http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php Welcome to the Take a Bow Blog en 2008-08-28T05:32:12 annick@takeabowfilm.com hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=62&c=1 2008-08-19T00:20:02 Becky (mailto:becky@takeabowfilm.com) General Greetings from the scorched earth of California! Just to keep you in the loop: we have finally finished a broadcast version of "Take A Bow" (a broadcast hour is shorter than a feature film to accommodate commercials) and are now pitching the film directly to networks. Additionally, we continue ...
Just to keep you in the loop: we have finally finished a broadcast version of "Take A Bow" (a broadcast hour is shorter than a feature film to accommodate commercials) and are now pitching the film directly to networks. Additionally, we continue to submit both the feature length and broadcast length versions to film festivals. In spite of a "Great Indie-Film Depression" we are hopeful to get our film seen! Additionally, I am working on setting up a possible screening at Paramount Pictures in one of the screening rooms! (Don't want to count any chickens before they hatch, so more on this as it develops.)

We are learning about how long and tedious the process of distributing a film is, and we appreciate all your love and support! Thank you to everyone!!!]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=56&c=1 2008-04-26T01:19:45 Annick (mailto:annick@takeabowfilm.com) General Firstly, I would like to welcome you to our (slightly) redesigned site. We've updated a lot of the outdated text (after all, the year of the website's copyright was 2006! Yikes), our director's note, timeline, stats, crew page, and others. I'm very happy with the site right ...
There was a comment on my previous post regarding the ability to rent "Take a Bow" so you guys can FINALLY see the film we've been working on so mysteriously for over three years. By submitting the film into festivals, and hopefully one day getting INTO those film festivals, it makes it more and more likely that we will get some sort of distribution deal that will allow the film to be rentable. Without boring you, the gist is that it is very difficult to have a film available at Blockbuster or on Netflix if you do not have a distributor. If we are unable to acquire distribution (knock wood!) we may self-distribute our film via this site and then you, faithful readers, will be able to purchase the film for your own viewing pleasure. For now, however, we'll have to wait a bit more to finally release the film. Who knew film took so darn long!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Thank you again for checking in ]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=55&c=1 2008-03-26T02:20:10 Annick (mailto:annick@takeabowfilm.com) General I wanted to get an update in before March was over, even though there isn't much to report. We've been applying to film festivals pretty consistently and have not yet heard back from any of them. There are pretty much at least 10 film festivals in every state in the ...
We've been applying to film festivals pretty consistently and have not yet heard back from any of them. There are pretty much at least 10 film festivals in every state in the US, plus several more in each country in the world, so there are a lot of choices to narrow down. There are about 4 festivals devoted entirely to films by, for, and about disabled people, but those deadlines aren't until the fall, so we're hoping that we'll have better luck with those specific festivals.

We are also applying for yet another grant to find the finishing funds for the film, and that deadline is mid-April. So, fingers crossed for that.

Also, we are updating our (very very) outdated website soon, and I just wanted to ask (if anyone would like to reply) if there is anything you'd like to see on this site that is not already here. We'll be updating information about the film, adding things to the timeline, Becky's director's note, and possibly a re-design at some point. If you have any suggestions/comments, we definitely welcome them.

Last thing, just an update on Illinois' ranking among the states in the US for the care of disabled people. When we shot "Take a Bow" in 2005, Illinois was ranked the 47th state in the nation for their lack of care for special needs people. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois has now dropped to last place, number 50. It's a pretty sad day for Illinois, and if you are located in Illinois and would like to tell your representatives how saddened/upset/disgusted (not to give you any hints or anything...) you are by this, please visit www.illinois.gov and click on the pull down menu in the Quick References section for Services and Information and then click on "Find Districts/Officials" to find your representatives' email address.]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=54&c=1 2008-02-18T12:51:06 Annick (mailto:annick@takeabowfilm.com) General As of right now, there are a few things going on with "Take a Bow". The first is that we are still trying to raise the $3-5,000 needed to finish the film. We have our color corrected tape and our sound mixed tape, and we just need to ...
We still have not gotten into any festivals but have now lowered our scope to be a bit more specific and are now applying to documentary film festivals and festivals devoted to our subject matter. Fingers crossed!

While we wait, Becky and Bryan are cutting a new, broadcast-length version of "Take a Bow". We are attempting to make the film as marketable as possible, and having the option of a feature length or broadcast length (which is usually about 58 minutes long, and could be broadcast on any station from PBS to Showtime) is definitely to our advantage.

Not a lot else is new, I've been meaning to make some changes and updates to the rest of the website, so hopefully you can look out for those changes within the next month or so.

