Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since my last blog. Let me assure you, we have been busy and the film is pro­gress­ing in remark­able ways. It’s just that some­times a Face­book post is eas­i­er to do than putting down a whole blog para­graph. Think­ing back on the past year, I groan at the thought of all the grant appli­ca­tions I wrote, and the many tweaks we made to our work-in-progress video. But I also have a great sense of accom­plish­ment know­ing that the film has got­ten stronger with every grant appli­ca­tion. The year con­tained sev­er­al high­lights, includ­ing break­through edit ses­sions, a pro­duc­tion trip to New York, my FIRST TRIP TO CHINA, and a won­der­ful work-in-progress work­shop on the pres­ti­gious LBGT film fes­ti­val cruise Pride of the Ocean.

Because of the gen­er­ous dona­tions of a lot of peo­ple, we man­aged to get into the edit room sev­er­al times this year. Turn­ing 100 hours of accu­mu­lat­ed footage into a com­pelling sto­ry is a time-con­sum­ing and often tedious process, involv­ing hours of tran­scrib­ing inter­views, log­ging b‑roll footage, writ­ing and re-writ­ing nar­ra­tion lines, and hunt­ing for obscure his­tor­i­cal pho­tos and film footage.

 

Luck­i­ly producer/editor Shirley Thomp­son has the real heart of gold she adver­tis­es and comes to work with a sharp sto­ry­telling scalpel. I took stock after our last edit ses­sion which end­ed the Fri­day before Thanks­giv­ing — we are 1/3 of the way through our rough cut!! And the remain­ing 20 scenes are clear­ly mapped out and ready to be attacked as soon as more fund­ing comes in.

 

 

It’s a great land­mark in the life of our film. We could­n’t have got­ten this far with­out the sup­port of over 300 indi­vid­ual donors and the encour­age­ment of film fans from far and wide.

 

 

Help us get to the fin­ish line in 2015 with a tax deductible dona­tion by click­ing on the red donate but­ton to the right. Con­tin­ue review­ing FINDING KUKAN’s year in the next few posts.…