Mold
Alright so thank the good L-rd we’ve been in our house for 2 weeks now. When we were finally able to get a hold of a mold specialist to test our home and give us an estimate miraculously the mold had dissipated.
Our nephew who is an HVAC specialist had cleaned out our AC unit. He said the reservoir where the AC moisture gets sucked to had backed up so bad that the entire inside of the AC was covered with mold.
So almost with no loss of our entire life savings we were able to get back into our home.
And to top it all off one evening when we were going through all this crazy we were driving home and saw a double rainbow.
Reality Television
Last week I had an incredibly awesome conversation with the owner of the company I am currently working for. To cut to the chase he offered to extend my contract.
Our next project will be a reality TV show about this car company in Norfolk VA called Fantomworks.
Reality TV is a whole other beast over docu-drama style shows.
Instead of recording 1 episode a week and having everything organized on it’s own drive all designated under it’s singular episode. We will be recording 12 weeks of footage to create 6 episodes and not one of these will be done in one week.
It’s my job to create a system of tracking and logging all the hundreds of hours of footage we will be getting in every week to track the A, B and C story lines that will be going on throughout the show.
I have to get all this footage in a central location so that all my editors can locate it and edit in an orderly fashion.
Not to mention that as of right now I actually don’t have any editors for this show.
Now in a narrative type show for every hour of filming you get approx 10 minutes of actual footage.
Well with reality shows for every hours of shooting you get about 50 minutes of footage. So as you can see it can get out of hand really quickly if you’re no organized.
Wish me luck. I’ll keep you updated with how I’ll tackle this beast.
Germany and Beyond
Well, it’s been a month since we were in Germany and although the trip itself was full have tears, wedding events, hugs and personal adventures, the trip home was nothing but terrible.
Ter-E-bal.
So for now I’m going to wait on all the fun things that happened and just tell of the experience home.
It was the biggest pain in the neck I’ve ever had to deal with.
After we dropped off a very good family friend at a different airport we made it super quickly to our airport like in 30 minutes and that was with traffic so it wasn’t as far as my dad originally said it (thank goodness because I was stressing it a little on the inside).
We got to Frankfurt and had a wonderful afternoon with my dads sisters family. Then had dinner and spent the night with my dads oldest brother and his wife.
This is when it got tricky. Because my uncle Rolf is almost blind and has very bad hearing and it’s very hard to understand either him or his wife, when I don’t really fluently know the language and especially when they mush their words together. I had no problem with my aunt Elfriede but uncle Rolf was a whole other story. I tried to tell him we need to be at the airport by 8 but I didn’t get the point across and my dad forgot to call him and tell him this.
7:00AM
So when we got up my aunt had a full breakfast waiting and it took forever…but I thought its ok I just wanted that extra cushion…
8:00AM
Well as we pull up to the train station (right after taking the above picture) we see our train pulling away…I took a deep breath and think ok now what.
8:05AM
So we hop on a train that I thought would get us there quicker, Jonathan races to exchange the cash we have for smaller bills since the machine is full of larger bills and can’t take large bills anymore. I see the train pulling into the station look at my sister who runs yelling into where jonathan went to get back out here quick with the cash.
It was like an awesome relay race.
He hands me the cash I get the tickets and we get on the train just as the doors close. As soon as we hear the next station that is called Jonathan looks at me and says “I think we’re going to the wrong way”. Oops…in the haste of getting the tickets and trying to get to the airport I had read the right train but wrong direction.
8:10AM
So we get off and swap trains, which turned out fine since we got on the same train we would have gotten on had we just waited the full 15 minutes for it at the original station.
When we get to the airport I looked at the board to see our departure gate and saw that our flight actually left at 8:45 NOT 9:30 which is what I had been thinking and telling everyone and it was at that point I panicked, I didn’t tell my sister or Jonathan but I looked at them and told them we HAD to bolt…I didn’t want to cause them more stress.
It was 8:21 AM.
