We received a telephone call today asking which size ad space we'd like to buy in the SANTA CLARITA INT'L FILM FESTIVAL brochure. I couldn't help but respond with "Are you asking because we've been accepted into the film festival?" The thought of a fest calling to ask you how much money you'd like to give them for turning you down seemed a bit unlikely. She apologized that we haven't yet received our confirmation letter andacceptance into the fest, we were indeed accepted into the festival. The SCIFF is known as the only family oriented film festival on the circuit. And it will be our first stop for "The Innocents."There is a lot to do considering we do not yet have a print to give them. They accepted our film on the basis of a really bad copy of a VHS work print. We cut the entire film on a flatbed transfer. When we finished all of the post sound work we took the DAT's and laid the final mix over the VHS copy of the film. It sounds great but the picture quality of the tape is not the best. It's all we could afford at that time. That was the only fest we had entered before deciding we should hold off on entering any others to get a print made and a clean transfer to better our chances. I guess it didn't mater, we got in anyway.There is a lot of work to do, and very little time in which to do it. We have to schedule an appointment with the lab's color timer and decide on a negative cutter. Oh yeah, and come up with a couple of grand. No problem.

We have an appointment with one of Monaco Lab's color timers in two weeks. That should be fun. In the meantime we're still trying to decide on a negative cutter. There are two people in San Francisco that I've been talking to on and off for the last few months about the project. Both are established, professional neg cutters. It will come down to who gives the best rate and who can get it done ASAP.

The schedule of Judy Epstein (neg cutter) just freed up for the next two weeks. Beautiful! Her price was nearly the same as the other quote I received. So, it's official, we're going with her.For the last few days, I've been going over all of the workprint and marking each "intended" cut with a vertical slash and each unintended splice with a diagonal slash - so she can tell the difference between which splices are intentional edits and which are not. As I was doing this, I also made a list of every edit from the films edge code to make things go faster for her. What a pain! But that's my decision, no hers. I want everything to go as quickly as possible so that we don't lose our timeslot at the lab for color timing. I'll be delivering the four reels to her tomorrow along with the twenty boxes of approximately 19,000 feet of 16mm negative. It's difficult to hand that over to someone else. Those twenty boxes represent a year and a half of hard work, blood, sweat, money and of course, let's not forget tears. She should be done in just about two weeks if all goes well. Hopefully all will go well.

The first reel is done already. A good sign. So, we moved up our timing sessions at the lab to coincide with each reel. This will give the lab a little more time to make the trial print in case the timing is a little off and we need a second or third trial to get the color right. Magnificent, beautiful colors have always been our intention when making the film. We used color enhancing filters (when shooting) whenever we could to help accomplish this, and the timing process allows us to take it a step further on the print, as well as smooth everything out from shot to shot and scene to scene. We're looking forward to these sessions they should be fun.Also, Monaco received the Optical Sound Negs today. They ended up being more expensive then we intended. The lab needs to strip and cut them and wait for the A-B rolls.