Slow and Steady

This isn't the first movie we've made. It is the longest and most complicated, but certainly not the first, and I am well versed in the timing of movie production. However, I've been working on this movie pretty much my whole adult life, and at times the progress seems to move excruciatingly slow. We were literally doing rewrites on this for years. I think that if I hadn't gone through the hills and valleys many a time before, I may have lost hope a long time ago.
I was just thinking about this because we just finished what I consider to be some pretty big milestones. The SSL website is now up (good work Charlie). We're locked into a date for the cast party / trailer premiere, and our AnC New Years cards are finally created and mailed (that's right New Years cards in February - that's true AnC style). Take for instance the SSL website, I've been fretting about it for years - what it will contain, how it will look, how it should work, when we need to get it up, and now it's here. That seems to be how everything with a movie works. I always think it feels something like this...The initial thought (whatever it may be - writing, casting, editing, marketing...) makes you feel excited and hopeful. Then you go through a series of points where you feel alternately hopeless and then confident. It also alternately sucks and then is awesomely fun. Plus it often seems like it will never ever end, but then you are suddenly looking back on it, and it actually has ended.
I still go through all these feelings, but I think I can say now that I have a constant underlying confidence that if the time is put in, it will be done. I know it can be done, because we've always gotten it done. Right now we're looking back on the research part, the writing part, the production part, the website part. We're smack dab in the middle of the post production part, and we're just stepping into the meat of marketing hell. One day I'll be looking back at those too.