Y'all

No holiday to Texas for Jake and Andy. Not this year.

Yesterday the official word finally came back from Fantasic Fest – thanks, but no thanks. It was one of the politest stock email fob-offs that I’ve ever been sent (Texans are renowned for their good manners), but any hope for a world premiere in the Lone Star State is now firmly quashed.

And the mood in Charmed Central? Mostly relief. Relief because the thought of having to craft a completed movie from the current set of best-guess jigsaw pieces over the next few days would spiral both of us into the worst kind of depression. Twenty months into the journey, and putting anything less than gorgeous in front of a paying audience will simply not do.

That’s not to say that we aren’t considerably closer than we were last week. The music is, well… done. The sound is down to the final tweaks and level changes. And a concerted amount of activity has delivered us the bulk of our remaining VFX shots.

But it isn’t finished.

The tally as of six pm today: 116 audio tweaks, six more VFX shots that we have yet to receive, another 38 that need playing with, an almost-there titles sequence and a technical grade that should be ready at the end of the week. But, as we found just before the shoot, it’s the little things that swallow up all the time.

So Jake and I get a couple of weeks reprieve.

Phew! But even so, it’s still a kick in the balls. I’ve never been great at dealing with rejection, although to be fair I don’t take compliments that well either. Fine – it was an early version of the film in super low-res that finally uploaded 36 hours after the cut off, full of green socks, sections of muffled dialogue and a confusing third act. Sure – it’s an American festival and they may not appreciate the British humo(u)r or understand Mac’s Scottish accent. OK – so this is the most prestigious event in the North American horror calendar and we were in competition with a bunch of high-budget offerings with big names and expensive cameras.

But this is the film about the zombie Jesus, people.

So, a small army of post-production elves allow themselves to relax slightly, and a thousand Southern rednecks are denied the opportunity to lynch two limey blasphemers before anyone else gets a chance to. Their loss, it seems.

One down, three more to go. Packing.