Last Sunday, we held our second test screening of Automatic. About eight of us gathered at my place at 1pm. I handed out pens and paper for notes and gave a brief introduction beforehand. The colour grading still hasn’t been done, the audio levels need attention and the music is only temporary. The main feedback I was after concerned the narrative flow.

Automatic contains a great deal of complex dialogue, which some people struggled with, although I feel the dialogue is very much part of the film’s identity, and others clearly enjoyed it.

After our civilian audience had left, Angela and I had a discussion. There’s a list of smaller issues still to address: cuts that feel too quick, odd bits of audio, syncing problems, etc. One or two people still felt the opening was a bit slow, but we’ve come up with a solution. There’s also concern that one particular scene still isn’t coming across clearly enough. After talking it through, we’ve come up with some ideas to fix all these issues, although we’ll probably need to shoot a couple of short pick-up shots. That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m still receiving comments by email, but the bottom line is that the scene order now feels solid, and this cut is, more or less, it.

It still needs tweaking. It needs grading. It needs music. But overall, we now have the narrative arc in place, and we’re getting close to picture lock. So on Monday morning, I contacted a guy I met at Chichester Film Makers to see whether he’d be interested in handling the colour grading. I’ll spend the rest of this week working through the snag list, but I’m hoping that, before too long, I can be a little more hands-off.

That won’t be the end of it, though. Looming on the horizon are the next stages: film festivals, promotion and distribution.

Ironic that while I struggle to create a new scene out of existing media a “professional” media company has closed off half the road outside to film a scene for The Siege. Two enormous trucks, numerous tents, two large buses, about 500 bags and around 60 crew standing about waiting for their moment to step forward and apply blusher or hand a new set of batteries to the 3rd sound assistant. I’m reminded of that joke about five blind men feeling parts of an elephant to try to determine what type of animal it is. One man grabs the trunk and says it’s a snake etc. I’m sure all of the specialists outside my flat will perform their task to perfection but it’s the director’s role to see the whole picture. I saw him sitting snuggly in a chair surrounded by toadies and felt a bit like Withnail: “It’s ridiculous. I’ve been to film school. I’m good-looking. I tell you, I’ve fucking sight more talent than half the rubbish that gets on television. Why can’t I get on television?”