So, my old friend had a video camera.
We were on a weekend away and just happened to be in Whitby, one of the locations from the Travelogue and I have all sorts of theories of where Bram Stoker actually wrote Dracula. Anyway, while I was in Whitby my phone rang and it was my friend who had a video camera. Remember the last blog about the Travelogue, not the one with the trees, the trees are gone now, cut down by a developer who claim to be an active member of the local community. No, those bastards just chopped down our ancient footpath about which I wrote a great bit of speculative fiction.
tumbleweed
Anyway, I digress, the previous blog to which I refer was the one where I was looking for a new film maker having decided I couldn’t do the editing myself and the bloke I hired turned out to be unable to make a phone call and has since disappeared off the face of the earth. Remember the tumbleweed? If you don’t check out the previous blog. I was rather pleased with the tumbleweed.
Anyway, my friend phoned me while we were in Whitby, searching for locally grown fish and chips (which were excellent), and he delivered the bad news. It turned out he had a video camera but what he had was actually a camcorder. Remember camcorders? I remember camcorders from way back when I had my first job working for a magazine in 1988. Camcorders were video cameras that could play and record onto video cassettes. The stupid name was an indication of the shape of things to come; camcorders, palmcorders, palmcammers, other portmanteau names that are just annoying, you get the picture.
So, the idea of my friend’s camcorder should give you an idea of how old it was, but apparently it was state of the art, way back when. But the world of technology moves on and apparently, with a new PC, he now can’t connect his camcorder to his new PC, or the software wasn’t compatible or the rubber band was the wrong type, or whatever.
Brian
Anyway, he phoned me in Whitby and told me the bad news. That was the day the sky turned orange and it was the end of the world, and we were visited by hurricane Brian… or something. So, he phoned to say that he couldn’t do the video and that was a month ago. For a month I’ve been cast adrift on the stormy seas of no video hell and my world had ended. (Slightly mixed metaphors there.)
Seriously, this Travelogue is going to be the end of me.
However, I have since tracked down another filmmaker and tonight I drove to Oxford and had a thoroughly agreeable meeting with a chap who is going to try to edit my existing material or possibly reshoot.
People who are seeing a repeating pattern should try to put away their cynicism.
fledged
So, I’ve given the existing files, all the footage from the first filming, the sound files from the second filming, the sketches from the animation and the wonderful animation itself (which may be the best bit so far) and everything else to the new film maker. This may be film maker number four, three and a half if you don’t count my mate with the obsolete camcorder as a fully-fledged attempt. Let’s say he’s number three and hope it means third time lucky, eh?