Many of you have no doubt seen me mention my project Stirling here or there over the last few millennia. I figured its about time I tell you all whats up with it.

An article was published about it in the paper today - you can read a copy here.

It took me three years to write, cast, shoot and edit the thing.

Twelve hours of raw footage.

Final film was 2:40, I cut it down to two hours so I could squeeze it onto a DVD (and because about 40 minutes sucked so bad they just had to go)

There's a third and final trailer here.

I will be editing it down to a twenty minute long "best bits reel" or something like that and submitting it to SF.com

It had a sneak peek at an international home-schooling conference in August which invited me to show it in Peabody Massachusetts, people from all over the US and Canada were there.

The Official Premiere will be November 7 at the Bijou Cinema in Worcester.

The major problems we encountered were:

sound (bad mics, inexperienced operators, random chainsaws and cars, and I had no clue what to do with the sound either), we ended up dubbing 900 VOs, half of which didn't match up.

low video quality, due mainly to my canon zr-40. though near the end I learned to coax some decent footage out of it by using 500 watt home depot lights and tricking the auto exposure by having at least one really bright area in the frame so it would compensate.

actors did not play their ages. this one I feel is the least excusable, but, when we started it honestly did not occur to us that we should either do a script with teen roles or cast adults.

On the other hand some things worked out great:

I got a great composer (a teen) over in Greece to score large parts of it.

I found a few independent composers (from as far away as Belgium and as close as Tennessee) who added to that.

I got rights from a band in Spain for the opening title song.

I did some terrific (if I don't say so myself) graphics, including completely realistic butterflies and some sky replacements.

A few scenes turned out really really well.

And I found a few people among my friends who really should be pursuing acting as a career. Sadly, they're not.

So, next on my long list of to-dos is, take the damn SAT already (i've procrastinated on that far too long) and begin applying to colleges.

I'm looking at BU, Mass College of Art, Brown, Bard, UCLA and a bunch more that I can't remember

I'll try to make a killer short in the winter/spring and win some festivals with it.

That's awesome. Sounds like it was agreat learning experience. Sounds like you're getting quite a bit of recognition with it in your local area. Good luck with your next movie, can't wait to see this one on here.

Sounds great. Let me know some more details for the screening. Maybe I'll drive out to Worcester for it.

wow - that'd be awesome. all the details are right here.

I wish I lived in Massachusetts, so I could see it. But I don't...Is there anyway I could possibly get a DVD of it so I can watch the full thing?

DVDs are for sale at the site to all who'd rather see the whole thing than the short version i'll be submitting here

Sorry, man. I don't think I can make it. I have to be in Hartford almost all day tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.

hey, too bad JW

i'll post pictures of the premiere everyone! over 100 reservations now.

hey i saw the trailor finally and thought it was awesome, and i want to buy a dvd of it, and i was wondering if instead of a check, if i could send a money order, it would be a lot safer.

i've PMed you ktabes

Perry, you should setup a paypal shopping cart. That way you can take Credit cards too.
They're surprisingly easy to integrate into your web page.

Also, is there any DVD special features?

there's a bonus cd-rom that comes with which has MP4s of the outtakes reel, four deleted scenes and a little documentary called 'between the scenes.'

i've been planning on doing a paypal cart - cause people keep emailing and saying they'll send checks and never sending them! lol


anyway - the premiere went great! over 108 people there! my budget is FINALLY out of the negative (+$400!) and they all seemed to like it.

sadly the color was not very saturated and the whites were blown out (which may have something to do with me never doing an NTSC legal filter and using superwhite.) there was one odd part where a few lines of dialog didn't play even though the music and the other characters kept going. i thought maybe one channel cut out for a moment and i forgot to mix that one character into both or something. anyway, it was really encouraging and i met a lot of great people!

hey..my brother (heliotrope) just got your dvd in the mail a couple of days ago. we watched about half of it.

i was really impressed with how well it turned out. the scope of the movie is gigantic.

now i just need to find time to watch the second half :S.

maybe i'll do a review on it once i watch the whole thing....that's an idea.

in any case...good work!

hey! cool! thanks

please, feel free to review it, and even post your review here. don't worry about saying what you think! all critique is good critique.

you'll notice there are no chapter markers, its a pain getting back to your place, sorry