Down and Outer?

I began the search for another job but nothing really presented itself. Meanwhile, my film wasn’t getting edited. Once again, it was a student volunteer position but no one was working out. With filmmaking, one of the ways to get in is to make a film that gets attention and leads to opportunities. I was hoping Go Tell Mama would do that for me. So it was important that the film got finished. I decided that, with my severance pay supporting us for now, I would edit the film myself with the hope of it opening other doors.

I had shot Go Tell Mama on 16mm film but non-linear editing was just getting going at the time. Regent had an AVID non-linear editing suite on which I had had some experience and I could learn as I went. The editing suite was actually in the same CBN building in which I had been working. 

So CBN was still paying me to go work in the same place on my own stuff. It felt like God was directing my steps after all and working out a plan through all this. Regent hosted a film festival every May at a local art theater where they showed the summer films and all the smaller films shot during the school year. The goal was to get the film finished by then.

One of the big mistakes in filmmaking is thinking that mistakes made during filming can be fixed in editing. Sometimes you make mistakes in pre-production that are hard to adjust once shooting begins. I knew my child actors were not doing great but there was just no way I could recast them once we got under way. I also wondered if using the smaller, less physically intimidating actress for the part of Mama was really going to work.

Once I got into editing, I realized that both issues made it a lesser film. But I had to just take what I got and make the best of it. I finished the non-linear edit and then had to go back to the physical 16mm film, sync up the sound and edit it. It then got sent off to a post-production film lab to get it all finalized. 

The time was approaching when my severance pay would be coming to an end. I needed to look into bringing in some more income while I worked toward any filmmaking future. Once the film was completed I was going to start sending it out to film festivals to see if I could get the attention I was looking for. If something did happen, I wanted the kind of job that I could just leave. The only thing I could find that fit the bill was…driving a cab.

When I used to tell people that I once drove a cab, I would usually get an incredulous reaction. Before ride-sharing services began, it was a job that had the reputation of being a bit skanky, typically done by foreigners and down and outers. I guess I fit right in. But I do like to differentiate between driving a cab and being a cab driver. I like to suppose that I just filled the position for a time rather than it being my identity. 


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