Ardath Rekha

1. So the DVD is... well, not quiiiiite where I want it to be. I burned several of the files to their own DVDs so I could test them out, and the widescreen ones play just right in my DVD player, but are distorted when I play them in Windows Media player. Except for one, which plays fine in WMP but then gets given the pan-n-scan cutoff treatment in the DVD player. Oh, and, the graphic used at the end of the other videos has something wrong with it, too. Joy! I think some of it has to do with the fact that I started out working with hi-def asssets but want to make a standard-def DVD. The God Of Engineering and I will be discussing this tomorrow. Hopefully, by 4pm or thereabouts, I will have something resembling a working DVD. But I'm not entirely thrilled because I'm questioning how it might play on an actual hi-def TV now, too. (It's Festival footage and the intention is for it to be something that the admins of the Festival can use for fundraising purposes. Gah.)

2. No actual progress on my editing project since I last updated, because the DVD has been eating my brain. Hopefully I'll have been able to switch gears and focus on it before 4pm tomorrow, since it's due 1pm Tuesday. YAY! *cringe*

3. I've been syncing up the sound on my film footage. That's gone awesomely well thanks to a semester spent learning "advanced video editing" (see #2) and so I'm knocking it out nice and quickly. I should knock some more of it out tomorrow, too, while doing test-burns of the DVD. And then it'll have to be tabled until #2 is ready, at which point I'll start rocking out on it again. Once the footage and sound are synced up completely, it'll be time to cut the shots down to the beginning-end points that feel right. Essentially, right after I say "action" and right before I say "cut." Once that's done, the film will be in "rough cut" status, awaiting the fine cut and reshot footage. And I'm going to HAVE to reshoot some of it because my genius of a DP (who, thankfully, was flaking out so much during my shoot that he was absent for a whole day of filming, so that footage, shot by my AD, actually looks good) actually arranged the camera so that my lead actor looks like he's looking at it. (A no-no he should have known better than to do! I just hope that our prof doesn't blame me for trusting him.)

4. I've got some pages to code for the website. Yay! Not many, of course, but some! And I'm going to spend a good deal of the summer continuing to refine it with the prof. So that, at least, feels nicely under control.

Since most of my work requires actually being physically in the DVComm lab, which has been closed all weekend, I actually got some housework done for an amazing change. All of my laundry is done. (Well, okay, there are blankets in the dryer and a fluffy bathrobe in the washing machine, but THEN it's all done.) And... well, I have a ton more cleaning to catch up on, but I actually kind of feel... tidy again? Almost, anyway! Which is yay.

I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there. On pretty much every front.