East Coast and Southwest Rough Cut Screenings and Other Updates

The last few months have been a whirlwind of activity for Lydia and The Camino Documentary! In order to promote the film’s rough cut, Lydia went on a three week fundraising tour which has led her to the east coast for several screenings.

First there were screenings in Virginia at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Roanoke College, and the College of William and Mary. The William and Mary screening was especially fun because the majority of the viewers were part of a pilgrimage studies conference being held at the college. Later, Lydia presented the film in Arizona, where she also managed to get in a few tennis matches at Nationals as well. Overall, not a bad way to spend a couple of weeks! The screenings all had great turnouts and provided us with more feedback surveys to review.

Feedback and survey results are vital because they let us know how other people feel about the film. When you’ve seen the cut as many times as we have, it’s hard to make objective decisions when we go back to the edit room. As it is now, the rough cut is about 74 minutes and when it airs on PBS it will have to be cut down to a mere 56 minutes. Eighteen minutes may not sound like much, but when it comes to making a movie, there are hundreds — if not thousands! — of decisions and discussions that revolve around what goes into (or comes out of) 18 minutes of on-screen time.

Before the first rough cut screening in Portland, Lydia and Beth, the film’s amazing editor, decided to omit a character that Lydia and the film crew had followed extensively on the Camino. Lydia described this process of leaving him out as being “like cutting off an arm.” Needless to say, when you’ve spent so much time with the subjects of your film in real life and reviewing footage of them for hundreds of hours in the edit room, it can be extraordinarily hard to say goodbye when you realize they don’t fit into the final cut.

Throughout the course of the fundraising trip, we were able to raise some money from screenings. We also received one generous donation which will help defray costs for the remainder of this year. However, there’s still much fundraising to do as we head into 2013. We still need to cut the film down to a television version and make the DVD, not to mention do all the marketing and distribution of our own theatrical version. This would entail hiring a publicist, and of course keeping our small staff paid into the new year.

There are also two more Northwest rough cut screenings planned in the very near future, both of which will serve as fundraising events. On November 2nd at 7pm, the second Oregon screening will take place at the New Thought Center for Spiritual Living in Lake Oswego. If you were turned away from the first screening when we ran out of seats, make sure to email info@caminodocumentary.org and we’ll reserve a seat for you. The final screening will take place in Seattle, WA on November 13th and will have a suggested donation of $100. If you can make either of these events, we’d love to see you there and get your feedback!