I’ve been grousing a lot lately about my lack of a job, but in reality I have enough to keep me working full time lately. The main problem is that I’m not reaping a paycheck.
I work pretty much 10 hours a day — heck, twice what I actually put in at my old office — on the DC Shorts Film Festival.
Shameless plug: DC Shorts: Just like life. Only shorter. Learn more about the second annual DC Shorts Film Festival at dcshorts.com. Ticket sales start Monday!
Anyway. We’ve got 65 films in the line up this year, and every one of them is here in my office. Piles and piles of them, each one requiring transfer from whatever media they reside on — mostly DVD — so that they can be put into a single master DVD from which the show will be projected onto a big old movie screen. It takes a lot longer than you’d think. For the most part, the films were supplied letterboxed — with black bars on the top and bottom–which means that I have to enlarge the picture to fill the entire movie screen while trying to enhance the quality. My G5 is crunching away at this night and day lately. Meanwhile, there are press DVDs to author and send out.
The other members of the DC Shorts team are worrying about publicity, volunteers, and making sure that all the venues are ready. Parties, screenings at a cool movie theatre and even the Canadian Embassy, feeding and housing visiting filmmakers, writing music… there’s an awful lot to do, and only about one month left in which to get it all done.
Add to this the actual paying freelance work I have to get finished in the next week or so, and the sum is one busy guy…
but at least I only have to go upstairs when I get out of bed, you know?
