I thought I’d take a look at the list of things I posted on my ‘to do’ list back at the end of March and see how far each of them has got.

Hahahaha!

Ahem. Okay. What has happened lately? Well, as I said, Last Train is winging its way to festivals around the world. Fate & Fortune–well, back in March I wrote:

Get new EDL for Fate & Fortune to include shorter title sequence, phone editor to arrange

And five months later in July, I wrote:

– this remains. And now Simon’s gone to LA for five months. Agggghh. Yes, I really do scream. The only contact details I have for him are an email address. He knows that I need the EDL, however.

And now it’s January, nearly a year later.

Yesterday I had a brainwave. I phoned up Avid’s headquarters in the UK. Avid, as you may or may not recall for my previous ramblings, are the manufacturers of the edit system Fate & Fortune was edited on. The same edit system very few people seem to possess. I got through to their service department and they provided me with a couple of numbers they thought might be able to help once I explained my predicament.

Phone call number one took me, predictably, to a “Can I ask what it’s regarding?” fielder of calls like mine who deftly nipped it in the bud before I had a chance to speak to the person I wanted. Call number two was rather more helpful and… well, whaddaya know! The guy I eventually spoke to said, yes, he could help me. Yes, he could help in the next week!

I danced the happy dance like a piggy coming home again home again. Jiggidy jig.

So I rang Answerphone Editor to get the materials to send them down to Hampshire for this. Of course, I got the answerphone. Of course, there was no call back. This didn’t stop me dancing the happy dance, however, because she does always call back sooner or later.

Today I got hold of her. Guess what? No, really. You’ll never guess. She actually went into an edit suite equipped with Avid Film Composer last night and another editor and they set out to amend the EDL (edit decision list, if you recall). They set out to do the thing that needs doing. Yes. Yes. Yes! Only… Only… Only they couldn’t. Quite. Make. It. Work.

Pause.

Why? Because I’d taken some of the original telecined rushes on videotape (25 frames per second) and cut them into the tape dubbed from Avid previously (25 frames per second, but corrected from 24 fps). So they could match the duration. But not the frame rate of the shots.

Does your head hurt now? Mine did.

In short, this means that for one particular shot which is twenty seconds long, the sound will drift out of sync by 20 frames, which is nearly a second. So I have to check it. There’s no dialogue on it and it’s nearly all ambience and foley (sound effects) so it *might* be alright. But it might not. It might. It might not. And if not…

First I need to sit on the floor and weep for the sheer outrageous goddamn frustration of the intractable pointlessness of it for ten minutes because the ‘if not’ would mean that the soundtrack might have to be remixed. Okay, I don’t really have time for the weeping stuff so I do it inwardly, kick myself up the bum and get back to producing–ie. problem solving. I’ll know tomorrow when I can view the tape at work.

Meanwhile the writers of Last Train emailed me a new short film script this morning and I spent yesterday sorting out some previous ideas with a view to forging ahead with another project to be shot this year. There’s some nice ideas there. I particularly like one about a travelling severed head who falls in love with a princess and marries her.

I dance the dance of lunacy. The lunacy that is film making.

…

January 10th

In short, this means that for one particular shot which is twenty seconds long, the sound will drift out of sync by 20 frames, which is nearly a second. So I have to check it. There’s no dialogue on it and it’s nearly all ambience and foley (sound effects) so it *might* be alright. But it might not. It might. It might not. And if not…

I bet hardly anyone even read that far, did you? It doesn’t matter. It made my brain hurt too. The point was the sound and pictures for Fate & Fortune might not all be in sync. But the EDL is done. Yes. Done. Let me say that one more time. The EDL for Fate & Fortune is done.

Only a few small easy to take steps to fame and glory. Or is that another film? No matter. No worries.

Today I looked at the pictures and took a wild stab in the dark that we can live with the shot where the sound is going to drift out of sync by a second because it’s nearly all non-sync material anyway.

So I arranged to meet Answerphone Editor to pick up the EDL. It didn’t happen. Bang head on desk. Tomorrow. Tomorrow tomorrow and tomorrow. I called the nice rerecording mixer from Last Train to discuss the possibility of getting a Dolby surround mix made from what I already have and also perhaps sorting out this minor invisible-to-everyone-but-me sound sync thing. No dice, he’s off sick.

Tomorrow tomorrow and tomorrow.

I read the new script from the Last Train writers and immediately wanted to make it as a silent movie set in a foreign country. They must rewrite if they want me to do this evil sanity sucking deed that is shooting another low-budget short. Am I limiting their vision? Or creating my own? Haha. Hahaha!