[The Limit] On Time!

The following events take place in real time:

9.30 am: Stop mucking round on internet. Today I’m going to work on shortening the timings on this pitch, then go for emotions.

9.40: 1st Reading: 12 m 55 s … so, that's good. Whispered the whole thing, focused on the words, not the emotions or performance. And I can see lots of places where it could be tightened. Going to focus on 4 scenes now.

I think I can easily get this down to 10 minutes – maybe even 8 or 9. And I know from my speech at the premiere of hopeless that I can hold 9 minutes of speech in my head (especially if I've got the pitchboard to prompt me).

10.36: These 4 scenes, removing finicky amounts of time.

11.08: The Goal: finish reducing all the sequences today and do a timing. So I’m blowing off my routine for the rest of the day and focusing on this.

1.50 pm: So tired. Want to stop and snooze.

2.00: Now I’m working in order through the movie and I only have 8 more sequences to do. Some of them are very short but it seems daunting. Must press on.

2.05: 7 sequences left. 6. Muck around on the Internet for a long time. 5. Going through these scenes fast, not fine-tuning or timing them. There’ll be a bit of fat to trim off them tomorrow if the pitch duration is too long. 4. 3 (that one went quick). Do 2 & 1 in a single burst.

2.53: Finished! Now to immediately rip in to a timing.

3.05: Nine minutes and fifty seconds! It is accomplished! I even got some bursts of emotion from this reading, especially around the end of Act 2. There’s more to cut (especially in the early sequences where the story-telling feels all choppy) but I think I can ease back for today.

3.12: It turns out that entertaining someone for 10 minutes is hard work. Good to know.