February 27, 1998
The DAT machine at Harvestworks is fixed, and I was finally able to book
a mix session at Harvestworks tonight. Everything came difficult
for some reason, but Paul and I eventually managed to change the sound
level at the beginning of reel two so that it matched reel one pretty well,
and after a little battle with the equipment we started transferring the
new sound track to DAT. While listening to the transfer, I noticed
to my distress that a few of the fixes that I thought we had made in the
last session didn't seem to be included in the current track. While
I was brooding over this, a bad glitch that I clearly remembered us fixing
six months ago showed up again! We stopped the transfer and refixed
the glitch before proceeding, but my confidence was shaken. Were
we working from an old version of the reel two track that didn't contain
all the latest fixes? Were some of our fixes not saved because of
system crashes or some other malfunction? Paul looked around the
system but couldn't see what was going wrong. Our time in the mix
room tonight was limited, so I left with the completed DAT, a bit demoralized
at the idea that all this effort isn't resulting in a perfect reel two
after all. I guess the next step is to listen very carefully to the
new DAT to see if any other old problems have returned.
As I paid this month's bills, I realized that my savings had finally
run out after two years of movie spending, and that I was living from paycheck
to paycheck for the first time in ten years. It's a good thing that
my money lasted this long (although maybe it's not an accident--there's
probably some law of nature that dictates that all the money you have is
exactly what your movie will cost), but there are still a lot of movie
expenses left in the next few months. Time to do some serious penny-pinching.
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