Tuesday, November 13, 2007

A Love of Spreadsheets

"You know, it's not always easy working for the man, but it's given me a love of spreadsheets."

What can I say?

It has come to this. Actually, the 13BIT machine is very lucky that The Big M has a "love of spreadsheets," as they used to say in the old country.

This film has come to rely MUCH more heavily on lists, organization and logistics than your average documentary. There's something very hunter/gatherer about a documentary. You go out and hunt down your assets; you collect them into your bushels for the long winter of editing that you know lies ahead. You subsist on those assets and bits of information, possibly gather in a few more as you go, then you are done. Organization is limited to folders, some lists, a few databases, and bins of tangible - well, tangible-digital - things.

This narrative feature thing, on the other hand, is...how can I describe it? It's a little more like an organized assault on a grand idea. No, that's not good. It's a lot of spreadsheets so far. Well, it's a lot of cross-referenced tables, some of which I don't understand, but which I completely trust Meredith to translate for me when needed. It's organization in a discrete compartment - creativity in a discrete compartment - technical execution in a discrete compartment - dealing with people in a discrete compartment. What does this sound like? I am suddenly brain dead and cannot say. Perhaps the next post.

This also brings up the symptoms of my early Alzheimer's, which I won't discuss now, but it's pretty amazing the stuff I cannot remember.

Anyway, we found our dwarf. We now need a sound person.

Back to the pits.

No comments: