If you’re like me, you are surrounded by a battery of technology and mechanical hardware that, in typical 21st century fashion, goes belly up at the worst possible moment. And like plant pheromones signalling others of its kind, there seems to have been a broadcast transmitted to all my creature comforts, causing them to fail in a kind of chain of destruction, akin to a butterfly flapping its wings in Peking causing earthquakes in California and hailstorms in New York City. My car died last Sunday. Yesterday, a hard drive failed in the middle of editing, which is one of the scariest events for an editor to live through, second only to coming to on your apartment floor, your clothes bloody, and your favourite steak knife embedded in the chest of a famous Hollywood director (why this auteur would be in your home is a mystery the detectives solve many months later, after your swift and publically brutal trial and execution). I mean, waking up to that would be quite frightening. What happened? Did I stab this visionary (yet curiously selfish) director in the chest because of something he said to me? Have I been framed? Can I get OJ’s defense team for my trial? Next to that, a failed hard drive seems rather an inconvenience, inevitable, yet able to be overcome, if only by brute stubborn resolve to see the project through no matter what the problems.
Then I went to edit the Grounds Zero title animation. Just a few tweaks, easily done. Except the file refuses to open. I try it again. Nothing. Not only that, but After Effects gives me an error. Something about a corrupt file. Oh. No. Not again.
Unfortunately, this is the file that houses all the animation and artwork for the title sequence. For some reason, it is the only one of all the project files that won’t open. I check the file header, and it appears there’s nothing in it. The ghost in the machine has struck again, leaving me in shambles. By 1:30am I’m exhausted trying to recover the file, even going so far as to call the local diocese to see if they perform exorcisms on home computers. The bishop hung up on me. Even knowing it was a lost cause and there was nothing to be done about it, I still teared up in frustration. This has not been a good week for me and my technology.
But we struggle on, don’t we? The human history of experience is fraught with failures and faultlines, marked in pain and sadness at the mountains nearly conquered, the battles almost won, the successes faintly tasted. The truest hero is not one who wins because he is good, but who doesn’t quite win because he is flawed, and yet rises again the following day to hope for the best. I’m not saying I’m a hero. I am saying I got up this morning and emailed my contact about the situation, ending with the ever ambiguous “oh well.” Like the Chinese character combo for crisis, “oh well” conveys the duality of disaster. One may find in it equally the reason for dismay (oh) and potential for opportunity (well). In this case, it cut short what might have been a long running series of “improvements” to an already completed title sequence. Perhaps I have won out after all.
The weekend was good. I’m well on my way to putting up a portfolio site, which will render my meager skills in such a way as to highlight the least flawed moments of a highly suspect career. May many employers find it compelling and hire-worthy. That’s all for today, as I’m scrambling to get Floyd updates ready for the server and finish up some other work before I leave for Texas on Wednesday.
See ya tomorrow, if my monitor doesn’t die first. And if it does…oh well.