Posted by Chad Burns
Posted by Shannon and Sara Burns at 11:32 pm on Sep. 11, 2008.
September 9th
Last night, we locked the edit on Pendragon. This moment has been a long time in coming. After thousands of hours of painstaking work by many people, the edit is finished.
The meaning of this small statement is huge. Finally, after 3 years of blood, sweet and tears, after hundreds of hours of work on the script and nearly as many revisions, after 15 grueling weeks of shooting, after working with hundreds and hundreds of friends we didn’t have at the beginning – Pendragon is finally poised to be completed.
Huge undertakings don’t always make it this far. Thinking back there have been so many key moments when the Lord held us together as a team or provided key resources that were needed to continue. I have often wondered over the past years if the Lord planned to bring Pendragon to fruition – we have learned and grown so much and met and fellowshipped and served with so many new friends that I have wondered if the process was more important to Him than the outcome. I still don’t know the answer, but as our deadline draws near it seems to me more and more likely that we shall finish.
Four big pieces of news:
- We happen to be flat broke and could sure use your help if you felt inclined to donate to the cause – we are borrowing money every day to keep the lights on, but this only goes so far and we are looking at a number of exciting opportunities to add real value to the picture, but don’t have the budget to do that right now.
- We are going to be submitting to SAICFF, which means our deadline for completion is Nov 1.
- We plan to release the finished DVD for sale on our site Nov 15th. If you’d like to donate, and get in line for one of the first copies, you can pre-order the DVD now for $45.
- Our computers are working better than they ever have before – if you’ve been praying for us, please don’t quit.
Now that video is locked we are pounding down the road on the four major remaining items, ADR, Foley, Music and Visual FX. It’s pretty exciting; we have major operations in 3 locations – Oklahoma City, St. Louis, and Detroit. The post team has expanded into a small army – continuing operations cost us about 1k per week.
Overall the movie is really coming together – there’s talk of cutting a new trailer, and when VFX are done I think we will. There’s a real feeling of excitement and energy in the team right now, a feeling that every moment counts.
I have never fought a war, but I believe this project has had a ‘war like’ emotional arc. In war you feel over and over again, for each battle, the full range of human emotion, the high high of surviving combat, and the bitter lows of loss and local defeat. The project does not have a single emotional arc, it has been a series of up down cycles. I have lost count of how many times we’ve been near despair for good reason, or believed that the last great hurdles had been crossed and that the future was all roses. I recall a long time ago feeling so sanguine about the project that I took time to fear the impact of success. That was 3 cycles ago.
I doubt if we’ve seen our last valley, but from the mountain top of video lock our goal in the distance is finally visible.
Thanks for your continued prayer and support.
