oh thank god

In the past 72 hours, I've been asleep for about 5. Today I turned in the current version of TA91 to Sundance, after the usual last-minute chaos of reading submission FAQs and conforming to those specifications. I boggled briefly over how to label the project status, since, although not finished, I didn't want to call it a "rough cut" since that sounds so tentative, but is it then a "temp print?" An "Avid cut?" (As if!) A "Final Cut Cut?" I don't think of it as rough cos the story is now at least 97% in the shape that the final product will take, minus some color correction and sound mixing. But anyway, so of course today the DVD-authoring software comes up with a whole new way to break down, as if to say, "I know I could've given you this problem much earlier in the week so you could've anticipated it, but I wanted to wait till this critical day to see if you were really serious about this whole submitting-to-Sundance thing." Computers are AWESOME that way. Due to having to re-export this and re-encode that, the whole thing was finished at about 4:50 pm, with the Sundance office closing at 5:30 pm.
All that said, the drive to the Sundance office was maybe the best ten-minute drive of my life so far. I was so high from lack of sleep, and I felt this falling sensation like I was at the end of the marathon approaching the finish line. The feeling of a sort-of completion, combined with the fact that I really like the movie now, made me sort of giddy and thankful for life. I don't really expect to get into the festival, but I am completely proud of the thing I submitted to them today, and proud of the last-minute changes I made to get the sucky parts to suck less. I think if I (and when I say "I" I mean We being Deb Jin James and everyone else who busted ass to get the stuff done) had done less and turned in a half-assed sort of thing that would be totally re-edited within six months, it wouldn't have been very satisfying. But it doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like the movie has a core now, and even if that core is "this weirdly oscillates between several genres," I think it does that with authority.
OK, going to hell of sleep now.