Thanks for reading!]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=53&c=1 2008-01-08T23:29:53 Becky (mailto:becky@takeabowfilm.com) General Hello TAB world. It has, once again, been far too long since I posted here. I am still working in Hollywood at Paramount Pictures in Distribution, TAB is finished and in the "festival submission" phase, and things are going relatively well for me. Except for this. Chris Burritt, our Columbia ...
Except for this.

Chris Burritt, our Columbia College Advisor on this project, passed away January 7th, 2008. Though he had experienced health problems for some time, his death was unexpected; shocking. I spoke with him last only a week ago, when I was home in Chicago for the holidays. He was even more jovial and supportive than he had ever been, in spite of feeling really under the weather. In fact, I received my last TAB-related email from him only 3 days before he passed.

Chris, I feel like I had so much more to learn from you. You were the only person I ever called "Dad" other than my own. And I knew you loved me the same way when you would call and say, "Beck, it's Dad..." Oh Chris, no one has ever believed in me as much as you. The world is definitely a sadder, darker place without you...

As of now, "Take A Bow" is being dedicated to Chris. Without him, I never would have made this movie.

Also, Annick and I are organizing a Memorial Service for Chris out here on the West Coast, for all of Chris's former students, colleagues, and friends who are unable to make it back to Chicago for the services.

]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=52&c=1 2007-12-31T15:50:31 Annick (mailto:annick@takeabowfilm.com) General I hope everyone is having/has had wonderful and restful holidays! As I've mentioned, things are slow with "Take a Bow" now that the bulk of our post-production work is completed. We've heard back from Sundance, Slamdance, and Rotterdam that we didn't get into their festivals (which is ok, we don't ...
As I've mentioned, things are slow with "Take a Bow" now that the bulk of our post-production work is completed. We've heard back from Sundance, Slamdance, and Rotterdam that we didn't get into their festivals (which is ok, we don't really have the money to fly out to those festivals anyway). We've applied to a few more including the Sprout Film Festival which is a festival in New York that showcases films for, by, and about disabled people. We are keeping our fingers crossed...

We have officially not received any of the grants we've applied for, which is pretty disheartening. But we'll move forward and more aggressively contact distributors to find the rest of the funds we need to complete "Take a Bow".

I will try to convince Becky to post so you guys can read a little about what's going on from her end. Most of what I deal with is business-type boring things, while her job tends to be a bit more creative.

In the meantime, I hope you are all well and those of you in cold climates are keeping warm! We hope you have a happy and healthy new year.]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=51&c=1 2007-11-25T18:22:55 Annick (mailto:annick@takeabowfilm.com) General Ah remember those good old days when my goal was to update once a week? As things have wound down, I've had less to write about, but as the film finally reaches completion, and as we apply for (and hopefully get into) more film festivals, I will have more ...
We were originally getting the film mixed in Chicago, but as our mixer's schedule filled, and as film festival deadlines loomed, we ultimately decided to have "Take a Bow" mixed here in LA. We completed the mix two weeks ago, and it sounds wonderful! Both Becky and I attended the final mix session (it was in the evening after I'd had my first day at my new job-- working at Paramount as well! What a small world...), which lasted about 4-5 hours, and then we were done. It was a huge weight off our shoulders and one more big step towards completion.

We had a little scare the week before the mix involving our color corrected master tape. We had had the color done in Chicago and they mailed us the master tape-- a very large tape called a DigiBeta, which is a very high quality, but is comically large. We received the tape in the mail, and it was labeled "Take a Bow un-color corrected" so we figured that either they had sent us the wrong tape or someone had mislabeled it. We kept our fingers crossed as Bryan checked the tape, but sure enough, it was not the color corrected version! That meant that the company had to have the color corrected film on their hard drive, or else we would have lost about $30,000 worth of work! We frantically contacted the company, and there were a good two days when we thought all was lost. Very fortunately, we received a call that they'd found the correct tape and would be sending it along. Becky, Bryan, and I seriously almost had three consecutive panic attacks.

Besides our titles (which we'll most likely finish once we are accepted to a film festival, as they are expensive and uneccessary until the last possible moment), all we have left to do is to marry the color corrected master tape to the sound mix, and then we are done! Oh yeah, and there is the little matter of one last music license that is being very slow, but we've still got a little time until that needs to be resolved.

We've been applying to more film festivals: we applied to Sundance and Slamdance (both in Park City, Utah in January), South by Southwest (Austin, TX), the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. There are more deadlines coming up, so we're trying to decide which to apply to, as applications are expensive and we're quickly running out of money.

We applied for 3 more grants and have already received word that we did not get one of them. I'm starting to branch out and call domestic distributors, to see if they will provide completion funds for a co-production, or an all-out sale. We'll see how that goes.

