Distilling the Journey

Reviewed the Ken cut with P.J. today. I'm happy with it, but enough of Ken. We need to move on. P.J. spent the day working on Mark, and I spent the day reviewing Cloudy's transcripts (all 60 pages of them...I didn't realize there was so much). I was looking for quotes, for that is the stage at which we are at the moment. I'm looking for cowboy poetry to put over sequences. I'm still trying to figure out where to fit Cloudy in. But I keep reminding myself that it's the journey I want the audience to feel. The film is a distillation of the journey. I know it's a lot to ask for, but can the film take them to Tokyo? In that dark cinema, will they hear it, feel it, smell it?

Drama

I watched the whole Ken cut today. It's very minimal, and it gives us our narrative, however loose. I was reminded of Hitchcock's quote: "Drama is like life with the boreing bits left out." This is still not the first cut. Ken provides the narrative, now we have to add the collage. That's where the other guys fit in.

Justice

Apple is going to reimburse us for the upgrade of FCP, which is great. So, now we wait. But, as we do, PJ can still be cutting on the old machine.

Apple's Response

I fell like I'm getting further away from the project. It's not all about editing. It's about fixing crashed harddrives and upgrading software. I remember editing at LFS. We did everything on film, and I'm beginning to long for those days.

Called Apple. They were all very nice, and I managed to convince someone to help me...plead my case to the powers that be who can give me a free upgrade. I'm supposed to hear back from them on Monday. Until then, I have to re-connect Bambi so that Patrick can get on with the editing.

The Long Goodbye

Spent the entire day setting up Hot Rod. Re positioned the hard drives, moved Bambi into the kitchen and started to set up the Internet. After several calls to both Tiscali and Apple support, I found out that our free modem from Tiscali is not supported by this Hot Rod. Soooo, had to run over to Maplin on the Strand and fork out £50 on an Ethernet modem. I was thankful, though. Maplin is a 5 minute walk from my flat*.

Anyway, got the modem set up, downloaded all of the updates and got myself ready to install Final Cut Pro 4.0. It didn't work. Hot Rod does not support 4.0 I was told by the tech dude at Apple. I was very upset because my sales agent had promised me that the computer would indeed support my version of Final Cut Pro when I purchased this £1700 hot rockin' computer. By this time, however, all of the sales agents had gone home, so three was no one to complain to.

I'm calling Apple tomorrow to throw myself upon the mercy of anyone who will listen to my woeful story.

*I was reminded of buying my first computer in Buzen, Japan in 1993. We had to get the computer on an American base. Got home, set everything up only to discover that the printer cable was not included. We had to travel 20 minutes to the next town to order one.

Hot Rocking Rod

My Little Office in the Kitchen
The new computer arrived today...a MacPro Xeon with two, count 'em, two Intel dual processors. We've decided to christen the new Machine "Hot Rod." He's come to us just at the right time, as Bambi (a first generation single processor G4) is really straining under the pressure of all of the hard drives. Sometimes we have to restart her two and three times to get her going.

Bambi is not obsolete, however. She will move to my little office in the kitchen, and Hot Rod will take over in our bedroom/editing suite.

Dreaming with Ken

Spent the day looking for Ken voice over to fit over the New Years sequence. I watched the cut up to this sequence, which ends at 38 minutes, and I was really pleased with it. Ken is just so funny and human, and I think his character will form a bond with both an English-speaking audience and the Japanese. I allowed myself a daydream of grandeur. Maybe Tokyo Cowboys will give Ken what he dreamed of. Maybe it will make him recognizable to 50% of the Japanese viewing audience. Then I came back to Earth. It's good to dream. Ken reminds me of that.

PJ and I are doing the old one-two punch technique of editing. When I feel like I'm not doing enough on Tokyo Cowboys, I have to remember that he's cutting. And, when he's not cutting, I'm looking at the footage, thinking and figuring out where to go to next. I think we are well on the way of having the first cut by mid February.

Diary for Today