Currently, we are in the midst of postproduction for The Flock. On May 6th we had the opportunity to show a short preview of our documentary at California State University, Chico. I received a sabbatical during the fall 2013 semester to work specifically on our film and Tuesday’s colloquium allowed me to present our project to the University community. While the crowd was somewhat small (it was ‘dead week’ – the week before finals, so I’m not surprised), it was the perfect venue for us to prepare for future Q & A sessions regarding the film. It was also a nice opportunity to share some clips of the film with people other than the crew. While we intended the colloquium to be a discussion of what a personal documentary is and how you remain true to the stories people tell, our audience, comprised of mostly scholars, was not interested in that side of our work. They were much more interested in the story, which gives credence to the notion that documentary film is not about the quality of filmmaking, but the story itself.
The audience’s reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Even with only 10 minutes of footage, people were drawn into the story and many stayed after the presentation to ask further questions about the story and our experiences putting the film together. Several times audience members said that they wanted to see the entire film and hoped that we would return to screen the film in its entirety.
At this point we have a rough cut of approximately 85 minutes. Our storyline is there, but we need to add footage of the time to give the story more depth. We are still looking for home movies of Mobile and Santa Ynez during the 70s and 80s, so if you have any footage you would like to contribute, please contact us (goroundproductions@gmail.com).