OCCUPIED COUNTRY

Making Movies

I'm trying to understand video editing software.  The simplest one I've come across is the bundled Windows Movie Maker (or whatever it's called).  It seems logical and is all I really need to make some coherent little films of my family - Littlest in particular.  What it won't do though - and I know this from a) bitter experience and b) a trawl through the forums on t'Internet is save any videos if there are quite a few captions on it.  It simply crashes.  Thanks Bill.  Now, I like to *ahem* enhance my meagre offerings with pithy comments and, on occasion, a cheerful aside to add a bit of interest to the generally bland 'home movie' style of my errrrmmmm....home movies and I have spent quite a long time editing so the comments and captions appear at the right moments.  It's only when you come to save your epic though that you find out the software can't handle simple things like exporting the project.


So this Bank holiday weekend I decided to see if I could acquire a reasonable priced package that would allow me to edit and caption my movies.  After mooching around I found myself in PC World (I know.....) where I came across Adobe Premiere Elements 8 for £29.  That'll do I thought and was soon on my way back home with my 'complete solution for my videos' under my arm..


Later as I opened the box I was surprised to find a basic instruction manual, a leaflet with an advert for Adobe Photoshop whatever on it and bog all else.  I looked around in case the software had silently fallen out of the box but it hadn't.  I scrutinised the small print on the box:  'Contents - Adobe Premiere Elements 8 Software'.  I scrutinised the inside of the box:  nothing.


So eventually I get back in the car, drive all the way back to the soulless retail park with more car parking than retail outlets and queue for feckin' ages at the 'Returns and Customer Enquiries' counter.  As you can imagine - this being PC World - the queue was massive and, incidentally, nobody was singing Que Sera.  Eventually I fetched up in front of Gavin, my very own customer care champion and explained the position.  To give him his due he was very polite and didn't try to infer that I had stolen the software and was trying to blag another copy.  No, he apologised profusely and went to get a replacement box which on opening was also devoid of software.  He tried another - a pattern was emerging.  Gavin would need to see his line manager who just happened to be passing.  "We've got a problem here Jason, there's no software in this shipment of Adobe Premiere."


Jason was at first quizzical but then assured.  He picked up the phone to the warehouse and a minute or so later the problem had been solved.  All the software was taken out of the boxes and stored in the warehouse in case of thieves and ne'er-do-wells.  A minion was despatched forthwith to bring my copy.  Gavin was relieved and, when Jason was out of earshot confided to Janice that he didn't know software was taken out of the boxes on account of  pricks.  I was more than surprised to hear that Janice didn't either.  Nor Ian, Chris, Mike or Kieron. 


Surely I wasn't the only person who had been allowed to leave the bloody shop without my copy of the software?  Was I?


Anyway I spent the evening messing about with the program.  It's not simple at all.  In fact parts defy my particular logic but that probably says more about me than the programmers.  In the end I married some footage of poppies and other flowers taken in Kephalonia with an instrumental I wrote and recorded back in the early 90s.  The music was an attempt to reflect the summer of 1914.  I envisaged long focus shots of young Edwardian men and women perambulating in a local park dressed in their Sunday best.  The air heavy with seed as the late afternoon sun haloed their backlit heads and all was well with the world.  It ends on a discordant echoed chord to signify the end of innocence.  It seemed apt.

In other news my mother has broken her wrist after going to catch a bus somewhere (or so she seems to think).  Coherence really isn't her strong point at the moment.  Will this be me in twenty or so years?  I bloody well hope not.  If only I could drink less, eat more healthily and exercise more I could have another thirty or so years in me.  Mind you it would probably feel like forty.

I've bought her a wheelchair as she has periods when she really isn't good on her legs and, with the help of Social Services we're getting along OK.

I watched that John Simm/Jim Broadbent drama the other week.  Broadbent playing a character with Alzheimer's to perfection.  There was one scene where John Simm (playing Broadbent's son) reminds him his wife is dead.  Broadbent can't believe it and howls his anguish as though learning for the first time that Edith was gone.  It was beautifully played.

About thirty minutes later my mobile went.  It was my Mother.

"Can you phone your Dad and let him know I'm staying here tonight.  I've tried him on the landline but I can't get through?"

Now in the past when she's forgotten my Dad's dead I've gently reminded her but on this occasion, after the drama I decided to go along with it.  I told her not to worry I'd see to it that he got the message and that she should get some sleep.  I figured she would have forgotten in the morning.  And she had.  

And finally some silverware has arrived to stand proudly in the dusty trophy cabinet at Eastlands.  About bloody time too.  Dearest and I had a great evening out watching the team parade the FA Cup through the centre of Manchester.  The torrential rain that had been pouring all day like some natural metaphor for our years of gloom suddenly stopped and the sun shone.  Yay!

Blue

Contre Jour

Tony Auton Rocks Out

Victor Brox sings the Blues

Little Monster

Palma Nova

Underground