I’ve overrun the rescheduled inventory deadline, after only getting in about 30 hours in the last 6 days. What else was I doing? Some M3 business on Wednesday, the usual training, eating, sleeping, maintaining social ties, fixing things…
Below is a peak at the inventory so far – a spreadsheet in NeoOffice. The colored lines show production days for the A unit, which helps me to locate matched cameras. A UNIT refers to the team that handled primary production with actors on the big boat. B UNIT refers to the team that handled all the other stuff – moldering trains, rust red canyons, abandoned highways.
Archeology – Originally the A UNIT had 10 days to do it’s thing, less 2 days of roundtrip travel from NYC to Kingston, Canada. I think we started a day late to finish prepping and testing the equipment, then we lost another day because the Canadian border cops got mixed up about our work permits… so that left 6 days. Looking at the A UNIT directory we captured for five days but only Monday and Tuesday were actually “productive”. What happened to the other day? Setting up, tearing down and rehearsing I guess. We were shorthanded too, Eiji had to leave unexpectedly before we entered Canada. As I dig deeper into the archives, I am sure the details will emerge.
We should have been on location longer, seems like we were just getting warmed up when it was time to go. In hindsight, it was silly to arrange all that and only get 2 productive days. I had zero time to review scenes with Ann Loeding, my producer.
I am building an inventory of the DOG archival drive ‘momma’, shown below with upper level directories visible. The camera files in the A UNIT directory (colored, above) are not visible in this list. Neither are the contents of the FCP directories which contain the editorial history, organized by year.
In 06 FCP, there are project files for every month after Canada. Basically, I worked on the edit for the rest of that year. In 07 FCP, there are files from January – March and then November – December or 5 months. My guess is that I was doing B UNIT from April – October. In 08 FCP, there are edit files for every month – the entire year! In 09 FCP, there are files from January and oddly May and June. 2009 was the year I dropped DOG and started ALM.
Looking at the history of edit files is revelatory because I had it in my head that I didn’t work enough on DOG and that I gave up when the going got tough. The truth is, aside from my work documenting performance and dance in NYC, I was doing little else BUT make DOG. Those two productive days in Canada triggered a 3 year educational immersion and trial by fire.
It’s important to notice that there is still persistent self talk which is neither supportive nor accurate. Why else would my perception about my effort and accomplishments be so skewed? I know a lot went wrong on location but perhaps enough went right. Since early 2006 I’ve been learning like crazy, having loads of fun and perhaps making a movie that won’t totally suck.
Today’s bottom line is that another milestone was missed. I didn’t do a solid 40 hours and the scope of the inventory was much bigger than originally projected. If a major deadline is missed, it’s important to deflect bad vibes and recriminations. Since Faisal isn’t available to take the blame this week, I whipped up a sweet flow chart.
The inventory is probably 3 times bigger than I initially imagined. After 5 days I am about 1/3 of the way through. Rather than spend another huge block of time organizing, I like the idea of switching between abstract and pragmatic, or put another way, wide and tight. Alan Watts might have called it prickles and goo. On the chart below, the orange area represents the inventory currently underway, now redesignated as INVENTORY PHASE 1 – RAPID ACCESS.
There are two more directories yet to do, PLAN (NOTES on ‘momma’) and VFX. LEGAL and FESTIVALS can be handed after the two EDITs (blue and black) are well underway. The other tasks associated with INVENTORY PHASE 1 are finding and organizing all the DOG files not on ‘momma’ and then riffing on the most interesting elements. That should take another 4 days based on what’s left. This wide task is followed by a tight task, revisiting the 3:30 edit and building a 6 minute version. I’ll get 3 days to do that, and the result will be scheduled for test screenings facilitated by friends. I’ll get to sit in the audience and be anonymous. There may be several iterations of the 6 minute version based on these test screenings.
Anyway, you can follow the chart right though to the finish. I’m projected an ending in November, but that doesn’t include a trip to NYC this fall. Also, it assumes a robust VFX team. The chart’s main thrust is the editorial for the 12 minute version – those projections feel pretty solid.