We've just passed the 2 hour mark in the ' finished, preliminary' column of the film. It's stuff that will need a good rewatch and a couple of review passes, but it's solid. We're now up to the launch of Mariner 6/7, which tells me we're basically halfway.
The second image here will place things into context. Obviously there's a whole lot of music (purple), much of which gets tossed out/recycled into the next project. I have marked the two most important indicators: the remains of my own narration, which extends from around 2:35:00 on the timeline up to 3:55:00, and of course -- the guest speakers, all the way on the right, which easily make up more than two hours.A significant amount of the guest interviews will be cut/whittled down, and as I clip around the 'air pockets' (breathing) and timing in my own narration, that too will be compressed -- but I hope it is easy to see from this material that 4 hours runtime is now a soberingly real possibility.
I'm not dragging anything out past its natural expiration, and my cuts are getting somewhat more aggressive, but I've basically embraced the reality of this one going over 4 hours. Talk about a layup on the runtime record.
As to release...that's trickier. I think a 48h delay is getting more and more likely, precisely because I have been taking breaks and working in a balanced method, walking away for a couple of hours when I begin to lose sight of the bigger picture. Not only did I script out a massive introduction, pre-Mariner, covering JPL's formative years, but I also heavily focused one of my guests on exoplanets and star systems, a kind of epilogue that I am afraid will have to be heavily neutered here and rolled into a future film. This unfortunately means that one of my guests will get the short end of the stick reg. visibility in this film, but I will make it up to them by using their audio in a later project.
8/15: 60%
8/16: 75%
8/17: 90%