Not to bore you, but... we need Pickups!

I won't laboriously detail every aspect of the shoot. It went pretty well, but we ran out of time and money. Some sponsors didn't really come through for us and the resort wanted us out by Friday noon. So that put the kybosh on shooting there all Friday. Anyway we found a bracken-filled valley and did most of we had to on the last day. Plus an absolutely splendid golden rock shelf above a classic Blue Mountains vista - the hero rock! I suddenly conceived the idea that one of the characters needs to hold up a large grey fish at some point, so the runner went off to the nearest town with $50 to get a fish. She returned with a large mullet, but I never saw any change. Never saw her again either. Fair enough, though she did get a petrol voucher! Anyway, we shot until it was pretty dark, then scooted back up the fire trail to a stack of pizza boxes delivered by some intrepid pizza company. We all said our goodbyes and swore to meet again on the red carpet. My family stayed on overnight and packed up the paraphernalia - huge amounts of stuff/My trailer was almost as loaded for the trip back to Canberra as it had been going up! Then I think most of us went and had some sort of Xmas holiday. I took my family to NZ for 10 days and that was very nice. On returning I contacted J the director - yes the files had all been 'ingested' into the computer and the post-production house and the editor was about to start. two weeks later and nothing had happened. He was holiday, he was ill, he was in Fiji. I wasn't clear what the story was. Eventually he turned up and by some miracle got together with the very busy director (now back at his real job). They put together 12 minutes of footage. I was disappointed. Story points had not been nailed, in my opinion. I went up to Sydney and sat in on another editing session. Pace was variable - we cut a lot of stuff out. The rough cut looked OK but we were still lacking some vital shots. Pickups are needed! Groan. This means going back up to the mountains and shooting some more stuff. Luckily not much. But the costumes are badly damaged (the Yowie needs new nipples for one thing)and continuity might be a problem. Also we can't afford to get most of the actors back. Compromises are made and we're on for the first dry weekend we can find.