Well it was ridiculous…first the passport line took forever then they asked us what our relationship was since we all looked so different and had different last names…theeeeen the stupid security line! Oooo mmyyyy goooosh! I have never been in a line with 10 people that took longer I just didn’t understand what was going on….annnnd then it took forever for our bags to come through the X-ray…and at this point it was
8:40 AM
and I told Jonathan the plain leaves at 8:45. I told him I’d wait for the bags and to run up and see if you can tell them we are coming….
Jonathan went alone and bolted while I waited for the bags…well the bags took another 2 minutes and by the time Amy and I went through the second passport control annnnd RAN to the gate it was
8:45AM
We saw Jonathan running back towards us I thought maybe yes they’re waiting and he’s coming to hurry us up….but no.
We had missed our flight.
The next few minutes were nerve racking but nothing compared to what we were about to deal with. We waited in line for 30ish minutes at the little Luftansa booth in the terminal only to find out that because it was our fault we missed the flight and the stupid Luftansa strike AND because even though Luftansa owns and operates Brussels air (which is what our tickets were booked through) there was nothing they could do. They suggested going to United Airlines and seeing if they could help us, since the actual plane we were supposed to fly out on was a UA plane.
Well long story short (yup I could go on for another 10 paragraphs with the H E double hockey sticks we had to go through, like how when we were done waiting in one line they just gave us a number to wait in another, we were 520 and they were calling 320) we ended up spending 9 hours going from one terminal to another from United Air to Luftansa each telling us to go the other. And no one could give me a number for Brussels to call…and Internet was so over slammed I couldn’t even pay for it at that point. I was freaking out that we would have to purchase brand new tickets for a grand total of $6000.
3:30PM
Well I did eventually find a way to finagle Internet got the number and was able to get a flight…which ended up not working out because they screwed up…and at a that point I had no more money to call them on a pay phone and my cell battery was just about dead.
Thank G-d my dads friend Hans Philipp finally came to our rescue at the airport…he retired from Luftansa and although didn’t know anyone working that day was able to convince them to let us get on the standby list for the ONLY departing Luftansa flight to new York that day! It was a miracle…we didn’t even have to pay a penny.
4:00PM
Of course the flight left at 5:00PM and we were on the exact opposite side of the terminal. We walked briskly through security, passport control and trams to finally arrive in a PACKED waiting area for this flight. I turned to Jonathan and mouthed “I hope they’re not all on standby”.
We take our time to find the line and wait. I look around and just start praying that all these people already had seats and wouldn’t take ours.
After 9 hours in an airport of nothing but NO’s I just started to think of how I was going to handle the “sorry, you don’t have a seat”…deep breaths I told myself.
Then we hear “Phillips party of 3” “PHILLIPS, Jonathan”
We couldn’t believe it! Jonathan and I looked at each other and almost thought we’d imagined it. We pushed our way to the front of the line where the attendant asked us for our standby tickets…WE WERE GETTING ON THE PLANE.
4:40PM
I started crying, Jonathan told the attendant she loved her and Amy just looked at us like we were crazy.
This really is the shortened version so much other stuff happened while we were there it was pure hell. Excuse my French, but no other word describes it.
Meanwhile my poor mom and dear friend, who are waiting in New York to drive home with the rental we got, are clueless. I did get a message to my friends father who bought a ticket for her (which ended up getting delayed and then they missed their connecting flight in Philly and had to stay the night) my mom left me a voicemail on my American cell around 1:30 saying she was waiting for me…luckily she had my friends number and was able to finagle a way to get on the same plane with her.
We arrived at 8:30PM no one would rent us a rental car to get home, only two hotels rooms were left in the entire area and they were an arm and a leg…but finally Hertz decided to accept our debit card by doing a credit check…really? Whatever at this point I didn’t care.
Well we couldn’t drive all the way home that night even though we were determined, we were just too exhausted. I don’t think I’ve ever truly known the meaning of that work until now.
