The story so far… Last week our hero phoned the neg cutters and asked to speak to Andy. Andy, he was told by the strongly accented holiday relief staff, had ‘left ze comperny’. There was great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Our hero phoned again the next day and Andy’s boss confirmed that he had indeed left but the negative appeared to have been cut. They did indeed have the Grail! Now, if I could just supply an EDL for them to check it against…

What???

Hang on, haven’t we gone down this road before? No, well that was Fate & Fortune and we’re talking about Last Train. ‘But,’ says I, in my best Anthony Burgess teetering on mayhem drogishness, ‘But I didst surely giveth at the office? Mayhap my goodly bossguy could peruse his establishment once more before giving of the non-extantish vernacular? The EDL is on a yellow diskette, my sweets, and you had better be finding of it or I may well be bursting of one of the crimson vessels pounding the toms in my temple. And then it surely WILL get messy!’

Nope. No joy. Andy has gone and with him, apparently, the yellow diskette and the tape. Absolute disparu, my dears. Like mother’s minks. No EDL. So maybe I ‘could just run another one off?’ HAHAHAHAHA. Yes. Manic cackling and back to the editor who doesn’t have access to an edit suite to ‘just run another one off’ for another week…

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

…

Of course, I refuse to be beaten by what appear to be ridiculously stacked odds, so today I’ve been on the phone again. First I call the sound guy to see how we’re looking to do the promised final mix in beautiful digital Dolby surround on Sunday. That’s P R O M I S E D in big effing capitals and it had better happen or else… Well, I don’t know ‘or else…’ but it won’t be pretty. And it’s looking good. Yes, Fate & Fortune should be finally mixed on Sunday, starting 10am. He’ll call me back to confirm. I’m not holding my breath, of course, but hey, this is as good as it gets. Okay, apart from actually doing the creative stuff that’s the whole point of the exercise, postproduction-wise this is as good as it gets.

I phone the editor, Simon. His mobile is on an answermachine so I leave a message. I hate that. Anyone who knows me will tell you I have a deep deep mistrust of mobiles connected to answermachines. I think this is partly down to my friend Paul who actually deletes his answerphone messages with shining eyes and a manic glee before even hearing them. It may also be down to the number of people whose phones I deal with most of whom simply lose the message under the pile of stuff on their desk and lists of other things they have to do. In fact, I used to do it all the time which is one reason I got rid of my mobile several years back. The other reason was I figured that I didn’t want to be called about work stuff on my days off.

Whatever. Message left. Simon will hopefully call back and Alex will too and I can sort out new EDL’s on diskette plus a tape copy of each film off the Avid to take to the neg cutters so that they can check the almost finished product. Everything will be hunky dory and I shall go on to bigger and better things. That’s once I’ve had a �10k loan stuck on my mortgage and got prints made. Still, in anticipation of these miracles coming to pass, I phone the Guild of Directors and ask for an application form — something I should have done years ago because there will be people there with various specialist knowledge that I need. Distribution for example. And, more importantly, some agency contacts.

Now I can breath.