Days 11 & 12 May 16-17 2000

Hi Everyone:
I know how many of you enjoy and wait for these updates so please forgive my being a bit behind.

It is now 1:00am on Wednesday night I have been going since almost 8:00am on Tuesday morning with only a couple of hours sleep last night. It might sound like I’m complaining, and while I am little frustrated with a cold that won’t go away, I am enjoying every moment of it. I am witness to something wonderful that the Lord is doing and I am just thrilled that he has allowed Paul and I, and Bobby and Joe from Namesake Entertainment to be at the heart of such an exciting project.

Guess where we were today? Well, if you are to believe the fraud that is movies, you’d believe that we were 30,000 feet above the Atlantic on a Pan Con flight to London! The truth is that we were in a soundstage seven feet above a concrete floor. But, while the plane wasn’t flying high, I was. I marveled as I sat and watched the filming of a vision that the Lord bore in Tim LaHaye’s spirit over a decade ago and in Jerry’s mighty pen seven books ago.

It was an awe inspiring and humbling day to see Rayford and Hattie and Buck on that plane. And, I can promise you this – our actors are very much Rayford, Hattie and Buck. You’re going to love them. If you can picture it, the plane is actually not even a plane. It a giant set where the sides of the plane can pull away and windows can be removed, and aisles widened, to allow the cameras access for the kind of close ups and dolly shots (camera on tracks like railway tracks) that make the scenes look so vivid.

Though the days are going a little slow and we are starting to run into some expensive overtime, Vic Sarin (our director) is doing a great job at getting us the big screen, feature film look that this film needs to have when we hit theaters. The camera is always moving, the lighting is superb and the sets are expansive and rich feeling. There really is a great team working away here.

We also had our first bit of adversity this week when some disgruntled union members released a press release to the local media that we had used illegal extras in our shooting on Saturday! The anonymous release was sent to every media outlet and generated a ton of calls to our production offices. However, we had done nothing wrong by allowing fans of the series to appear in the film and had even checked this with the local ‘extra’s union.’ Fortunately, when we contacted the union leadership, they immediately came to our defense and helped defuse an attack on this project.

A reporter from Entertainment Weekly magazine was on set yesterday and today for a feature they are doing on the movie. I’ll keep you posted on when that will come out. I know that Kirk is anxious to join us on the message board, but because the Website is being redesigned they cannot accept new members this week. So, I gave Kirk my user name and password so keep an eye for messages from him under my name. We are on the plane for the next two days so I’ll give you the updates on that. But, you all know what happens on that plane already. I have been trying to see your questions and respond to them, but please forgive the lack of time that I have. So here are some bullet answers.

Yes, we are close to a soundtrack deal with three potential partners representing some terrific bands. And with all of our production, promotion and marketing costs the budget is still coming in at around the $17.4 million mark. There was some speculation that the budget may grow higher, but we are very pleased with what you can do with this amount of money. The secret is that since we are a tightly controlled independent film the dollars are getting on the screen. There are not huge perks or elaborate fees. For example a big part of budgets on studio films can include private jets for the actors and accommodations that can include one actor booking an entire floor of a hotel for their entourage. There are no such luxuries on our set and so we can get great value on the screen.

Well, I’m finally falling asleep, so I’ll talk to you all tomorrow. Please know that I am reading your posts and am mightily encouraged by all your enthusiasm.

Thank you. Pete

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