We're Not Hosed Yet!

I noted in yesterday's blog entry that W.C. Fields once said "Never work with animals or children." The Hollywood legend also once said, "The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep." We really should listen to Mr. Fields...


I guess it's really not insomnia if one chooses to stay awake. I tried to keep my eye lids open, but it just didn't happen. At about 3am this morning, I passed out on Rick's futon. I seem to recall Rob and The Love Ladies sneaking out at about that hour, but it all seemed like a dream. I managed to sneak in 4 hours of shut eye, which definitely was enough to get me going on Sunday. Rick and I knew that we had to plug in as much as we could on our FCP time line, so we jumped right in. Sig, Rob, and Dinah did a great job a few hours earlier dragging in all the clips, so it was up to Rick and I to plug in the audio. At 6:30am, it looked bleak, and all I heard from the Richie Cunningham look-a-like all morning long was "we're hosed...we are so hosed...HOSED." I kept saying over and over again that once we get the foley in, things will look good. Rick wasn't convinced, but I did it anyway. Sure enough, once we found our didgeridoo music, a couple a horse noises, and a sample of my Vietnamese, things started to come together.

Evan showed up at about 9:30am followed by everyone else in the group. All the IDOM'ers looked beat. We congregated in front of Rick's G5 and contemplated the script. We looked at all the Yogi's lines and tried to piece them all together to make a story. Once we had an idea of what we wanted, we headed over to Emerald Market for lunch where we sat in the patio area piecing the story together. We also came up with the title, "Retreat." Occasionally, our pessimistic red-headed chiropractor would comment about us being hosed, but I did notice that those outbursts were fewer than in the morning. I do believe that Rick was feeling more confident at that point. I knew I was, and I bet the other IDOM'ers were too. With that feeling of accomplishment, we marched back to the editing suite to complete our fantasy masterpiece. I knew that my voice over work was up next so I mentally prepared for the occasion. It was very important to me to keep some level of cultural sensitivity to this project so I really made sure that my grammar was correct. Whenever I was in doubt, I call my older sisters for assistance. Below are some out takes from that voice over session.

I've never met a Vietnamese horse before, so it was exciting to see our little midget horse from The Serendipity Ranch come to life! I can't wait to show this film to family and Vietnamese friends. We completed the voice over work in about one hour and continued to plug along with our film. Things were looking good! That is, until Rick pulled out the ironing board. The oblivious chiropractor set up the table and started to iron his long sleeve button down shirt. All of a sudden, POOF!! Then all the lights went out. The cinema display on his desk went blank as well. It donned on me that Rick's iron short circuited everything and as a result, we had a that brief blackout. I looked up at the pitch black screen and sullenly proclaimed, "WE'RE HOSED." This black out definitely rattled me, but when I learned that we had only lost 10 minutes worth of work and that it was easily salvageable, I eased up. I'm sure Rick was repeating the hose line over and over again in his head, but he kept composure and fixed the problem.

Lessons learned:

1. Always save your work.
2. Never turn on any appliances near your G5!
   

With that, we decided to call it the night and return in the morning to complete the project. We had an 11:59pm Monday deadline, so there was still plenty of time. We're not hosed yet!