The Very Best Of!

Two weeks ago I was asked to create a DVD for Biggar Theatre Workshop's Annual General Meeting. The brief was to make a DVD containing some of the theater's more memorable output from the last few years. As the keeper of the tapes I accepted thinking it wouldn't be too difficult. Oh, how wrong I was.

Normally creating a DVD for the theatre is a piece of piss. Start the tapes importing and go away. This part has to be done in realtime, so if the show's two and a half hours it will take two and a half hours to play in. Then do some topping and tailing, and some light editing, usually chopping out long series of darkness to give the illusion that the scene changes were smooth. Once that's done I add chapter markers, open up LiveType and type up some credits (the real ball ache of the entire process) make some menus, create a disc image and burn a DVD. Easy.

With this I have met every problem you can think of; tapes not playing properly, running out of hard disk space half-way through importing, my video editing software (Final Cut Express) seemingly making stupid decisions completely on its own, loosing whole files and more. I've had fun at the same time though. I have found that a certain member of the Theatre Workshop is incredibly funny to watch at high speeds. Dance routines are also improved with speed, but if you slow them down you can really see the concentration on certain faces, one cast member even had his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth at one point. If I saw that then members of the audience certainly would have. I only laughed safe in the knowledge that I will never get up on stage and dance in front of people. No coordination and a real lack of rhythm, that's my problem.

I will get back to the DVD on Monday as I'm repeating a journey that I made last year. Heading to Glenrothes tomorrow, then to Perth on Saturday then home on Sunday. It was exactly a year ago that I last did this, so I shall get to see my friends who were married last year on their anniversary. Which will be nice. So no blogging for a few days, I'm afraid. I also won't be Tweeting (Twittering?) as I have been doing a lot of it lately; at the time of writing I have posted nine-hundred and eighty-eight of these little brain-burps.

Right, I'm off to edit a tune called Sit Down You're Rockin' The Boat and then pack. Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Keep it dusty...