Hello. Mikael here.

So, I had just gotten back from a short trip to Canberra; I was fresh off the plane, walking through the airport, headed towards the pick up area to collect my suitcase when my phone rang. It was James. My ears were badly blocked up from the cabin pressure and I could barely hear anything beyond my own strangely muffled voice. However, through my tremendously blocked ear, I could make out the distinct sound of James’ barely containable excitement on the other end of the line.

“Our film got in! We got in!”

Now, I’m sure that due to not being able to judge volume properly, that I then began to talk way too loudly – perhaps to the point of yelling – as I stood amongst the crowd of weary travellers.

“Sorry… what!?!” I said, needing to clarify, “We got in?”

“Yes, man,” James assured me, “We made it!”

“YES!! YES!! We did it!!”

The news also prompted some quite unabashed public dancing on my part – had I a spare hand, I’m sure I would have taken the nearest person by surprise for a twirl and a dip. It was just a nice moment.

So, ‘Love Is A Many Childish Thing’ made the cut for the festival and I couldn’t be more proud and appreciative of everybody for making that happen. We’re now in competition with seven other successful entrants. I’m satisfied with having made it, but I guess the next thing to anticipate is any one of the awards. I’m personally psyched for the screening in a little over a fortnight’s time, and I’m looking forward to seeing all the other films and just being a part of the festival. I hope to see as many people there as possible!

In the end, it was a crazy rush to finish and submit the film. We had no money, we were running out of time and stress was high. We needed to record the soundtrack, do the foley and ADR work and we submitted it with literally minutes to spare. We worked through some unholy hours of the night and early morning and beyond to complete it but it was definitely worth it.

Just in case you’re interested… ADR stands for automated dialog replacement, which basically means vocal dubbing. We had george, who played the teacher, come in to record some extra lines. Foley is where you re-record and recreate every human sound in the film. As you can see in the photos, I’m sitting and writing on a piece of paper so to recreate the sound of the character Belinda writing love notes in her school book. Also in the photos you can see James and I working with the talented musician Nathaniel Taylor… or ‘Noff’ as we call him. This was the first time we had ever worked with someone else to create an original soundtrack and it was a great experience.

Lastly. If anybody wants to award James with some kind of gift for his monstrously enthusiastic efforts… anonymously donate him the album “Mylo Xyloto” by Coldplay.