And when we did finally get home the next day we are greeted by house which has decided to grow mold the entire time we’ve been gone…so we didn’t get to sleep in our own beds for nearly a month.
Annnnd on my way home from work the next day our only good working car decided to break down on the side of the highway…yup…I can officially say that week has just been one bundle of the craziest most stressful week of my life.
Arlington and Maryland
For two weeks in a row I’ve had to drive up to Arlington, VA to oversea our very first episode of “A Haunting” season 5 going to tape. Yes I said tape. Discovery is still a little behind the times when it comes to digital and all master programs have to be delivered on a special kind of tape.
It was my responsibility to make sure the episode got to tape and looked perfect, as it did in digital form.
Well the first week didn’t work, somehow everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
Thursday night we went to a local production company who has the tape deck we needed and unfortunately due to a PC v Mac system they couldn’t work with our Mac drives.
Friday I tried everything to get our mac drive to work on PC but due to a problem with the deletion of our project file (yeah uho) it was decided that we just needed to go to a professional Post House.
So this past week we were able to get two episodes done and Sunday night when I reviewed the final ONLINE (which is the term used for final picture and audio lock) version of the two episodes only to find issues with both. And one major issue with the second one. Somewhere a two shots that required visual effects never got replaced with the final shots…so 6 hours later we were able to get one episode ready but the other had to wait.
I drove up got the episode to tape then hand delivered it to the Discovery headquarters myself.
And that’s the story of how we got our first episode to Discovery.
First go ’round…
Second time’s a maybe…
Third time’s the charm…
City Skyscrapers, the Washington Memorial, Discovery Place and the Prius.
Saturday Morning Coffee
When Jonathan and I were first married we inadvertently got into this routine of waking up Saturday mornings, realizing we had no commitments that morning and we’d get breakfast together.
This was wonderful for several reason. One because we could actually wake up and spend time with each other and second because it became our little tradition.
So every Saturday morning we’d find our way to Dunkin’ Donuts. However within the past two years when my commitments to school became overwhelming and since most film sets are on the weekends it meant that for the most part I had to give up our Saturday morning.
I graduated in May and this Summer Jonathan changed jobs which meant his schedule changed…he worked Saturdays.
But this Saturday, he was off. So guess what we did. We had coffee.
“Post” Traumatic Stress…
The show runner for A Haunting came into my office this afternoon and affectionately said “Shannah….I think we’re suffering from “Post” traumatic stress disorder”.
He was up until 4am this morning working side by side with the editor trying desperately to get me the Fine Cut I needed up to the network by yesterday morning. I was greeted this morning to 20 different emails that were sent in the wee hours of the morning.
Things are absolutely crazy nuts in my job right now, and I’m loving it. I see each new problem that arises as a challenge. It motivates me to find a way to get things done, no matter what. And with a show runner who himself is willing to be up until 4am my efforts seem hardly worth mentioning.
I’ve work late all this week and the past two weekends…buuuut I’m slowly learning that this is production. So if I don’t like it I better get out now.
It does stink though when I get hom at 8:30 and just don’t feel like doing anything.
I did just buy these awesomely cute shoes! I loved them so much I got them in black too!
We’ll fix it in post
Ahh the words that every post person hates to hear but know is coming. That’s why we don’t go to set.
As I like to quote one of my favorite DP’s Matthew Libatique, the cinematographer of Requiem for a Dream, says, “People should really say, ‘We’ll cheat it in post,’ because I don’t think anything’s ever necessarily ‘fixed’ in post.”
I mean yes we hate to hear those words but the truth is, we always fix it. We have to. We make the magic happen. That’s what we do. We make that shot with the guy in a long white robe actually look like a ghost. But like any good magician we rarely reveal our secrets.
We are reinventing a TV show so there’s a fair amount of fixes that will be required. But we got this covered, in fact we like to the people who were on set go “wow” when they see our final product.
Happy Thursday!
