On May 13, I was meant to premiere Claustrophobia to about 250 people in Los Angeles. If you asked me even four days ago whether this was still going to happen, I would have said yes. Then we ran into a little snag: Not long after we began the final mix - at 4am on a Friday morning, mind you, which I can now tell you is a stupid time to have a final mix - my sound mixer informed me that all the dialogue from the first 30 minutes of the film, which we had mixed two weeks earlier at a different venue, was screwed up. He said he could clean it all up and remix it in a week or so, but what was I to do about the premiere? For a few minutes, I thought, "Well, I'll go ahead with it on May 13 and just explain to the audience that the audio they're going to hear won't be quite right." Then my co-producer Julia Stemock, there with us even in the wee hours, suggested simply postponing it until the sound was perfected. I reluctantly agreed that this was the best course of action, though I dreaded having to email everybody that I had harassed for two weeks for RSVPs, and tell them that they'd have to wait a few more weeks. Which actually caused me so much grief that I barely slept on Friday morning, after getting home around 5am. The lack of sleep and stress about the decision made me catch a cold. In the end, of course, nobody minded the postponement, so there was really nothing to worry about.
I suppose it's best that it happens this way. Now when I do have the premiere - next month - it will be with a completely finished film (I won't set a new date until that happens), I won't be sick, and also I'll be comfortably settled in my new house, into which I'm moving next weekend. Bad idea to premiere a film and move during the same week anyway. The good news is that everything else - music, color correction, color re-correction, digital clean-up, titles - is done. Done! And I am indeed signing with producer's reps this week, so the film has a bright future. Huzzah.