This past week has been incredibly trying.  Eric and I went rounds about one final piece that he (and many others) felt needed to be included in the film.  It’s a piece I felt reluctant to put in, because I didn’t understand where this need was coming from, and I couldn’t figure out how to ground what needed to be said in my own experience.  So I was completely lost—writing like mad, grasping for anything that felt even remotely true.  And then Eric called me out on it.

He called on Tuesday 6/29 and said, “Eli, we need have to have a heart to heart, because what you’re writing doesn’t feel like it’s coming from you.”  We had a tough conversation, and examined this story we were telling, and what we needed to do to tell it more responsibly.  And if we couldn’t say what needed to be said, we had to pull the heart of the film.

So I left Lucy with my friend Katie, headed home.  I had 3 hours to salvage the last 10 months of this film’s journey.  My friend Danica called, and with one story, she melted through my steely defensiveness.  Crying, I sat and wrote, and the missing pieces of the film poured out onto the page.  I recorded them, and sent them over to Eric.

3 days later, on 7/2, Eric and I cut in the final elements of the film, then watched it together.  At 11:15pm, our bodies were crumbling, but our spirits were soaring.   We declared the film Locked, and I caught the midnight ferry back to Seattle.

Of course, the road from “Locked Picture” to “Finished Film” is a significant one.  We deliver the film on hard drives to AlphaCine and Bad Animals on 7/6.  The week of the 12th is color correcting with Marc Brown, followed by a week of sound mixing with Dave Howe.  Then we marry sweet sound with gorgeous picture, and (hopefully!) call it a wrap on July 23.