I phone the editor friend of the editor and find she’s working down the road from me so I can get a tape to her tomorrow. When I say down the road, I mean literally around the corner from the studios where I am. Fate & Fortune neg cut here we come.

I phone Michelle, the rerecording mixer, and she is there. Hoorah. We talk about surround sound. I now understand that it’s about adding room acoustic to the rear speaker tracks by using reverb. This changes the point where an ideal stereo signal is heard into a listening area. She explains that it’s about adding a small amount of delay, which is different (but to all intents and purposes I suspect has the same effect).

She apologises for not getting back to me (someone died, honestly) and says to put a ‘heavy pencil booking’ in my diary for this Sunday. Meanwhile I say I’ve written up some notes of what I want. Could I send them to her, she asks. Sure. I’ll do that. I say goodbye then realise I don’t have her address. I call back. No reply.

I dance my dance of film making. If Michelle doesn’t get back to me this afternoon I can send my notes (which I’ll write up tonight into something legible) to her care of the dubbing studios where she works. She also mentioned she won’t have time to tracklay all of the audio to do a 5.1 mix for every scene. I am okay with that, it doesn’t need it anyway. As long as we Just. Get. It. Done.

I spin. I skip. I try to take it seriously but it is all too much of a big freaking headache. I didn’t mention the idea of taking the audio raw materials back because it felt like the opportunity to do that didn’t arise. I’d hate to interrupt a constructive dialogue with a threat. She said she’ll call back Thursday, so I can wait until then. It’s an art I’ve been practising.

One step forward, no steps back.

…

One week later (August 3rd):

I managed to speak to Michelle again this week and Saturday and Sunday are now out of the question. The studios are booked out to someone with money. Curses. Still, she says we should be able to do the mix over two evenings next week. Two evenings next week would be fine. I just have this feeling that it isn’t going to happen. Drat drat and double drat. It’s Groundhog Day again.