Two Hours or Less – Almost There

I’m just about finished getting Our Side Of Joy down to two hours or less. It’s still a very tough process. It feels as if this film is really two complete films in one and most likely that’s pretty much what it is. It has caused me to think about my documentary career. Before I think I just looked at making documentaries from the perspective of choosing a topic and trying to cover as many aspects of the topic as possible. In the end, I think this is fine for multi-volume and academic releases. But I need to be extremely careful in the future when I shoot films for the film festival cuircut. I never have it in my head that my films will be available for theratrical release. I’d be lying if I said I cared about having my films in theaters. The reality is… I don’t. I do like the idea of having my films show at film festivals, on TV and availale on DVD for retail sales. With that in mind, I must decide on topics and how they will be filmed based on where and how I plan to release them. I should have shot Our Side of Joy differently for festival and TV release. DVD releases are awesome because you don’t have to compromise on content. I did initially feel I was going to film Our Side of Joy for the festival cuircut but I didn’t think enough about content in terms of the extent to which I would cover topics and how they releate to each other. In order words, my initial goals for this film in terms of topic coverage was just way too broad. Now I have goo-gobs of very useful footage making it a nightmare to carve down to less than 2 hours for film festivals and TV broadcasting.

This post was written by:

Tressa Sanders - who has written 78 posts on Three West.

Tressa Sanders, founder of Three West Creative Development, Asabi Publishing, and Ijaba Films, provides active learning, workshops for business Image, publishing, creative writing, graphics design, and filmmaking. In addition, she has authored the curriculum for the Big Bad Business Image, Concise Publishing, and Creative Writing workshops as well as several literary titles. Tressa also holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Psychology and authored the introduction for a book titled “A Peek Inside the Goo: Depression & The Borderline Personality”. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Tressa was a well established Information Technology professional working with the largest IT, communication, utilities and financial companies in the country. Some of the companies Tressa has worked for include, the New York Independent System Operator, GE Capital Business Asset Funding, IBM Global Services, AT & T Wireless, Hewlett Packard, MCI/Worldcom, GTE, and Sprint. Her areas of expertise include: Publishing Startup & Planning, Business Image Planning, Creative Writing Development, Effective Graphics Design, Cost Conservative Filmmaking.

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