Huge Relief

Things have been stressful lately.

A few weeks ago I volunteered to create an orientation video for a new-employee retreat. I have some screenwriting experience and by necessity had produced a couple of "funny" videos for work events over the last few years. It's always enjoyable and beats regular work. So when I was asked to repeat the performance, I of course accepted.

As of Sunday night, that seemed like a big mistake.

To do this right, I bought a new camcorder (which I was planning on anyway) and new video editing software, Adobe Premiere Elements 8. I ended up getting a new video card and various other accessories.

The shoot itself has gone well. I've filmed people and places around work and gotten a lot of good footage. The narration, which I've never done before, was successfully recorded and everything looked on track. Then came the reality of our computer, our ancient computer.

The software was slow to load and easy to crash. I put together the first minute of the video and hit a wall. The software became so sluggish that over last weekend I made no progress. The Task Manager showed that I was running the CPU constantly at 100%. And my deadline is this coming Monday.

At work yesterday I was resigned to failure. I just couldn't figure out how to make the project work. By coincidence, while filming on Friday I had discovered that someone in another Bureau used the same software to produce work videos. I remembered this on Monday and realized I had one chance; to get myself a much faster work computer on which I could install my software.

After some pushing, a new machine was brought into my office today, I successfully installed the software and I'm back in business. I can't do the work at home now and I may have to go into the office this weekend, but the project will get done. Hopefully.

It is a huge relief. A huge, unbelievable relief.