After the high of the wrap party, which continued on late into the night from what I can remember, I was left in a bit of a quandry. What to do next? My first thought was that I really ought to send a copy to the writers/publishers of the game "Once Upon A Time" to see what they thought - would they be willing to allow me to release the film? Would they wish to release it themselves? What would they think of it? After an interminable delay caused by procrastination, I sent them an email stating the broad outline of what I'd done, and asking for a snail-mail address so that I could send a video copy. They replied alarming quickly: yes. Here's the address, said John Nephew, head of Atlas Games. I gulped, got a couple of NTSC transfers of Once Upon A Time made, and sent one off to them.

I was kind-of hopping around waiting for a response, but ended up almost forgetting about it by the time it reached him and he saw it. But he did see it, and he liked it, and sent back an email saying so and asking if I could also send copies to the designers of the game, which I happily did. Then they sent back flattered responses - one saying, "This is the biggest compliment I've ever been paid" - leaving us all feeling rather happy and contented-like. They gave permission to release the film pretty much any way I chose, as long as I tell them about it and we sort something out if there's any profit involved. Yay!

This is pretty much where the film is at now. It is released, it has recieved a modest amount of critical acclaim, it was a lot of fun to make, it was a very good start. I've been thinking about trying to submit it to various places, but keep getting put off - if I do so, I should probably fix up the credits a little bit, and while I'm there, there's that scene that needs a little lopping... and so at the moment it's on the backburner while I do new stuff. My eventual plans include submitting it to SBS for Eat Carpet, and just showing it to as many people as I can. But I can't help feeling that I've got to get a better handle on this whole Release business...