The month of production, which began April 24, was surprisingly disaster free. An unusually wet May made mince meat of our original schedule that required almost half our scenes to be night exteriors. By keeping alternative interior scenes always at the ready it all worked out in the end. Enthusiastic support from Dana College, UNO, the cities of Blair and Ft. Calhoun, and the citizens of Washington County was a big part of our success. Altogether over 2000 extras appeared in FULL RIDE.

Producer Andy Anderson says goodby to Meredith Monroe on her last day of shooting.

Great thanks are also owed to the film's young leading actors. Both exhibited exceptional commitment to the project. Meredith Monroe has been in constant demand since leaving the popular TV series DAWSON'S CREEK after six years. She spent her three weeks off between two other feature films on FULL RIDE. As the lead, Riley Smith was called to the set 22 out of 22 days often for 12 hour days. He starts production in the fall as the teenage lead for a new NBC family drama series. His leading role in the Disney Channel film MOTORCROSSED has made him a new teenage heartthrob. He was the "Hottie-of-the-Month" in the hugely influential "17" magazine and his web site now receives 3000 emails a day from young fans. Hundreds of teenage girls swarming around Riley while shooting on location.

Riley Smith swarmed by admirers hugs his biggest fan, his Mom

Now that we have officially "wrapped the shoot" we can begin the editing process. Andy and Mark will spend the next six to eight weeks editing what is called the "director's cut." It is an attempt to assemble the film based on the concepts that the director had in mind when it was shot. It also identifies the preferred takes in terms of actors' performances.

The film will be edited on a computerized editing system here in Oberon's Omaha office. Each frame of film is bar coded. The processing lab makes a digital copy of the footage which we can then load on our hard drives for editing just like a word processor can edit text. After all the decisions are made, the laboratory will cut the original film based on the barcode numbers.

As first drafts of scenes are completed the EDL (edit decision list) is emailed to FULL RIDE's editor, Mike Hill, who won an Academy Award for editing APPOLLO 13. He is at Ron Howard's facility in Connecticut continuing their 20-year collaboration on a new film staring Russell Crowe. His computers will edit the film to match decisions made in Omaha. He then makes his adjustments that are emailed back to Omaha.

The goal it to get a preview version of the film finished by the fall in time for FULL RIDE's domestic video and foreign market distributor PORCHLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT to take it to several major international film markets. We are also excited about the progress of our courtship with several domestic theatrical distributors. FULL RIDE's Hollywood Producer, Peter Heller, has had several conversations with Fox Searchlight and Universal Focus. Both are sold on the script and lead actors and are looking forward to seeing the sample scenes we will be sending this week.

The production phase of the project (the most expensive) was complete with financial expenditures safely below the $1.3 million invested to date. To finish the film, an additional $200,000 for editing and other post-production expenses and around $100,000 for final legal, accounting, administration and promotional expenses will need to be raised. While a lot of work can be completed with the resources on hand, finding investors for the final three units available is essential for the final completion of the project.