I hope everyone had a wonderful, restful Thanksgiving!]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=60&c=1 2007-09-24T15:22:28 Becky (mailto:becky@takeabowfilm.com) General Hello TAB world!! It has been SOO long since I updated, and I apologize. I moved to California; arrived here Sept 1st! We drove from Chicago to LA in a 16 foot Penske truck, with our car towed behind and our cats YOWLING in the cab with us. I freaked out ...
It has been SOO long since I updated, and I apologize. I moved to California; arrived here Sept 1st! We drove from Chicago to LA in a 16 foot Penske truck, with our car towed behind and our cats YOWLING in the cab with us. I freaked out in Arizona because the heat was in the 110’s and I thought the extreme temperature would damage the tape masters of our film but no apparent damage was done. PHEW. We moved into our new place in Glendale, CA, on the hottest day of the year: 112 degrees. (and it was hotter the next day when we were outside painting our new bedroom set; 120 degrees that day! BLECH)

Anyway, things here are great! I am working at Paramount Pictures in their Worldwide Television dept as an “Operations Coordinator.” You know how sometimes you can watch movies on HBO, Showtime, TNT, AMC, etc? Well, when those networks screen films, they have bought a package of titles from the distributor (in this case, Paramount Pictures) that they can then air on their channel. Countries all over the world do the same thing, and my dept is in charge of making sure all the foreign networks get the correct tape formats with the correct subtitles, etc, to screen our films on their networks. Working for Paramount is amazing and I love them!

Take A Bow is being mixed in Chicago, and Annick and I are seeking a title house to do our final retrack and titling here in CA. (Retrack: when the final sound mix is done, we receive it as a file on a disc, no picture attached. So, we lay it back onto the picture and sync it with the 2-pop (the beep you hear when the “2” appears during a countdown…we line up the picture of the “2” in the countdown with the “pop” at the head of our audio mix track…) This ensures that the audio is in sync with picture and this process is called “retracking.”) Anyway, point: the film is SOOO close to being totally done!!! Mix-retrack-titles-finished!!! So easy (yet so expensive and therefore arduous…but Annick scolds me when I start to worry about these things…)

Well, that is it for me! Hope all is well in the world of Illinois and that “our kids” are all doing awesome! I miss all of you!

Becky]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=49&c=1 2007-08-06T10:16:04 Annick (mailto:annick@takeabowfilm.com) General In the interim between posts, we have been trying to get many things done. We only have three more music licenses to acquire (out of 20!), and we are trying to wind those down by next week (fingers crossed). We began our color correction on Friday, and will ...
We applied for several grants over the course of the past 8 months, and unfortunately, did not receive any of them. There are various reasons for this: in some cases the foundations did not have enough money to fund all of the wonderful submissions; in other cases, "Take a Bow"'s goals did not exactly match the goals of that particular foundation. We are waiting to hear from one last foundation, but it's mostly been through your wonderful and generous donations that we have been able to make it this far, and we are incredibly grateful. There is still time to donate, so you can either visit our "gifts" page or our fiscal sponsor's page and donate there via paypal for a tax deductible donation.

We submitted "Take a Bow" to the Toronto International Film Festival and did not get in, but it's ok because if we had, we would have had to complete the whole film yesterday in time to send it to the festival. So! We have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and we're focusing all of our energy on the deadline for the Sundance Film Festival. There are a few other major festivals that have deadlines coming up as well, so once we've finished all of "Take a Bow"'s post-production, we'll probably submit to all of them.

That's all for now, we're in the last leg of our journey and very anxious for where it will lead...]]> http://www.takeabowfilm.com/blog/index.php?p=61&c=1 2007-06-22T09:36:11 Annick (mailto:annick@takeabowfilm.com) General So! We are so close to having our music completed that I can almost taste it. Our score is pretty much done, there is one scene we're still struggling with finding the right music for, but the wonderful work of Jeremy Borum sounds amazing and fits very well. Through the help ...
Through the help of a fantastic music supervisor in Chicago, we are acquiring our music licenses faster and more easily. Sometimes these labels and publishers will only talk to music supervisors, and no one else. It makes it difficult for someone like me to try and acquire these songs on my own. We have just received word of the approval of two of the main songs in the film, that also happen to be two of the more difficult songs to clear. The price is a little higher than I anticipated, so for those of you who have yet to donate, now is your chance! Every little bit still does help, and since we're ohsoclose to completion, your donation might take us through to the end! As I've said, you can either donate via paypal on our site, or for donations of $200 or more you can visit DER's website and donate to Take a Bow via paypal and then your donation will be TAX DEDUCTIBLE! Yay! The link to our donate page is HERE and you have to scroll down to "Take a Bow" (about 3/4 down the page).

We have also applied for two more grants, but probably won't hear from those for a few months.

What else? We have started to apply to film festivals! The first is the Toronto International Film Festival, that takes place at the beginning of September. It is one of the larger film festivals in the world, and is also a great place to sell films (fingers crossed).

That's about it for now, more to come as we begin our color correction and sound work.]]>