The Rough Cut
This past weekend, my wife and I received a minor miracle. By ‘minor’, I mean that no great world-changing event took place. No higher order of peace was achieved in the Middle East. As far as miracles go, it was more in the common garden-variety category. But still…
As far as we are concerned, there is no question. We witnessed a miracle.
That's my "house," in the background
In order to understand just how amazing this event was, I need to explain something about our home here in England. The big house where we have our apartment is located at the end of a two mile-long lane. The telephone and power cables were all laid down in the ‘60s. Which means the phone lines are old, the seals are corroding, and we cannot get high-speed internet.
Up until last year, all we could get was dial-up.
It’s a beautiful world, our little haven in the fields. But it is also a world without Skype, or downloadable films, or music, or video conferencing. It’s not quite as bad a connection as where we lived back when we first arrived in England. That was an Edwardian boathouse, converted to a home back in the nineteen-teens. We renovated one room, and discovered all the wiring wrapped in old newspapers. The Times, to be exact. The headline was about the negotiations to end the War to End All Wars.
All this has something to do with the miracle. Really.
This past week, I invited my wife on a date. We have both been so busy since we returned to England—the surgery, and Oxford term, and work on the Unlimited novel. But a week ago I completed the novel’s first draft, and last Thursday I gave my last class and completed all the tutorials for this term. So I invited Isabella to go away for a little weekend break. I took her back to the village where we used to live, and still love, called Henley-On-Thames.
As the name suggests, Henley sits on the River Thames. Its history is pretty amazing. Back in the early medieval era, when the river was the major conduit for transporting goods through the heart of England, Henley was the seat of the royal customs houses. All goods transported along the King’s river was subject to the King’s taxes.
There are still houses in Henley that are over a thousand years old, that bear names from this time—the Salt House, and the Corn Exchange, and the Wool Market, and so forth. At that point, Henley was home to almost five hundred taverns and inns—not bad for a village of some five thousand souls. There is still one brewery, Brakespear, that has been making ale in Henley for more than seven centuries.
We left Henley because it was ‘discovered’ by rich London bankers, who, in one twelve-month period, pushed up the housing prices so high we could no longer afford to stay. In one year our rent went up 350 percent. At the time, it was a very hard moment. I can’t say I’m glad it happened. But I am very happy that we’ve had a chance to live where we are now. Very glad indeed.
So we returned to Henley, and stayed in a riverside manor called the Phyllis Court Club. It basically looks like a wedding cake that sits on an emerald lawn right alongside the river. It is one of my wife’s favorite places in the whole world. So to celebrate all the milestones, and to thank her for nursing me through the recovery from my operation, I took her to Henley for a date.
After my last tutorial, we drove down from Oxford. Before dinner, I checked my emails, and to my astonishment I discovered a note from the producer of the Unlimited film, Chad Gunderson, announcing that the rough cut was completed.
The rough cut of a film means that from all the hours and days of shooting film, a basic structure has been laid out from beginning to end. The soundtrack is in place, including the initial structure of the music. There is still a great deal of polishing to be done. But this is the first glimpse any of us have had of the story in its entirety.
The basic rule of thumb in watching a rough cut is, this is the worst this film will ever look.
Which means the only people who should see even a glimpse at this stage are pros – people who know to look beyond the off-tempo moments and the scratchy sound and the absence of special effects – and so on and so on and so on. There are a thousand different reasons why the rough cut could be a toe-curling experience. The best thing that can be said for most rough cuts is, there might be a film there somewhere. Basically the experience is a jagged shift from one cringe to the next.
My wife has never seen a rough cut before. When I told her over dinner that the link had come to the rough cut, she immediately demanded to see it.
“Let’s not ruin a lovely meal,” I begged. “It can wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what? For the sky to open and the Second Coming to arrive?”
“Let’s go home. I’ll go over to a friend’s house. I’ll give it a first look…”
“You’re not seeing this without me.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“We’re not waiting. They have wi-fi in this hotel. We’re watching it. Tonight.”
There are moments in married life when all the logic in the world is defeated by a woman on a mission.
My dearest friend in the publishing world, Gary Johnson, former President of Bethany House Publishers, was having a discussion like this one with his granddaughter last week. The granddaughter is nine years old.
When she came up with an idea that he had a hundred reasons to nix, she planted her hands on her hips and said, “Stay with me here, Grandpa. You have two choices. You can argue with me and then do it, or we can go have some fun.”
Which was exactly what I thought about as I gave my wife the inevitable answer, which was, “Okay.”
So I went to the front desk, and explained what had happened, and asked if we could sit in the disused room closest to their wi-fi connection. To stream a professional cut of a film, we needed every ounce of oomph their e-link could provide.
The receptionist responded without the blink of an eye. I mean, it was like she had been sitting there all day, just waiting for me to come up and say, I’m a novelist and a screenwriter, and there’s this film that I’ve been working on for over a year, and we have a chance to see it…
The receptionist announced that they had just redone their conference room, and installed a professional-grade overhead projector and a wall-sized screen.
So we took our desserts and our coffees and moved into this room with padded swivel chairs. And this really nice guy came in and hooked up my laptop to their system.
And there comes the film. Just remembering that moment gives me chills. Readers who have followed the course of this project will understand when I say, there have been moments when all we had to go on was prayer. And yet here we were, holding hands in the darkened room, watching rain streak our window and make patterns upon the river, and then the dream came to life.
Unlimited is without question the finest inspirational film I have ever seen.
There are so many astonishing aspects of the finished project. I am going to mention just two here, and come back to others later on.
A few weeks before we started filming, the insurance groups that cover risk on a film production stopped covering work in Mexico. The violence and the risk of kidnapping were just too great. Which meant it was possible to film in the slums of Rio, or Angola, but not across the border from El Paso. So one of the last-minute issues our producer and director had to overcome was finding sites that looked like Mexico, but were north of the border.
There are moments in the film when the border fence becomes visible. And I know at some level that I am looking south, from Texas into Mexico. But my logic doesn’t hold me. Because at a gut level, I am so caught up in the atmosphere that I’m in Mexico, seeing across the impossible divide, and there on the fence’s other side is the forbidden land, the richness and the opportunities of USA. Which it isn’t. It’s actually the other way around.
That’s one thing. The other is the cadence, or what in film parlance is known as the beat structure.
Too often inspirational films go like this: Story, story, story, then soapbox, soapbox, then back to story again.
The hardest thing about bringing an inspirational story to the big screen is finding that balance between message and story, so that the entertainment value is never lost, not for an instant. Because this must happen, it must become the norm, in order for inspirational films to start drawing a mainstream audience.
The message of Unlimited is solid. But at no point – not one – is there the sense that the moral pulls the viewer out of the story. It is amazing.
The emotional ‘feel’ is constant.
The tension and the flow and the steady unfolding of the plot draws beautifully towards the climax.
The lighting is exquisite. It holds to that arid Mexican yellow, the parched quality so powerful I was comparing it in my mind to favorite big-budget movies that have been shot in desert settings.
Unlimited is a good movie. Really. As a rough cut, it is fun to watch. From start to finish.
I will finish here with a request.
This week the producers and director are flying to Nashville to show this rough cut to major backers. It is a vital step. Crucial. So much hangs on this showing. Your prayers would be so very much appreciated.
We stand in prayerful thanks, our hands outstretched to receive the next miracle.
