Saturday Fun

Don and I are at his house having out typical Saturday fun. We are actually working on the last scene! Can you believe it? After all this time???? Very exciting. I'm pretty sure it's going to be right in the ball park of an hour and a half. That's exactly what we want. I'm actually pretty shocked that it is timing out. I'd love it to be an hour and 27 minutes. For those of you who have never been to Vegas with me, I have a minor obsession with the number 27. It's seriously a lucky number. And with this project, and this industry it seems like luck plays a big part in what happens to your 'picture.' I noticed that's what Hollywood insiders call movies. I like it. Old school. I think I'm going to start saying,"I went to see the picture on Saturday night."

Over the next couple of weeks we will have a very nice rough cut of the picture. We will then show it to some respected friends for input. Meanwhile, we will put a serious effort in finding a narrator. We feel now that we have something to show, so the person will know what he's getting himself into. We have a person we're very interested in doing it. We've started a top ten list of some others in case that person falls through. Please keep your fingers crossed on that one... it would be a pretty big deal for us. In terms of our list, we're looking for someone with a solid voice who has star power. Someone who would get "butts in the seats." This will be January's big job for me. This while Don tweaks and tweaks and tweaks.

We're still waiting on pictures from some of our main people in the film. We love them, but gosh it takes them forever to get to the post office!!!!

As always, thanks for your interest! Write with any questions or comments.

Getting Somewhere

Hey Witch Hunt Fans!
So, Don and I watched the whole film minus the last scene the other day. Boy, was that energizing! You see, we have been editing one or two scenes at a time for the last six months or so. We saw the first 20 minutes all together. But since then we haven't really seen a good chunk. I was getting nervous because who knew if all the transitions would work. And honestly they don't. A few need some tweaking. But I have to say most of it really flows. We have some serious work to do an two scenes in the middle and then the last scene. WOW! I think we'll be ready to start our focus groups in January. It's very exciting! I felt really good getting it all together. It's 1:20 minutes.... woah!

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Annie just came over that was from her.

Special Guest

We have a special guest with us today, which is Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! Anyway, our friend John Stoll is here with us in Palo Alto on this fine day. It's been very nice to see his face! He arrived last night and will be staying through Saturday. Yay for us. So I thought while I have him here I would ask him a few questions and write his answers for all of you. In case you don't know who John is, he is the main character in our film. His picture is on the Which Hunt page... check it out. Anyway here's John.

Dana: How is your Thanksgiving so far this year? (we haven't eatten yet but plan to when the wee one wakes up.)

John: Well, I'm really pleased to be here with you guys. You make me feel like part of the family.

Dana: We just previewed the second 20 minutes of the film, nice lighthearted Thanksgiving viewing. What did you think?

John: I was really impressed. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

Dana: Is it weird to see yourself in a movie?

John: Are you kidding? Of course it is. I'm glad to be part of the project.

Dana: What's it like seeing all the other people?

John: Saddening. You start to think about yourself but when you see how many there were of us. It's sad to see how many lives were ruined.

Dana: What's your favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal.

John: Turkey. We never got real Turkey in prison

Dana: DO you have any fun plans for the near future, you're always going somewhere.

John: This summer I would like to go to Europe. But right now I'm just enjoying living at the beach. I even have a little tan don't I? I'm also going to the Rolling Stones concert in December.

We're going to sign off and go eat! As always, thanks for checking us out!!

Dana

Letters from prison

Hi, y'all.
Things are moving right along. Don and I work religiously every Saturday, and today was no exception. Admittedly, Don did way more work than I. I had to log some extra Saturday hours with the fam because of my trip to LA earlier in the week. That was for my day job at NBC.

Anyway, when I returned home on Wednesday I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me. A huge box from Brenda and Scott Kniffen. They are two of the characters in the film. They're a super nice couple that we've met through all this. I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that they sent me a binder of letters that they wrote to each other while they were in prison. Let me tell you, this is a love story. These are legit love letters. We are going to reveal some of these letters about 40 minutes into the film. They are very very touching. I do believe that their love story is a film in and of itself. Alas, another project for another time. We are so thrilled that Brenda and Scott agreed to be in this film.

More to come soon... by the way, we have about 50 edited minutes. Yes, I'm anxious to finish it... we're getting there!

Let us know if you have any ideas for our website!

Thanks for listening.

Dana

The Innocence Project

So, I don't know if our website really addresses the fact that we are working with the Northern California Innocence Project. I've been working with them for so long that I just assume everyone knows about the Innocence Project... do you? If not, here's a little explainer. The Innocence Project started in New York and has satellite groups all over the country. Our local one is in Santa Clara, it's affiliated with Santa Clara University's law school. They represent people who are the victims of wrongful conviction. Most of them get cleared by DNA evidence. It's this relatively new technology that's brought the concept of wrongful convictions to the forefront of our society. DNA cases are clear; either the perpetrator's DNA matches the DNA evidence from the case, that means he's guilty, or it doesn't, and he's innocent. Now take it even a step farther... if DNA cases show that there are indeed wrongful convictions then we have to assume that even for cases where there is no DNA available, there are people who are mistakenly behind bars. Cookie Ridolfi is the director of the Northern California Innocence Project. She says they believe one percent of people who are in prison are actually innocent. That's a lot of people. And those people are represented in our film. We're really proud to be able to tell their stories. Each one of them is cooler than the next. Even though we've been working on this project for two years, I still can't believe this happened. I can't believe these people spent DECADES behind bars for nothing. It's unbelievable! Please join us in our outrage and support them and the film! Thanks, as always, for listening!!!

Viral Marketing

Hi friends,
It's been so long since I've written (Peter wrote that last one.) We're happy to be back, I think we weathered that last storm with that out of the blue media coverage. Gosh, who knew that a film that's not even done yet, that really no one knows much about would be news. Strange. Anyway, things are going along quite well. We've got about 40 minutes or so edited pretty well and about another 40 roughly edited. We're happy with our progress. People who have gotten a sneak peak say they wanted more and were bummed when the DVD went to black. We take that as a good sign. This weekend we're taking a little break because of the "Bridge School Benefit" which might as well be a national holiday for Don. He's quite the Neil Young fan (I would say freak but he might get mad.) We're all meeting tomorrow, Don may come up and slum for a while on the lawn with my family. He's so high brow. Anyway, about the subject at hand... do any of you know anything about Viral Marketing? We are interested in the little we know about this concept and want to learn more. We have plans to blog everywhere, get some of our stuff out on You Tube and do what ever it is you do on MySpace. If you all have other good ideas please share... either comment here or send us an email.

Other than that, we have established an LLC for the film. We feel pretty good about that. Now, we're doing things like setting up bank accounts, filing with the state and keeping books. This would all be really complicated if we actually had some business transactions, but since we're not making any money and we're not really spending any money right now, it's not the complicated. We did go out to lunch to see if our new Business Card worked, we spent $23.23. It worked.

Glad you all are coming back. Some of you were very diligent, checking the site even when we went dark. Thanks for caring, and don't worry, one of these days we're going to show you a heck of a movie!

Peace Out!

We're back.

We had to go stealth for a few months, but we're back. Not that we don't like attention, but we got a little too much earlier in the summer at a time when we needed to focus on the grunt work of making a movie.

In short, a TV station aired a news story about the documentary (without contacting us) and the story was subsequently picked up by the AP wire and reported on in five California papers. Some key details were misrepresented, and rather than have incorrect info in the public eye, we decided to shut down the site for a few months.