Video Job
In a burst of energy yesterday I finished my job for NTID* — 6 6-minute DVDs — and Jim spirited them off to the post office.
For the fifth year in a row I've prepared a video catalog of courses for the Performing Arts Department, to attract Deaf students to their theater courses. There are 6 variations: Fall, Winter, Spring, one for the regular registration period and one to pull students in during the add/drop period. The DVDs are played in kiosks and on closed-circuit television, so they need to be eye-catching.
I did all the hardest work back in 2003, when my customer Alan gave me exacting specifications for what he wanted. He had a tape of all their classes, but I needed to get it on my computer in usable clips.
The job used to be harder because the final product was a bunch of 30-minute video tapes on which I had to copy the 6-minute videos 5 times.
Now I just have to do a DVD, set to loop.
It's an easy job, but painstaking. There are about 15 little clips (x 6) that have to be re-processed and lined up correctly, processed again, then turned into DVDs. Check, double-check, triple-check. I can't listen to the radio or TV because if I lose my concentration, I'll screw something up. A technologist's job, not an artist's job.
I can't complain. Alan and I have gotten our collaboration down to a science. We didn't even meet this year. He e-mailed me the info. I mailed him his product. He mails me a paycheck. As someone who teaches theater technology in a performing arts department, he loves it that I'm not a drama queen.
*National Technical Institute for the Deaf
2.14.07