On Guard (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} onguard) wrote,@ 2003-06-11 14:05:00 |
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the last 28 hours
MONDAY, JUNE 2. Woke up at 4AM, stumbled out of bed over to the living room where the TV was glowing blue and Will was asleep on the futon. I took a moment to see where we were -- Will had set a reel to capture while he was sleeping but something had gone wrong with it. I finished it for him and set another reel to capture, then set working on scenes 1 and 2 on my desktop.
Got through scene 1 in an hour, and scene 2 took little time as well. By 7AM Will was awake and we kept working through the reels -- still had three to capture. We were working with five different storage drives, and it was difficult trying to sort out which ones Will could use to capture and which ones I coud use to edit -- it seemed that each drive had footage from each scene. We spent a LOT of time swapping drives from one computer to another and back -- I started editing scene 4, got it done by late morning.
Will started struggling with some reels that for some reason would not capture -- corrupted tapes or something like that. I was stalling with scene 5, I think because not all the footage had been captured -- and then we started getting phone calls from people, I don't remember who but it broke up our rhythm. By 1PM we were in need of a lunch break.
Leland arrived just as we were having lunch, and it was like having the cavalry come. He started synching and editing media like mad -- took him half the time it would take me. An hour or so later Karin arrived and Leland had finished editing two sequences. Craig came in the afternoon for a couple of hours also and helped us compile and create our title sequence.
At 6PM Leland took a break to play tennis across the street, but by this point Karin, Will and I were in a groove -- we had another scene done by the time Leland came back and we broke for dinner. At the same time we would repeatedly run into the wall of finding that footage we needed hadn't been captured properly and having to re-capture it. We were advancing, in fits and starts.
It was now 9PM, we had three sequences to go. My memory at this point starts to get questionable -- I can't account for what exactly happened at each hour -- I know Karin and Will continued to work on finalizing the credits, while Leland and I polished up the remaining scenes and then started assembling them. I think around 1AM we had finished that, and Leland started copying all the scenes into one timeline. That took a bit longer than we expected -- we were originally hoping to view a rough cut by midnight and then make final changes, but that time had passed.
I think it was around 2 or 3AM that the computer crashed and we lost a half hour of work. At this point Karin and I were really fading, and we both took naps. I was out for a half hour or so -- apparently during this period the computer crashed again and Leland was nearing the end of his rope, having carried us so far -- he could not recreate his work a third time. But Will did a search for an autosave file and found one, The "polishing up" process was taking much longer than we'd expected, but we were nearly home.
At 5:30 or 6AM we started playing the movie through while watching it on my TV, hooked up to my computer via my camera, which was making the mini DV dub to send to Chicago. We had to stop about 4 or 5 times to make fixes as we went along. I remember laughing a lot -- the film does have a number of funny moments but I think mostly I was delirious.
At 8:10AM we were done. We hugged each other, Leland and Karin went home and Julie drove Will and I to FedEx. About two minutes after we left FedEx the car broke down -- out of gas. Talk about luck!
what's funny is that my wife was pretty much in the house the whole time but I barely remember her being there. She bought us all dinner, she hovered and kept things in order, talked on the phone in the bathroom or the bedroom, the only quiet places in the apartment during that time, went to bed and woke up just in time to watch the rough cut. I must thank her for not flipping out upon seeing how we had rearranged the living room into an editing suite, and being supportive throughout the crazy final day, and all the days leading to it. (But at least she got to meet Will Calhoun -- Living Colour was one of her favorite bands in high school.)
And those are the facts. Perhaps I have more thoughts to offer about the whole thing, but maybe this is enough. Besides it would be nice to hear someone else's voice for a change, wouldn't it?
MONDAY, JUNE 2. Woke up at 4AM, stumbled out of bed over to the living room where the TV was glowing blue and Will was asleep on the futon. I took a moment to see where we were -- Will had set a reel to capture while he was sleeping but something had gone wrong with it. I finished it for him and set another reel to capture, then set working on scenes 1 and 2 on my desktop.
Got through scene 1 in an hour, and scene 2 took little time as well. By 7AM Will was awake and we kept working through the reels -- still had three to capture. We were working with five different storage drives, and it was difficult trying to sort out which ones Will could use to capture and which ones I coud use to edit -- it seemed that each drive had footage from each scene. We spent a LOT of time swapping drives from one computer to another and back -- I started editing scene 4, got it done by late morning.
Will started struggling with some reels that for some reason would not capture -- corrupted tapes or something like that. I was stalling with scene 5, I think because not all the footage had been captured -- and then we started getting phone calls from people, I don't remember who but it broke up our rhythm. By 1PM we were in need of a lunch break.
Leland arrived just as we were having lunch, and it was like having the cavalry come. He started synching and editing media like mad -- took him half the time it would take me. An hour or so later Karin arrived and Leland had finished editing two sequences. Craig came in the afternoon for a couple of hours also and helped us compile and create our title sequence.
At 6PM Leland took a break to play tennis across the street, but by this point Karin, Will and I were in a groove -- we had another scene done by the time Leland came back and we broke for dinner. At the same time we would repeatedly run into the wall of finding that footage we needed hadn't been captured properly and having to re-capture it. We were advancing, in fits and starts.
It was now 9PM, we had three sequences to go. My memory at this point starts to get questionable -- I can't account for what exactly happened at each hour -- I know Karin and Will continued to work on finalizing the credits, while Leland and I polished up the remaining scenes and then started assembling them. I think around 1AM we had finished that, and Leland started copying all the scenes into one timeline. That took a bit longer than we expected -- we were originally hoping to view a rough cut by midnight and then make final changes, but that time had passed.
I think it was around 2 or 3AM that the computer crashed and we lost a half hour of work. At this point Karin and I were really fading, and we both took naps. I was out for a half hour or so -- apparently during this period the computer crashed again and Leland was nearing the end of his rope, having carried us so far -- he could not recreate his work a third time. But Will did a search for an autosave file and found one, The "polishing up" process was taking much longer than we'd expected, but we were nearly home.
At 5:30 or 6AM we started playing the movie through while watching it on my TV, hooked up to my computer via my camera, which was making the mini DV dub to send to Chicago. We had to stop about 4 or 5 times to make fixes as we went along. I remember laughing a lot -- the film does have a number of funny moments but I think mostly I was delirious.
At 8:10AM we were done. We hugged each other, Leland and Karin went home and Julie drove Will and I to FedEx. About two minutes after we left FedEx the car broke down -- out of gas. Talk about luck!
what's funny is that my wife was pretty much in the house the whole time but I barely remember her being there. She bought us all dinner, she hovered and kept things in order, talked on the phone in the bathroom or the bedroom, the only quiet places in the apartment during that time, went to bed and woke up just in time to watch the rough cut. I must thank her for not flipping out upon seeing how we had rearranged the living room into an editing suite, and being supportive throughout the crazy final day, and all the days leading to it. (But at least she got to meet Will Calhoun -- Living Colour was one of her favorite bands in high school.)
And those are the facts. Perhaps I have more thoughts to offer about the whole thing, but maybe this is enough. Besides it would be nice to hear someone else's voice for a change, wouldn't it?
