Juggling Time

It's been three and a half weeks since we wrapped principal photography for the first half of "That's What She Told Me," a short film I directed. I'm also the editor on the film. The plan was to create a trailer with the footage we've shot, show it, and raise the rest of the money to complete the film. But as I started looking at the footage, I realized that I needed to edit together all of the scenes that I have before I can cut together a trailer. So I began, thinking it would take me about a month. In three and a half weeks, I've spent a total of 20 hours editing. And I'm only halfway done with the rough cut. It will probably take me at least another 20 hours to finish cutting the film before I can start on the trailer. Why so little time?

In that time, I've also had three school holidays, attended one high holy day service and held one family dinner for Rosh Hashanah, had four therapy appointments (me), two occupational therapy appointments (my son), one appointment in the burn unit (my father-in-law), one sick day (all of us), moved my kids into two separate rooms and painted both rooms, attended five meetings at the kids' school on volunteer projects, bought two birthday presents (the kids' friends), three other birthday presents (the kids and husband), took the kids to three piano lessons, designed and printed birthday invitations, designed and ordered Christmas cards (my husband is Jewish and I'm Protestant), and paid the bills. And that's just on the personal side.

In my other film work, I've had two phone meetings for film consulting, attended one artist networking event, submitted two film grants, put together a proposal for a potential producer for "Weeki Wachee Girls", did some re-writing on "Weeki Wachee Girls", read 12 pages in my writing workshop with Mick Casale of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and sent off "Flower of a Girl" to the Baltimore Women's Film Festival (playing Friday, Oct. 24 at 10:00 p.m.).

And I ask myself for the thousandth time, can I really keep doing this? So far, the answer is still "yes." Or maybe I'll just go back to bed.