Sisyphus
I must apologize for not writing in such a long time. I’ve been editing, or trying to, for the past six months, and couldn’t bring myself to write because I felt ashamed. During that time, if I wasn’t editing, I was feeling guilty about not editing, not enjoying much else because I thought I should be editing instead, and every long editing session seemed to bring me no closer to finishing. No sign of progress, really, nothing to show except for a slightly tighter scene here and there. I can’t just do a bit of editing every day. It takes a solid block of many hours. You can’t just edit for a few minutes a day. I can’t, anyway. I’ve spent the last several months hating myself for not being able to just get it done. The rest of my life has been backing up against this project for several years now, forming a thick dam of scattered, inferior goals.
I went through and made all the changes we talked about when Dean was last in town. I took out entire scenes, drastically cut down dialog in others. Switched things around. People ask me how much I’ve done, how much longer it will take, when will it be done, etc. I have no idea at this point. Dean’s been working at the special effects, and doing great work, but it’s slow for him as well. Darrell can’t really even start his job until I get him a final cut.
My 3.2ghz duel-processor computer with its 2gb of RAM and almost 1tb of hd space is struggling to handle the project. Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 is unstable, crashing occasionally and forgetting the last few saves, sometimes an afternoon’s worth of work will disappear. Even when it doesn’t crash, each little cut or change takes several minutes to churn out, and I find myself staring at the message “Rendering Required Files” for a considerably longer time than indicated in the unhelpful Help section in which Adobe says I shouldn’t be seeing this message at all because Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 features smooth, seamless previews. My entire system is bogged down, though I find it hard to believe that nobody ever edited a 2+ hour project in Premiere before. Even the normally helpful folks at dvinfo.net don’t seem to know what the problem is. Maybe my computer is just worn out. Maybe it’s not just my computer.
But it’s 2008. Deep down, I had really hoped not to be still working on this by now, to have moved on to other things, but here I am, seemingly no closer than months ago. I’ve stopped guessing when it will be done, or trying to tell people when it will be done. “Eventually,” is about all I can muster at this point.
Hello,
I know perfecly what you going trough wright now, as a matter a fact I’am feeling the same way wright know and I’am feeling so tyred of constantly all members together
it’s a hell of a job aranging locations, preparing props ,scenes and actors for the shoot. But at the end It will be worth it. I have changent my whole editing from Premiere to Final Cut and know it’s like a dream. Premiere works well until you get a higher level of working and then the trouble starts, constantly crasches and so on.
But you can’t give up my friend, and you must continue the good work you guy’s are doing, this is one of the best low budget productions I have ever seen. As I sayed Superr good lighting, scenes and more. Believe me.
Again kind regards,
Bleyaert Guy
Comment by Bleyaert Guy — January 25, 2008 @ 5:29 pm
Thanks for the compliments. Ironically, I used to use Final Cut Pro on a Powerbook G4, and it kept crashing on me, so I moved to Premiere. I’ve broken up the project into smaller parts, and as I edit it down it gets easier for the processor, actually.
Comment by poagao — January 25, 2008 @ 6:05 pm
Hello collegue,
I have read your post, and I understand perfectly what you are going trough. Recently I had the same trouble. Working in premiere was good untill a surtian point. But as the project became more harder to render Premiere crashed constantly. As a try out I buyed a Mac Mini witch I needed anyways to load HD projects on location. Wright now we are still shooting in DV but I shoot in 720pn 60 frames to get a perfect slow mo. I set up Final Cut Studio on the Mac Mini and started to try it out. It was not the purpose to work on the Mac Mini for editing. But believe it or not, I have never returned to my Premiere and windows workstation to edit, no more crashes, I even edit HD in this little fucker. Now I understand why Final Cut is a professional workfloor. So my friend, if you can in the future.
Kick out your windows PC and Premiere and start with one of these MacMini dual prosessor boxes and Final Cut.
It is not a loss at all, later on if you upgrade to MacPro you still can use the mac mini on location. Together with 1 Terabite Hardisk and it is a hell off a storage system for your HD data in the future all together for a price of aproxemly 850 dollar for the MacMini and Terabite.
Anyway, I know how you feel wright know, but do never give up what you guy’s are doing it’s GREAT WORK!, it is one of the best low budget movie I have ever seen. Good lighting, good scenes, nice actions etc..
Wright now I’ts 23.16 PM and I am working on the preparation of some actionscenes we must shoot hopefully and if all goes wel in the comming next weeks. If I ever finish this work I will take a long vacation I think. It sucks so much energy out of me that I somethimes get depri.
But I am a fighter and I wont give up. The goal is 90 min movie. But with so many freelance players involved and so many diferent agenda’s I hope we will ever be able to end it. So you see my friend you are not alone.
Kind regards,
Bleyaert Guy
Comment by Guy Bleyaert — January 25, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
Well, we’ll see what happens in the future; if I have enough money, a good new Mac system would be nice. But I don’t have the money for that right now.
Comment by poagao — January 25, 2008 @ 6:41 pm
Keep is up TC!
I do understand what you are going through. I still use Premiere on short projects. However, I will be moving on to Final Cut on a MAC Pro soon. Premiere 2.0 is still fine on the PC for low end productions.
Many of the guys at TOT are looking forward to seeing the end product. We had fun acting in the film. Hang in there.
James
Comment by James — February 27, 2008 @ 4:55 am