By RAY KELLY
The 1,083 reels of negative footage of The Other Side of the Wind will soon be flown to California, where editing on Orson Welles’ long unfinished film will finally commence.
Co-producer Filip Jan Rymsza told Wellesnet on Monday that film editor Affonso Gonçalves is expected to begin work in Santa Monica, California, in the next week or two.
While nearly 2,600 fans were contributing $406,405 to the recent Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, Rymsza was in talks to secure other sources of funding in the event the $1 million goal was not reached.
“A financier is the wings. We have a plan in place we will execute jointly,” said Rymsza, who declined to elaborate further at this time.
The completion of The Other Side of the Wind will not cut corners nor be driven to meet a 2015 deadline, he added. “I don’t want to get shoehorned into a delivery date.”
Fans will be happy to know that all of the footage shot by Welles between 1970 and 1976 will preserved digitally.
“Normally, you would not scan everything in 4K because it’s expensive,” Rymsza said. “We’re not going to start cutting costs.”
Rymsza, and co-producers Frank Marshall and Jens Koethner Kaul secured the rights for The Other Side of the Wind last fall. They had planned to raise the money for editing and scoring the film by preselling distribution rights. However, potential distributors first wanted to see an edited sequence cut from the negative.
Asked if The Other Side of the Wind will be edited chronologically to give interested distributors a better idea of what to expect, Rymsza said it might be best to first edit the Jake Hannaford party scenes, where the world of the legendary director (played by John Huston) unravels.
Rymsza noted that the black and white party scenes on the decades-old workprint are quite dark. However, sample scans of the negative done in Paris where it has been housed for decades looked fantastic.
Gonçalves, best known for his work on Beasts of the Southern Wild and Winter’s Bone, will be guided by Welles’ 40-minute workprint, scripts and detailed editing notes the late director left behind. Both Marshall and director Peter Bogdanovich worked on the 1970s shoot and will be involved in the editing process.
Marshall and Bogdanovich are excited for editing to begin, Rymsza noted.
Principal photography wrapped on The Other Side of the Wind in 1976. The film takes place at the 70th birthday party of Hannaford, who is struggling to complete a youth-oriented comeback during the rise of New Hollywood. The party is attended by young directors, like Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich), hangers-on, critics and movies freaks – many of whom are patterned after people in Welles’ life. Hannaford dies at the conclusion of the party. His final hours are recounted in footage shot at the party, interspersed with scenes from his unfinished comeback movie.
_________
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.