Note: This is a shorter version that highlights scenes with a different edit. Please view the official, complete version is at the Widow Maker film site.
On Friday, October 1st 2004, a substantial group of San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers awaited an email at Glorinda’s home in Marin County. These are members of the San Francisco Indie Club run by Glorinda Marie who is producing the film entry to the National Film Challenge 2004. They are waiting for the requirements sent to registered groups around the United States. What we received was:
- Genre: Western
- Prop of a monkey
- Line of dialogue as “I didn’t know you felt that way”
- And the character of W. Burns – Ventriloquist.
I was honored as the editor of the film. So, Saturday night I pickup the mini-DV’s shot so far at a beautiful estate in Tiburon where the brothel scene shooting is finishing up.
I get home around midnight and start digitizing with Adobe Priemere through a Pinnacle DV500 capture card. I tell myself I’ll take a short snooze during the capture. So, at 6 am on that Sunday I wake up to find that the computer screen is frozen. I reboot the computer and it doesn’t start up with the hard disk grinding. I’ve had a disk crash!
I rush over to Fry’s in Fremont and buy two firewire cards: One for my desktop and one for my laptop. But they can’t replace the Pinnacle capture card I had on the failed computer. And I don’t have time for a complete reinstall. I can barely edit wtih frames skipping, but I slug along. In the afternoon, Paul Martin, the director, comes by to look at my progress. I’m stressed and feeling guilty.
But Paul has no blame and simply states my conditions for editing is unworkable. That the only solution he sees is to drive 1 1/2 hours up to his home in Sonoma and edit there on his Final Cut Pro system. To make a story so far long, shorter, the unit production manager, Vicki DeMey, from San Jose joins is with her own Final Cut Pro system. We capture and then edit our sections straight through to Monday morning. Then we drive to Victor Speigel house in Berkeley to score the music. By around 10:50 pm with little over an hour before the Monday deadline is up, we finaly have a complete version output to mini-DV. I drop off the mini-DV at the 11:13 pm at 7th Street Oakland Post Office that closes at midnight!
“Widow Maker” turned out to win three awards from the National Film Challenge 2004:
- BEST WESTERN
- BEST COSTUMES
- Plus a special award for BEST SHAVING INCIDENT.
“Widow Maker” was also accepted and screened by the Cedar Rapids Indie Film Festival April 2005.
:),
Enric
P.S. I ended up getting a G5 Final Cut Pro system on which I now make my films and vlogs.