Are you titling that post?

Today big Paul is taking the editing wheel and I am back seat editing. Today we are tackling a particularly thorny scene, but I think it is coming together quite well.

When Paul edits he likes to de-link the audio from the video when we replace the audio with a better audio clip. I just mute the audio channel that we are replacing. The de-linking makes me very nervous. And now I think Paul does it just to drive me insane.

Paul says "in english we san unlink not de-link."

Paul's theory is that we are both mentally disabled in different ways and together we form a third way of being mentally disabled.

Another thing you should know out there in blog land is that paul and I insult each other by calling each other by the name of famous directors. Paul is now calling me Alfred - Implying that I am a fat, bald Englishman.

Also I dont understand the reference televisionland - like "Hello to everyone out there in televisionland." Shouldn't the people "out there" be in the real world, while the people on tv are in television land?

As a final note: You can't get Gonorreah from swimming in the Gowanus canal, but you can get polio, from swimming that is.
That is a reference from Quesadilla.

P.S. Gonorreah is the one word that Paul can't spell. I, personally, confuse all STDs with the sea monsters from the Odyssey.

Right, Left, and All Over The Place

Meredith and I have been having a fascinating discussion about something that I am still trying to understand - why there is a right and a left. Not political sides, but simply a right and a left side.

It would take too long for me to recount here my attempts to understand what she is trying to convey to me, but I do still feel that I am NOT the one here with this particular learning disability. I may very well have others, but not this one. This is actually a very rare and odd condition, not the left and right-handedness thing, but her take on the whole thing, the way she sees it and even feels the need to understand this, as though this is something that can be understood and not felt.

In the backgound, Meredith is singing "montage-rama" to a lovely little melody. The scene is going well and it's another fruitful night here at 13BIT Productions, LLC.

"Stupid and vapid are really different."

"You can be really smart and still be vapid."

So, we're deep in edit. And you get in these rhythms while editing. It's all part of that overused, over talked-about thing these days called "process."

As such, deep in edit, a few things are going on. Elko is hanging out trying to get attention. The AC is humming, even though it's April, because it's warm out and the massive turbine-operated Macs are putting out many BTU's. The timeline is taking shape, tea is brewing, I am keeping the browsers all turned off - except for this one, of course.

And, as we always do while deep in edit - and this is a good sign of a happy edit bay with good rhythms and a healthy creative flow - we are talking shit as we work. I happened to talk about something - I cannot say what here - and Meredith happened to respond - I cannot say what about here. And we began to have a dialogue about human nature, which is what it often comes back to here in the 13BIT Agora, the temple to all things modern and philosophickal, as they may have said one day in old England while discussing ancient Greece.

I should get back to the editing before she makes some cut that I don't like and I have to straighten things out.

Happy passover, America.

The Master Multitasker

Meredith can keep her focus like no one else I know. She can be doing clever, daring, fine edits while surfing the web in between breaths.

It is my job, though, to try to keep that great engine of BIT focused, so here in the compound, you will often hear my voice screaming "Shut that browser down...shut that browser down..." to which Meredith responds with a guilty look and then minimizes the browser window with her 55 opened tabs the her Amazon shopping cart holding 1000 unpurchased books, only to surreptitiously open it again if there's half a second of downtime during the editing.

I usually look the other way during this behavior. God knows, I have my faults, too, and she usually overlooks them. Today, though, I am going to shut her down and, as soon as I hit the "Publish Post" button here, I am going to make her actually quit that browser for good.

So there.

Action, whatever...

We have finally learned to say "action" when we shoot. It didn't come easily. Aside from it being a highly technical term that's difficult difficult to pronounce, we have an innate tendency to rebel against all forms of established process and nomenclature. We don't like conforming to the system, god damn it, even if the system evolved through slow, painful process and is the best way to go. No sireee. We have to discover the wheel ourselves every time.

Not really. We actually embrace prior experience and knowlege, but for some stupid reason, it took us a while to get into the habit of saying "action" before every shot. Clearly a consequence of not having spent a few hundred grand on film school. What failures we are. Ack!

Anyway, early on in the film, the irrefutable tape, the tape that never lies, caught us saying "action, whatever" on one shot. What were we thinking? Were we showing disdain for 100 years of Hollywood? No way. We love Hollywood.

Were we being lazy? Never! We are not lazy.

Were we being bogus? No comment.