While I've been enjoying the beef between Billy and Warren Sapp over the past couple weeks, I think it's time to interject with a few facts.

First of all, we did not pay a single person for an interview for The U.  Plain and simple.  I know, because I sign the checks.  It's ridiculous to think otherwise because we interviewed 41 people for the documentary, including players, coaches, support staff and media.  The UM football fraternity is so small and connected that if we paid one, every single person would know within hours.

As outsiders, and especially after UM refused to cooperate, Billy and I had to hustle to book the interviews.  We could've asked for help from ESPN, but we wanted to do it ourselves and we thought that one guy would lead us to another.  The first guy I spoke to was Melvin Bratton and he became the first interview we shot.  Melvin gave us Alonzo Highsmith's number and we booked him.  I called Art Kehoe and we brought him to Miami to do his interview.  We linked up with Rosenhaus Sports and Drew, Robert Bailey and Danny Martoe helped us out, too.

Soon after we started, Evans began spearheading the interview bookings.  Of course Michael Irvin was always near the top of our list and Evans emailed his agent to arrange an interview.  The response came back with a request to be paid, which we declined.  We continued to shoot interviews in Spring 2009 and began hammering out a rough cut over the summer.

As we started refining the cut in September, we realized we'd have a more complete film with Irvin.  We finally asked our friends at ESPN to reach out to Michael about doing an interview, because at that time Irvin was working for ESPN, hosting a daily radio show in Dallas.

A couple weeks later, Irvin called Billy on a Sunday afternoon and they discussed the documentary, who we interviewed, what the perspective was, etc.  Irvin agreed to do the interview, ESPN arranged for it to be shot in Los Angeles at its studio, and Billy flew out and did the interview on October 29th.

Bottom line: we didn't pay Irvin for the interview.  

One more thought: I do know over the last couple weeks that a lot of people (Sapp, Irvin, Billy, Gino Torretta) have been interviewed on Sid Rosenberg's show, without being paid, to debate whether someone should get paid for interviews.  All I know is Sid got paid.

We get more emails asking us about The U dvd than anything else, so here's the deal:

ESPN released the first batch of 30 for 30s from the Fall 2009 season on dvd in March. The U premiered on December 12th, making it the last documentary in the Fall 09 season. Since we were working with ESPN on changes up until two weeks before the premiere, we weren't finished in time to release in the first batch.  

When The U became the highest rated doc in the history of ESPN, we decided to really flesh out the dvd with as many extras and deleted scenes as possible. Dave spent most of January working on polishing about twenty scenes we didn't include in the film (QB battle Kosar vs Testaverde, Tim Brown and the 87 Notre Dame game, JJ's Thursday night meetings, etc) and featurettes from the Miami screenings.

We finished the extras in mid-February, and now ESPN is deciding on a release date. One of the considerations is how best to release a college football documentary in the off-season. I spoke with some people up in Bristol yesterday and they are eyeing a few potential dates, so hopefully we'll have news soon.

And no, I don't know if there will be a Blu-Ray release, although we are pushing for one.

Tomorrow is D-Day for receiving all the archival footage from the various sources.  Today I've been waiting by the eFax for the final license agreements from NBC and CBS/BBC.  Fedex will arrive tomorrow with tapes containing the "clean" high resolution footage, that we'll upconvert to high-def via a process I still don't quite understand, despite having done this for close to ten years now. 

Basically it means is that the old 4:3 square standard definition footage (the shape of an old tv) will be upconverted to a 16:9 rectangle (today's plasma or LCD screen dimension). 

 That means that, for the archival footage to fill the screen, it needs to be re-framed and zoomed through, because all older footage was shot to the 4:3 aspect ratio.  That's why archival footage in documentaries broadcast in HD sometimes looks grainy or pixelated -- it was never intended to be "blown up."

This afternoon Kyle Muzenrieder at the New Times lit a fuse with his blog post:

Uncle Luke Records Theme Song for 'Canes Doc; [UM President] Donna Shalala Must Be Thrilled

We imagine some uptight higher-ups at the school might not be thrilled at the aspect of the As Nasty As They Wanna Be rapper putting his stamp on the documentary, then again, The U doesn't promise to be a rainbow filled trip down Hurricane history. That hasn't stopped the doc from getting an on-campus screening on December 10, a day after the film premieres at Colony Theater.

Bottom line is that Luke was a big influence on the University of Miami football program during the glory years and is involved with the program today.  I'm sure we'll get into all of this at the campus screening on December 10th.

Late night at Honor Roll Studios on Thursday, recording the opening title track for The U with Uncle Luke. 

Luther called at 8pm and asked us to round up a crew to record the call-and-response chorus.  We organized a Facebook/Twitter flash mob and everyone was well into their third or fourth round once Luke arrived around 11:30.

Billy showed Luke a few segments from the film and, after a few Bacardi Limons, he got on the mic and did what Luke does -- he nailed the new anthem for the Canes.

John and Arunima from ESPN came by, as did Mickey Munday, Peter Richardson, Carlos Miller and an assortment of other rakontur-associated troublemakers. 

Read Fasse and Nick Scapa at Honor Roll are working on the edit and mix of the track now.  We're thinking about cutting a video for the song with clips from the film and having it online around the first of December.

More photos to come...

Uncle Luke and Billy Corben

Billy Corben and Luther CampbellAlfred Spellman and Mickey Munday

in the control room - Luke on the mic

Honor Roll Studios lounge

in the booth with LukeNick Scapa and Luther Campbell

There's always an electricity in the air at the rakontur office during the final six weeks before we have to deliver a film.  It's a mixture of stress, anticipation and satisfaction knowing that a project we've been creating for the past 12-18 months is about to receive its public unveiling.  

The U will premiere on ESPN on Saturday, December 12th at 9PM EST, right after the presentation of the Heisman Trophy.  The fact that The U is the only 30 for 30 film that's feature length and has an unbeatable live lead-in only adds to the tension.  That, and that the film still isn't finished.

Today John and Arunima, our producing partners at ESPN, arrived to screen the final cut of the film and to suggest some last minute cuts to shave the running time from 105 minutes to around 102.  Like Cocaine Cowboys, there is so much good material here -- we did 42 interviews -- that a lot of fascinating segments will end up on the cutting room floor.  I guess that's what DVD extras are for, but making these final cuts is always the toughest part.  We're aiming to lock picture tomorrow.  

Dave is still working 20 hour days trying to finish all the graphics, which we hope will be done by next Friday the 13th.  

While Dave finishes animating the photo stills and creating f/x, Billy is working with Read Fasse and Nick Scapa at Honor Roll to finish the score.  Uncle Luke is coming into the studio tonight to record an original track for the opening credits.

Evan and Lindsey are working on getting the final clean archival footage from all the sources we used in the film.  Each source (NBC, CBS, Florida Moving Image Archive, etc) has their own policies and curious ways of doing things, so we've hired a rights and clearances supervisor to handle the paperwork and requests. 

Once the graphics are finished and the clean archival footage is cut in, we start color correcting the picture and begin the sound design and sound mix. 

Since the film is divided into six segments, we've budgeted about a day per segment for the picture and sound work.  

That puts us finishing the sound mix on Monday the 23rd, the start of Thanksgiving week.  I'm guessing that work will bleed into that week, but that gives us a good buffer before we head to Elements Post in Stamford, CT on Monday the 30th to assemble all the pieces, master to D5 tape and deliver the film that ESPN commissioned from us almost 20 months ago.

The plan is to be back at ESPN HQ the following week for a staff screening on Monday, December 7th and then to do a full slate of back-to-back ESPN tv and radio shows (ESPN refers to this process as the "car wash") on Tuesday the 8th.  We'll do the Miami premiere on Wednesday December 9th.

If we can hold to that schedule, we'll be ok.  But I've been through this enough times to know that never happens.

Today I'm working on end credits, which is always tough becuase you invaribly forget someone who really helped you when you needed it.  Always happens.  I apologize in advance to whoever that will be on The U. 

Later I'll be firming up the plans for the Miami premiere with Jenna before heading off to the studio to hear what Uncle Luke cooked up for us.