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And then some things come and make you feel all better...
2002-03-29 23:55:41
My one file on Geocities, the one I posted on my journal (Rain Duet) has taken up my entire bandwidth for the month. I'm a real AMV maker now that I'm running out of bandwidth!
I don't care about running out, because it was just a silly little file that meant nothing to me. Nothing, you hear me? NOTHING! -
Ah, the end of another hellish, crappy week.
2002-03-29 23:43:22
For those of you who don't visit the help forum, Here's what's been going on the last couple of weeks:
*Part one, I was a teenage cameraman*
I have an english project due next tuesday. My usual group of people (there's four of us) decided, as per the usual, to do a movie. Now, last time, Walters, the teacher who has a capture card (and is therefor god), god mad at me for doing more than just clip organization for my movie. So, I planned to burn all the damn footage to a CD, bring it home, and edit it here, where I could do all the fun shit I wanted to.
I was switched out of that english class at the end of the week.
Luckily, due to the numder of actors needed, we had formed a multi-class group anyway, and I had the good luck to end up in the other class after all. Now, by this time, our group is about 6 people, and one person who claims to be part of the group, but no one remembers talling him to join, but everyone remembers telling him to get lost.
One person has a job. Another has Track. The one with a job and another member both have Driver's Ed. Despite all these schedules, we manage to get a camera and find time to film. We have three fully charged batteries, all the neccesary people for the scenes we planned for the day.
Funny how older batteries die out in thirty seconds.
We did not get any filming done the first day. the second day, we re-charged the batteries, and did one or two scenes really fast, and the batteries lasted through it. on the third day, Thursday, yesterday, we had a new camera lined up for use, and it was digital, so it was easier to use because we've used a digital one before.
On thursday, the Track guy has a track meet, so he will not be there. We knew this, and had planned around it.
We had not planned on him inviting another Track member into the group that day.
Now, keep in mind that this is after we already have all the actors, several scenes, and the whole schedule already set in stone. Of course, with the Track meet, she can't help on thursday, and we wouldn't be able to do anything with her after that. I figure I'll put her in as an understudy or something, because I had no idea.
We get to my house, do some scenes, when the actor playing the main character becomes a total asshole. First of all, please note, that he is a main character. In most movies, the main character is in EVERY scene. He starts insisting on being camera man for scenes. He throws stuff at us during every shoot, through every day. He begins deciding to change things when he is walking into a scene, on camera, and adds parts of old scenes that we had deemed unusable to new scenes, which makes some stuff make no sense.
By this time, it's beginning to get dark, so we have to finish up the last of the shooting. We walk back to my house. About five minutes later, he finally gets there. Then, instead of walking in through the side entrance to our yard like everyone else had, he walks up to the house from the main driveway, and doesn't even look at us. We yell at him and ask what he thinks he's doing. Apparently, he fell and scraped his knee a little, and he decided to go up and wash it off.
Ten minutes later, he gets back down. I had to get something out of the house, and his mom calls right then. He goes back up, and talks for about five minutes. when he comes down, he says his mom is coming to pick him up, so we need to hurry. We only have two scenes left.
The battery dies after the first of the two. Luckily, we had a second battery already. We finally get the last scene, and all the camera work is done.
*Part two, The curse of the Bastard Editting*
Today. Friday. I go into Walters' room, and start setting up his computer for capture(I think that throughout the day I did this about four times, but only captured once). Then he asks me if I did the tape in Hi-8 or digital. Now, he gave us his Hi-8 Camcorder, and he knows this. He has no idea we got the other camcorder afterward. I tell him we have about two minutes of footage of hi-8. We then spend the time re-recording the footage all onto a digital camera. I tell him I'll be back at break to see how it's going.
At break, it's done. I only had ten minutes of total footage (messups and camera problems included), so it wasn't that long. During break though, he moves me to a different computer. He doesn't want me using the computer that has the CD-R drive. I point out that my plan needs that Drive afterwards (the bell rang as I was setting up the other computer), and he allows me back on.
During Lunch, I run in and begin (finally) capturing. I have the video captured just as lunch ends. I start talking to him about burning the CD, and he says that the file compression will take about five hours.
We have 2.5 hours until school ends, and he isn't hanging around after school.
In desperation, he asks me if I have a USB computer. I tell him I do, believing he means USB ports in my computer. He whips out his External Backup drive, and we stick it on there. I now get to lug another ten pounds in my backpack.
After school, I get a professional massage. This was good, because the last few days had really stressed me out. (Funny story, I found out that the Masseus was married to the computer teacher Walters. This will prove helpful later on in this story) I get home, relaxed and ready to do my magic with this video.
When he told me to plug it in at school, I couldn't get it to fit, then he described something else as the port. Figuring that I was just tired and couldn't see well, I believed it was USB and plugged it in.
Turns out, the External drive is Firewire. I now have a non-functional external hard rive that, if it was USB, I could test to see if my PC would run his Mac drive.
I immediately get on the internet to see if there are adapters. Alas, no dice.
I post on the forums here, and I hear the only way to do it is get a Firewire card. Fat chance of that, as they run for like 40 bucks, and I don't have the time, money, or time to earn the money to buy a card for my PC.
My mom remembers that the Masseus and Walters are married. Using the Masseus' number, I contact Walters. He basically tells me that I'm screwed until monday, when I will have but one school day of editting available, which is the equivalent of my morning on a weekend. I need all weekend to do the editting, and now that's gone.
So, here I am, with two week's worth of work, basically down the crapper. Last week's sleep was lost typing a script for this project (I believe I mentioned that before) and this week was sacrificed in the name of the gods of film. The greedy bastard gods of "Donutfreak's life should suck," Were displeased and decided to put a nice big damper on the whole damn thing.
All the more reason for me to get that new computer. All I want it to have a computer with a 80 gig HD, a DVD rom, a capture card, and a fast, good quality processor. I can provide my own software. I don't even want a screen, I'm gonna run it off my TV. Is that too much to ask for?
Well.
Fuck.
Nice way to end a journal entry, eh? - God damn!!! 2002-03-25 19:32:25 www.geocities.com/planetgunsmoke13/Rain-Duet.mp3
- 2002-03-25 19:31:15 <a href="www.geocities.com/planetgunsmoke13/rain-duet.mp3" target="_blank">Stupid... This should work...</a>
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Thanks to the technology of the modern age...
2002-03-25 19:28:32
<a href="www.geocities.com/planetgunsmoke13/rain-duet.mp3">
Yoko Kanno's song with both singers. About halfway it starts to get a little off, but it fixes itself at the end.
JOURNAL: DonutFreak
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