over the millionth hurdle and into the pond...

I will make one small admission. There are times when I prepare for battle against an unknown foe knowing that I am going to lose the first few rounds. I have heart. It's the only thing that keeps me taking punches to the nose. Who is this invisible foe that strikes from the darkness with sucker-punched glee? A f-ing computer. I read. I study. I have discussions with intelligent and well versed individuals on subjects that are meant to teach, enlighten, and spread the secret experiences behind the post-production hell of making a film with little (or NO) budget. I have spent a great deal of time hacking and chopping my way through the thick-wet crunches of "group of images" and layer break calculation coding. Much like the search for Solomon's Gold, there is the constant draw and hope that treasure is hiding beneath an unturned rock. After spending $125 on Dual Layer disks and laying them to waste as drink coasters at five dollars a pop, we have had a break through. Anthony put some money down for a new burner... Low-and-behold the madness!!! We are now capable of burning dual layer DVDs! Yes, there is a fabled light at the end of the edit bay. However, this light has pulled another small issue out of the digital muddled darkness and brought it to feast before the eyes. Apparently layer breaks pause for about a second while in transition. This I know. There has to be a small amount of time in which the laser readjusts so that it can read the information off of "Layer1" (as opposed to Layer 0-- stupid binary codes)... and that switching between layers causes the video and audio to pause for about a second (or half-a-second).

That small gap is too long for my taste... especially when the computer decides that it wants to put this layer break in the middle of a piece of dialogue or some other inappropriate segement that jars the senses and stops all elements of spatial enjoyment. The pause comes off looking like an unintentional glitch and I do not wish to simply "settle" with a layerbreak pause when we have spent so much time and effort to make this film as perfect as possible. So, we continue to burn disks at five dollars a pop until we can find a reasonable point of agreement with the computer. You see... the program doesn't like where I want to put the layer break. We've tried manually placing the break at several points. Most films find a fade to black or entail some kind of transition that appears to be seamless when the layer switch is made. I haven't found that "easy" transition yet. It's just not working right. So I argue with the computer and ask it "Why computer? Why won't you let me put the layer break where it will go unnoticed? Why won't you just work with me a little and stop wasting these precious disks? Why won't you listen to reason?" There is no answer. I want to take those 1's and 0's and stick them sideways up it's USB port. It's like arguing with a cat.

That's pretty much the latest update. We're burning money, burning disks (that actually do work... just not like I want them to), and burning a little more time before we write someone a $1700 check for 1000 DVDs. Trust me, the film will be on DVD soon. I'll be glad when it's in someone else's hands... because I'm tired of trying to get the damn thing out of the computer. Well... we can get it out of the computer, just like you can take a child to the grocery store... but I want to avoid a half-naked DVD screaming around the feminine hygiene product aisle... or maybe I can use that as an advertising ploy. Okay, maybe that's not a good analogy. By the end of next week we'll have the answer.

-B