Smoke is coming out of my ears.   I think I blew a fuse at some point.  My eye whites are red and I haven't slept in days, unless you count two hour a night sleeping.  Why all the trauma and drama?  The editing, the trauma, the drama.  But my little remake of "Shutter Island" that I wrote, acted in, and directed and shot on a runabout - is done.    I have mastered the maze-like basics of Final Cut Pro.  And come out with something that looks semi watchable.

I even learned how to write music and score a movie music theme with my Garage Band software.  Amazing!  I wrote that music!  It even runs a little green ribbon  at the top of the screen that shows your music bouncing along as it plays back.   Somehow that makes the music more real, something concrete I created.  I'm  a music composer!   Most of it was finger thumping on a piano (well, my keyboard acting as a piano), which is a little like finger painting in kindergarten.  And you always thought what you did was such a great work of art you had to take it home and make mom put it on the refrigerator door.  It feels a little like that.  Nonetheless, it's a musical score.

Time flies at 3am.  Figuring out how to change that one little piece of audio or music, so it goes with the video, figuring out how to create a seamless acting flow with the different energies of different actors in different takes takes hours and hours.  There's one piece of video I keep changing, then changing back.  Then I change it again, on and on.  And it's still not right.  And why does that sound effect keep beeping, telling me I haven't rendered it when I have?   Rendering - that's a new word.  I have no idea what it means in editing terms - only that I have to do it.  It's not the same kind of rendering as in the dictionary.  Not really.   But I don't know.  I just click on the button that says to do it.  Suddenly those two minutes you thought it  had taken have turned into 5am.  What???  The birds are chirping in the trees outside already.  Where does all the time go deep in the middle of the night?

And just when I finish my masterpiece, I get ready to export.  And I can't.  Why is the save box grayed out?  WHY???  I'm so loopy, I start to cry in frustration.  My  exhaustively edited project is trapped inside Final Cut Pro.  I've called on everyone I know who knows anything about Final Cut Pro and get every answer under the sun, but none is the right one.  I have spent hours getting friends to teach me this editing, spreading out the burden of having to teach me Final Cut, so no one person gets too sick of me.  And now I'm stuck.  And I keep whining that it's not working.  I can't get my mini-movie out of  Final Cut.  I think I'm wearing out everyone's generosity, crying and whining.  But I'm so close.  Why won't it export?

I think I'm delusional.  My head is spinning.  I try to figure it out by myself.  Another late night turned to early morning.  I have to be up in two hours.  And because I have to be up in two hours, I can't sleep.  I might not wake up.

Finally, a co-worker figures out how to get around the gray box thing.  I'm not sure what he did, and I'm too excited to care.  He just gets around it.  He says some setting is off.  He doesn't know which one.  But I don't care.  My masterpiece is ready to show on YouTube.  

"Wait a minute."  He does a double take on some of my video.  "You didn't even do a fade-in?"  

"I haven't learned how to do that yet," I mumble.   

"And the video could use some color correction."  I don't have the heart to tell him I did do color correction.     

"There's  glitches, you know."  Big deal.   I'm just happy I got it done.

And now I've got to get some sleep.

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