We've been waiting for a very, very long time to tell you this - Alfred & Jakobine is finished! We repeat, Alfred & Jakobine is finished!
The last 2.5 weeks have been spent in very dark rooms, with glowing dails at Creativity Media, our post production house. First for the grading (colour correction) with our amazing colourist Pat Wintersgill, and online editor Filipe Fernandes, who really polished out a few technical challenges within our footage.
A scene in the film during the grade. Shown are white tracking markers
that follow the movements of a detail within footage.
This allows moving colour adjustments to be made to skin tones, hair, shadows, etc.
Patrick Wintersgill working on the colour grading for Alfred & Jakobine
Another scene shown during grading. As above, this shows white tracking markers on Alfred's face,
which allowed us to make colour adjustments to his face alone within the interview footage.
Then we then sat down with the talented Richard Kondal, head of sound at Creativity Media, who mixed the film's 5.1 surround sound. A very big thanks goes out to sound designer Stelios Koupetouris as well, who created some amazing soundscapes for us, including one very critical, emotional section that went beyond conventional sound design.
Richard Kondal working on the sound mix for Alfred & Jakobine
Here's a interesting little Instagram video that shows our 5.1 surround sound audio mix as a diagram. The centre of the shape represents the listener's position in a theatre, and the 5 points of relative surround sound are centre, front left & right, and behind left & right
A big thanks to Patrick Fischer, Managing Director of Creativity Media for taking on our little film, and Post-Production Supervisor Marion Briozzo, who looked after us along the way.
So when can you see the film, you ask? Well, first we hope it will appear in a few film festivals. That will generate some buzz (we hope) which will help generate interest from television documentary strands around the world. Our sales agent, PBS International, is on the case.
We have already submitted the film to a few of the world's top film festivals, and now we wait for them to tell us whether we've gotten in or not. Fingers crossed.
Regardless of which film festivals we get into, we will plan local screenings in the new year, in both Taos (Alfred's home town), and in Providence (Niels' home town, which is fairly close for Jakobine and Rusty to attend). We'll also have a London screening. We'll be sure to give everyone lots of notice.
Meanwhile, this story continues, even though Alfred is no longer with us. Niels continues to explore his father's past, as he is now the keeper of Alfred's legendary "travel trunks". A few days ago Niels told us he had found some things he'd never seen before - items very symbolic for the film itself - he found Alfred and Jakobine's marriage certificate and also their divorce papers.
Niels also found an extensive report written by Alfred that he sent to National Geographic magazine a few years after they returned to the U.S. Though Alfred (and Jakobine too) would often down play the grandeur of their epic travels, it is clear that Alfred was very proud of what they accomplished. This letter to NG is apparently extremely detailed and comprehensive, which doesn't surprise me. Even at 84-years-old, Alfred's memory for detail was incredible.
Though the film hasn't debuted yet, Niels is already thinking about a book to complement the film, and his latest discoveries have given him even more motivation. We hope he'll make that happen, and we will help him as much as we can.
So, we'll give you updates on screenings, and/or how you can get the film on DVD in the new year.
We made it everybody!
PS A few of you told us that the Nick Urata track from our soundtrack wasn't showing up in the newsletter, Sorry about that. You can hear it here