Closing cycles for new beginnings

Things were hugely complicated at the beginning of the new year, both, personally and professionally. Lots of things to complete, lots of new beginnings.

Shortly after the new year’s interminable events, Jac was able to get together with the principal cast and a few of the crew to watch Seditiosa in it’s – almost – final version.

The screening itself went well, some of the guests had some engagements after the screening so as soon as it was over and with not many comments, everyone left, almost in a hurry. Jac did not expect what came a couple of days later. Lots of comments from the protagonists about some shots and little issues that are almost undetectable, but they are there.

Dani made a list of things to go over. It was not only her list, but a list where many of those who watched the film added their little 2 cents. Dani became the spokes person for everyone.

Jac and Dani met to go over the film, bit by bit, examining the issues. Little things, like during a Close-Up shot at the beginning of the film, when Dani and Mila are lowering the trunk they carry to the ground… ALAS, Mila’s nail is painted blue! Jac hadn’t seen that and I doubt many people will notice, maybe no one, except Dani, maybe she has something about finger nails… but it’s there and it must be fixed. And like that one problem, many other little issues came up, like a close up of Simonne where her skin apparently does not look very good … stuff like that.

Jac began to work on fixing those problems but suddenly he felt he was saturated, he could not open the project and concentrate on it and it happened for many days. His saturation state was not only with Seditiosa. He tried opening 69 Année Érotique, but no, he couldn’t get into that one either. As if that wasn’t enough of a distraction, January was full of family gatherings to celebrate many birthdays and special events, lots of them. We can say that Jac took a forced vacation from film.

Beginning February, Jac went back to Seditiosa, to finally close it. He managed to get all the way to the crucifixion part, where many of the comments concentrated, he was about to jump completely into it when he received the news that Pygmalion was pre selected for the Premios Platino (Platino Awards). It’s like the Oscars for Ibero American movies. To be pre selected for those awards is huge, really huge. Suddenly our team is joining the likes of Benicio del Toro, Pedro Almodovar, Penelope Cruz… that kind of deal.

Jac took the rest of the first week of February to prepare all the materials requested by the famous awards. They included pictures of the film, pictures of the cast, 2 of each, trailer, Making-Of clips, press book, technical specs and most importantly, the film in a particular way. Jac had a deadline, Thursday, February 8th. He had very two or three days to do all of the work!

In the process of preparing and uploading the film, he discovered that Vimeo compresses the films we upload, and the Platino people needed the film in the highest bit rate possible. After many tries Jac had to open a Dropbox account to upload the 10 giga,15 bit rate film clip. Their reaction from the awards people was “It’s perfect“.

On Friday the 9th Jac was done with Pygmalion and waited until Monday to hear from the Platino Awards.

That Monday the news were great, Pygmalion was all set for viewing by jurors, journalists, film professionals and other VIPs attached to the Platino Awards… it means… great exposure for this great film.

https://www.veoplatino.com/VPla_Ficha.asp?Id=29958&Ed=2023

But that was not the only unplanned work Jac was facing. Last year he was contacted by the people that run the very prestigious Anthology Film Archives requesting permission to show his first film, Krik Krak, as well as a good copy for the screening. Jac accepted the request and promised a good copy. Time passed and as the screening dates approached, he was contacted again about the copy. So, Jac had to spend sometime looking for the good copy, process it, upload it and so on.

The film was shown on the 11th and 19th of this month and it went well. To Jac’s surprised, they had some money for him.

After Jac completed all that exciting but stressful work, he was too craze to think of anything except his cats. He decided to take another few days off from film work.

The weekend began with Carnival and Jac decided to get busy cleaning house. Things that haven’t been touched in months. A mess. Plus he rescued a little kitty, Chiqui, before the weekend, while walking his dog.

Meanwhile, Mila’s son rescued two kitties, took them home with him but Mila was afraid she didn’t have enough space in her apartment for two cats and one dog, she has a nice big dog. So she begged Jac to take the rescued little, tiny, cats, you are the lord of the cats, after all Mila said to persuade him. Jac thought it over for a bit and decided to do it. The three newly rescued kitties are now part of what Amy calls Jac’s Cat Sanctuary.

I hope the veterinarian is giving you a bulk discount in cat neutering. ​You’re officially running a cat sanctuary.

Amy Hesketh

Jac has seven cats now.

We are past mid February now and Jac is, slowly, returning to Seditiosa, to finally release it to the world. We’ve been organizing the strategy for the film to have the best impact possible because it is very different to release a movie to a niche of supporters than to try to reach a larger market, It’s a whole different deal, it takes some time to get all the necessary work done.

We’re pretty much in full tech mode, checking stats all over the place to make sure our strategy works the best way possible. We can check stats of how many people watched our films, whether they saw the entire movie, or just half of it. Things like that. It gives us a very important perspective about how a film will do with a given audience in a particular market. There are too many details to consider because of the so many platforms we use. To give you an example, Justine has a lot more sales at Vimeo than anywhere else, while Maleficarum’s best sales come from Amazon. That’s intriguing to us.There’s a lot of data that we’re looking into as we prepare Seditiosa’s release.

Even with all the delays, Seditiosa will be released in record time, really. One thing Jac blames for all the little problems in the film is that he was rushing the post, not going over every little detail in every single shot, something that he now has to do. Still, in record time.

That’s where things are right now.

In the meantime, La Paz is going through heavy storms, which in a very odd way reflect Jac’s mood these days:

https://x.com/LaTrafico/status/1757897181304914189?s=20​