Oh God I’m absolutely wracked with sour adrenaline. This has been a big week and at the end of it I have just recorded a short story, me on film, reading it for a guy in Australia. It was 12 pages long and I knew I needed to get it done in an hour, and Alex in the studio kept faffing. We lost a good fifteen minutes to him changing his mind about the microphone, and then he kept on breaking my flow to give notes that frequently just betrayed that he hadn’t read the fucking story so didn’t have context on what I was doing with it.
I said the final word on the dot of 5pm. He can’t charge overtime for that. My reading could have been better if he hadn’t fucked my flow almost relentlessly at the start. I watched the first one in this series I’m part of and I thought the actor was being way too slow. Then every single note the engineer gave me was about slowing down when we didn’t have time (and the story is a heist – it wants a build in pace.)
So yeah. Sour adrenaline. Not enough time in a studio hour for interpretative shenanigans particularly pushing me to sound all serious and important, particularly when the first quarter is wiped out with tech issues that might have been solved ahead of time.
Still, Alex does know what he’s doing. He’s good at listening. But it isn’t just audio and he is used to that being the only information carrier. He doesn’t know what I’m doing on camera, so his notes only address half the delivery. That’s why I’ve got the sour adrenaline. I want this to be excellent, of course I do, but it doesn’t matter how good it is if it stops before its finished. I promised my client I could do twelve pages in an hour, and I managed it despite everything by the skin of my fucking teeth and I feel wrung out now.
But this has been the week. Deadlines, new information, responsiveness. I’m fucking knackered. This time last year we were finishing a long long rehearsal process for a calm and happy job that I will never forget, the people were so wonderful…
Nice though to do something creative, to care about ideas and storytelling instead of metal and wood and heavy machinery. Nice to get home without oil and filth all up my arms and all over my face. I’m gonna go to the shop and buy a pie, put it in my face and wind myself to bed. This is an excellent night not to drink, as after the week I’ve had that would be my coping strategy hands down. Pie will have to do.
Not even pie, with the storm outside. That might explain my mood, a storm rolling in. I’m having pasta pesto with the cats.
AlBarclay 