My DDR pie in the sky

In just over a week's time, my partner and I fly out to Berlin. My third visit, her first. It is part of a bigger, three week tour of central Europe. We go to Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Lithuania.

Other than a fantastically exciting prospect, the trip has worked as something of a My DDR T-Shirt deadline. In fact, one of the reasons for starting the tour in Berlin was to enable the Hawkinsian camcorder to capture finishing touches to My DDR T-Shirt. As readers of this blog will know, things have been up and down for the project over the summer, but it's good to report that things are nicely on track to take advantage of the coming visit to Berlin.

The My DDR T-Shirt working edit currently stands at around 25 minutes. There's a lot of polishing to do - in fact, it's still at the sanding down stage but a test DVD burn took place the other day and things are looking quite good. The original estimate of a 40-45 minute final running time is still about right.

And for the pie in the sky bit...
The other day, while reading some underground style club and band posters on a bar wall, it struck me as a good idea to organise a My DDR T-Shirt 'premiere'. Ideally, I'd like this to be in Withington, Manchester and there is a perfect room at a bar on Oxford Road. No contact has been made with the bar, and any public screening is many months away, but maybe this kind of thinking is a measure of the growing confidence here at Hawkinsian Productions.

All systems go - again

The impact of the corrupt project file reported in my last update has fully hit home - and what a body blow it was. However, it is great to report that most of that lost ground has been regained. Editing staff down at the Institute have been piecing the project back together and we are now back up to around 13 minutes running time.

We have taken the opportunity to assess and polish the edit wherever possible and it is generally accepted that the new 13 minutes is an improvement on the old 16 minutes. There have also been one or two mini-innovations (minnovations?) that bode very well for the end product.

Aside from these project details, there are a couple of small points...

The Hawkinsian software package has been upgraded in a measure to irradicate the buggy/crashy elements that caused the file corruption in the first place. It was actually sheer good fortune that a friend of the Institute happened to have the latest version of the Hawkinsian editing software program of choice. The newer version seems a little slow at some simple tasks but notably more stable. It also features some exciting new export/format options that will certainly be exploited when the film is ready to be distributed. People will be able to sit and watch My DDR T-Shirt from the comfort of wherever they are with a whole raft of downloadable options compatible with portable and hand held devices such as iPods, Nintendo DS, PocketPCs and a variety of others.

Good and bad news

There is good and bad news to report. After several weeks of fairly intensive editing activity, My DDR T-Shirt reached the heady heights of more than 16 minutes running time. In a project expected to be around 40 minutes, this is a considerable achievement and very pleased we are too. That's the good news.

However...
The other day, after attempting to burn a test DVD, the Hawkinsian System crashed. No big deal - this happens from time to time and we are now accustomed to frequently saving our progress. The big deal is that when re-booting and re-opening the editing project, the file has somehow become corrupt and unopenable. Without wanting to be melodramatic, many hours of intensive activity have been lost.

This a considerable blow to the project and massively disappointing. However, in the grand scheme of things, it isn't the end of the world - or the project. The biggest loss is time and early estimates suggest that it will set the project back 2-4 weeks. That's the bad news.

Testing times

Work is progressing with some positive results. With the new start, the initial edit had been stripped back to just over five minutes. Total time now stands at nearly eleven minutes.

These eleven minutes are just the beginning but they have helped establish a provisional narrative structure - though still subject to change. It is much easier to estimate the overall running time of the project and this is looking like around 40 minutes.

A rough cut of the first 10 minutes was made available to a select few a couple of days ago. Feedback was very positive - including a great response from a German colleague of Ian's. Being able to show just an intro to the project was particularly rewarding.

On a slightly different note, the longest Hawkinsian film to date is 'Our Man in Harrogate' at around 13 minutes. Jumping to about 40 minutes is presenting its own challenges. Editing staff down at the Institute are grateful that the interviews have such engaging content, but innovation is much harder to maintain on a longer project. We aren't looking to cater for short, choppy attention spans with short, choppy editing. My DDR T-Shirt is designed to let people speak and communicate their views and experiences - but does a series of unbroken talking heads make these experiences a little too dull?

It's the current hot potato down at the Institute.