Oct. 25, 2000

The Making of “If I Had a Hammer,” Part 2:
Post-Production

       I am 99.9% through post-production, so this seems like an appropriate time to pick up the narrative of the making of “If I Had a Hammer.”  I have seen the first two answer prints and the next answer print will be the final print, and that officially makes the movie done.
       It’s been ten months since I wrote the last installment of this saga, and that which I thought would take six months in total and another $20,000., in fact took fourteen months and another $75,000. to reach actual, ultimate completion.
       How did I miscalculate so egregiously?  This is a fairly good question and worth considering.
       My biggest mistake to date was charging $80,000. of the production on credit cards, then taking over fourteen months in post.  This combination has cost me about $20,000. in finance charges.  On top of that I have hit the longest stretch of unemployment in my adult life, which is the entire year of 2000, so far, thus ending my steady stream of working capital.
       What this has all equaled has been the most grueling, stress-filled year of the last ten years of my life.
       Having made a pretty good living throughout the 1990s, I had forgotten what being dead-ass broke was like.  I remember very clearly now and I don’t like it all.  But it’s too late to do anything about it at this point.  I stepped into a quagmire with my eyes open and now that it’s sucking up around my mouth and nose, I’m starting to panic.
       The bottom line regarding putting a lot of the production costs on credit cards -- about a third, in this case -- is that you had better be ready and willing to declare bankruptcy if need be.  If you are not ready to do this, as I am not, you will suffer horribly.  However, do I regret doing this?  No.  I would rather have made this movie than anything else, and that includes getting a big payday to direct a big, stupid, Hollywood movie.
       For the second time I have made exactly the movie I wanted to make, given my budgetary restrictions.  I did not rewrite a word for anybody else.  I did not shoot an extra angle at anyone else’s behest.  I was entirely free.  You won’t hear many other filmmakers say that.  I use it as a mantra to warm the cockles of my heart late at night.
       Anyway, why did post-production take so long?  Basically, I got several terrific deals that I had to wait for.  Even with the waiting and finance charges, they were still really great deals and that’s just how it goes.  If you have a lot of money then you can get the people you want exactly when you need them.  If you don’t have the money and you still want specific people, then you have to wait.  I waited.
       My next biggest mistake, I’d say, was miscalculating post costs by almost a third by not owning up to how long the movie is.  Having never made a 116- minute movie before -- my longest film previously was “Lunatics: A Love Story” at 87 minutes -- I didn’t realize what a huge expense that extra 40 minutes would be.  “If I Had a Hammer” is a seven-reel movie.  I’m referring to the 20-minute projection reels, the ones that come in those octagonal metal cans, as opposed to lab reels, which are 10 minutes long.  Well, seven reels times 20 minutes each equals 140 minutes, except my film is only 116 minutes long.  So why isn’t it on six reels?  Six reels equals 120 minutes, with four extra minutes, right?
       Get this.  You try as hard as you can to make the reel-changes come out in logical places, like at the ends of scenes, not during scenes.  Well, that doesn’t always work out to exactly ten minutes -- when you’re editing you work with 10-minute reels.  Why?  Because that’s the length Kodak sells rolls of film and there’s nothing you can do about it.  So you can’t exceed 10 minutes on a lab reel and you want your reels to end between scenes, and since most scenes are a minute or two long, that will put you somewhere between 7 and 9 minutes.  Over the course of 12 lab reels losing a minute or two or three each reel, I developed 2 more 10-minute lab reels, which became a seventh, 20-minute projection reel.
       Does this make sense?  It better if you’re making a movie.  Perhaps this will all disappear soon with the advent of digital filmmaking, but, as yet, it hasn’t.
       I simply must laugh when some lying asshole filmmaker says their entire movie cost $7000.  Completely ignoring production costs (which are the big costs), to have the camera negative cut cost $8500.  To go from the camera negative to print so you can actually show the film costs a dollar a foot!  A two-hour movie is approximately 10,000 feet.  To have a soundtrack on the print is another $4500.  That’s already $23,000. and that’s if your movie was completely free until you got it into the lab for post.
       How about digital effects?  Right now it costs $1.25 a frame to digitize the picture, then another $1.25 a frame to spit it back out onto film.  That has nothing to do with what the effects guy is charging to create the effect.  And that’s not a foot, that’s a frame!  And there are 24 frames a second.  My three simple digital effects were over 1250 frames, which, all together, doesn’t equal one minute.
       Admittedly, I always make something of a production out of my front title sequences -- it’s sort of my trademark -- but the titles and optical work on this film cost over $14,000. and that was because I got a terrific deal.  The first couple of places I spoke with wanted over 25 grand for the same work.
       I now look back on “Running Time” as the easiest feature film I have made.  I had saved almost as much money as was needed to produce and complete the film.  I was also working throughout that time and had money flowing in.  The film was only 70 minutes, it was shot in 16mm, which is minimally two-thirds cheaper than 35mm, there were no digital effects or opticals (like wipes), and when everything was said and done the film cost $130,000.  I did also spend another $30,000. opening the film in a theater for a week, but so what?
       Well, that extra $200,000. I spent on “If I Had a Hammer” is trying very hard to sink me.  This may all sound like diddly-shit for a feature-length motion picture, but in the real world $200,000. is A LOT OF MONEY!  More than twice as much as I’ve ever had at one time.  To avoid bankruptcy, which dangles over my head like the sword of Damocles, I have been eating vast amounts of shit in the past year to weasel, finagle and borrow money.  Any pride I may have once had about such things is now gone.  If I even vaguely believe that I can get some money out of someone -- friend, relative, or acquaintance -- I’ll now pester them worse than long distance phone companies at dinnertime.
       If it sounds like I’m taking pride in my lack of pride, I am.  I’ll do whatever I have to do to complete this film.  Period.  I am an unstoppable force.  If I am not as spectacular of a force as, say, a hurricane or an earthquake, then I’m an insidious force like erosion and I will drip, drip, drip until I wear a hole through a boulder.  My films may not ultimately mean dick to anyone else in the world but me, but they will get made.  And that, I believe, is the only way to get these silly little independent features finished.
       Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of “The Making of ‘If I Had a Hammer’,” which will be sub-titled, “Part 3: Distribution” and is, as the future is for all people, entirely unknown to me at this time.

Josh Becker