October 2, 2003
10/2/03 I am barely conscious
I am barely conscious as I write this, having had one of the most intense days of my New York business existence. Keep in mind as I tell you this - the last shipment for Fedex is 9:30pm. And the deadline to enter this Really Big Film Festival is tomorrow. Have I set the stakes yet? Good.
6:20am - Fall asleep after giving the movie a "film look" and laying it all onto a DV cam tape.
10:15am - Wake up, grab tape and rush to Dubbing House to turn our "PAL" (European style) movie into "NTSC" (American broadcast-style) movie. This place is on 38th Street, and requires a Q train, which is running behind.
11:00am - Dubbing House says the tape will be transferred to NTSC by 2:30pm; I freak out, thinking it would be much shorter than that. Outside, after narrowly dodging speeding cars due to fatigue, I go back to Brooklyn to get an hour of sleep.
1:45pm - I oversleep, then run back to Dubbing House, where the tape is waiting. I call a mutual friend who owns a $20,000 deck that will allow us to put the new soundtrack onto the newly-dubbed movie.
3:30pm - At the sound studio, we realize that no deck is coming. Frantic, I rent one from another dubbing house on 26th Street.
4:45pm - After waiting in the green room for what seems like a century, the deck finally arrives. I thought it would be a small deck the size of a VCR; instead it is the size of an upright piano on wheels. I wheel it 12 blocks back to the sound studio, where the fuckwad doorman makes me take the service elevator around the block.
5:15pm - After hooking up this beast, we begin to lay down the new sound on the new movie. I'm noticing that the synch isn't exactly right. It's only off by a frame or so, but it begins to drive me insane. I don't know whether it's just me, or if nobody will notice.
7:00pm - I rush BACK to the Dubbing House YET AGAIN to transfer the new DV cam tape to a VHS tape. You know, like the ones you watch at home. They say it will be ready by 9pm. I pray that they are telling the truth.
7:30pm - I rush down to Soho to play two games of basketball - I wasn't going to go, but I was the 8th player, and to bag it would have been dishonorable.
8:45pm - Sweaty and exhausted, I thrash BACK to the Dubbing House on the R train.
9:08pm - I get the tapes. I am on 38th St. and 5th Avenue. Fedex is on 34th St. and 10th Avenue. There are no cabs. The night has turned cold, and a bitter headwind develops down the cavernous alleys of Manhattan. I run. I run run fucking run, with a giant backpack on, through the wind. I remember the days in 1999 when I was lugging scripts through a rainstorm, trying to get a reading of the screenplay done - now I carry a finished videotape of the movie, and still, New York is trying to make it hard for me.
9:21pm - I reach Fedex. I have in my possession two tapes, and only one can go to the Really Big Film Festival - and both have a flaw. Tape #1 is the new dub with the "film look," but a creeping, tiny synch issue throughout. Tape #2 is the one we made earlier in the week, with a perfect soundtrack, but the footage still looks like video. I call Tessa. I am stalled. A lot of our future seems to hang on this decision, and I have to make a call. It is truly 50-50.
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which would you have chosen?
After looking skyward and beseeching the winds, I decide to go with the "film look" tape. I don't know why. I suppose it was just that important to me. Besides, although New York had made my day excruciating, it didn't make it impossible. I take this as a sign that the new dub had earned it.
9:29pm - I close the envelope and send it off on the last Fedex plane. Freezing, starving and still wracked with ambivalence, I stagger home to Brooklyn into the waiting arms of my beloved.
Posted by at October 2, 2003 11:02 PM