We are deep into the land of timelines, media bins, preview windows, and video codecs.

It is a lot of fun, jeez let me tell you oh boy oh boy. With four tracks of unmixed audio per video track, and 3 video tracks from different angles per song, and 6 songs on the hotplate, that’s a WHOLE LOTTA TRACKS TO GET MESSY WITH. Marty, who was a professional video editor for a hefty chunk of his past, assuages my tendency towards frustration by reminding me that every project begins with a phase he calls “The Quicksand”. That’s where you work and work and work and it feels like you make no progress at all and you THINK that this is gonna be the way it is, and you can’t possibly imagine how you’ll cling on to sanity at such a stubborn crawl. But this uncompromising limp of our creative gait is actually just the ironing out of the inevitable wrinkles that come with any big project, and the Quicksand is sure to melt away into a more satisfying flow. Well, I think that’s starting to happen, finally, after 2 and a half days of transferring, rendering, instruction manual scrutinizing, syncing, and workflow scheming (complete with little drawings of our brains and which parts of them are melting, freezing, or going on unannounced vacations).

Here is a screen shot of our Big Mess timeline. This is the song Big Mess, which is in the Fine Cut stage.

We are using Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio HD. Yes I’m a mac guy. Yes I have a film degree. PM me if you want to start a debate about why I’m not using Final Cut Pro.