First off - A couple of months ago I took a giant leap of faith that my company would pull in enough money to warrant leasing a brand new editing system. Hi-def, the works. It costs about as much as a new SUV. At least it doesn't run on gasoline.
Anyway, money still just barely trickles in, but so far I've been paying the bills. I keep yelling at myself for leasing the gear, but then I also realize that if I hadn't gotten the new gear, I wouldn't have booked the last three jobs that I've been working on. It's a bit of a catch-22.
Well I have the gear, so that's that. At least until they repossess it. Sadly, there have been many problems with it in the last month or so. It's a long story, but as I've been trying to get the damned thing fixed so that I can continue to make money to pay for said damned thing, I found out that the company I got all the gear from has sort of gone out of business. Needless to say, I was thunderstruck. And not in the good AC/DC way. The guy at the company said that "lawyers are doing their thing", and that another company is working out the details of purchasing the company that I'm doing business with - but where the heck does that leave me? Screwed-ville, that's where.
In addition, some of the new software on the system (specifically Motion - a program for motion graphics) is all screwy and not working correctly. Apple's answer, back everything up, delete the hard drive, and re-install everything. Great advice. Why didn't I think of that. Must be nice to get paid to hand out gems of wisdom like that. I called this evening to get some more info from Apple's tech support, and apparently I called after their normal business hours of 6-6pm. Now, from my point of view, with the amount of money I'm spending on this, I should practically have a tech guy living in my hallway closet. Since Apple doesn't offer that, the least they could do is run 3 shifts at their joint so that I could call at 2 a.m. (which by the way is not bizarre working hours for people in the film profession, especially editors) and get some friggin help!
Well, that's about it for this rant. Join us again next time when my rant will include the new Indiana Jones movie - or more accurately many of the complaints surrounding it.
