of time and space.
So now Patrice will be sending the The Long Weekend to film festivals around the country (that in itself raises some interesting issues) and the premiere is slated for Friday evening on August 12th at Tunxis Community College. That will officially mark the completion of this project and hopefully The Long Weekend will live a life throughout 2006.