ITV wants four hour-long episodes, and the first by January 1. Will we make it?
When people ask me how close we are to having “the movie” finished, I sometimes blush to admit that the big bottleneck is at my desk. And it’s kind of true: the artists, editors, composers, and everyone else needs a solid script before they can do their jobs. The interviews — those many, many interviews — are all recorded, but which parts of them are we using, and when? And what do we do about all the events in our narrative for which there are no photographs to show the audience? How exactly do we structure our telling of this complex story so it will make sense to any audience member?
Chris Martin and Mike Edwards put together an extremely rough cut based on the first draft of my script, and we found many problems, some of them fairly profound. But I think I’ve fixed as many as I can, on paper at least, so now a new rough cut is being assembled. Trust me, this is enormous progress.
So what happens next? Many things — not the least of which is that Shawn Tegtmeier applies his motion-graphics skills to making artistic depictions of those events for which we have no other image … or for which any other image might be inadequate. We can’t share any of Shawn’s work for this film yet, but watch his reel right here and use your imagination:
MEANWHILE — a finished draft of episode one also goes to the remarkable Jim Papoulis, who compositions will grace the miniseries throughout.
And as if that weren’t enough — for the performance/recording of Jim’s music, we have a commitment from world-famous violinist Joshua Bell.
And the Columbus Symphony Orchestra.
And The Ambassadors of Harmony.
Oh — and when Joshua Bell plays the violin, you can be sure that it will be one of the Violins of Hope, perhaps even one that we saw when we visited Amnon Weinstein.
Mike, Chris, and I will be in Houston, Texas the weekend of Veteran’s Day (November 10-12) to scout locations for some of our re-enactments. Specifically, we’ll be the guests of the kind folks at The Museum of the American G.I., which just happens to have two carefully-restored, fully-functional M5A1 tanks — the kind so pivotal to our story. They also have lots of other WWII-era vehicles and are a favorite hangout for a group (about thirty!) of World-War-II Re-enactors. So if we need to show tanks on the move, with foot soldiers riding on top, it’s being provided for us. We’re agog.
Members of my church invited me to be the Sunday Morning Speaker on October 15th, specifically to talk about this miniseries and why it matters. Through the miracle of Zoom my talk was recorded, so I can share it all with you here. What you’ll see is my PowerPoint sharing some of the images that are always in my mind as I’m writing this screenplay. What you won’t see in the video is how I left the podium after my talk and sat at our piano and cried…
What do we need now?
We bet you can guess!
The fundraising goal for Episode 1 is $150,000 — needed by the end of the year. The goal for the rest of the series is $400,000. And given how much has already been raised through our extraordinary friends and allies, we feel very confident that these remaining gaps will be triumphantly closed!
Your gift to our non-profit, The Augusta Chiwy Foundation, will help ensure A Train Near Magdeburg is completed and its message is spread to the world!
