The Filmmakers' Night Before Deadline

Sometime last Tuesday or Wednesday night, mired deep in the middle of the edit for A True Patriot, poetical lines of frustration began seeping into my mind around my concentration. I took a few minutes off to write them down, and it quickly morphed into the Filmmakers' Night Before Deadline. Thankfully not EVERYTHING in the poem happened to me this time, but a good bit of it did...including multiple power failures due to a bad AC power adapter during the edit and ...

It's rather rough, and some of the lines don't really scan, but this is more-or-less just as I wrote them down. With no further ado...

Twas the night before deadline, and all through the house,
Every timeline was rolling, and I burned out my mouse.
The titles were perfect, animated with care,
But the effects shots were not--in fact far from fair.

I was still up; could not go to bed,
Visions of transparency danced in my head.
When I the spacebar to output did tap,
My camera decided to take a short nap.

Then from my laptop the hard drive did clatter,
After Effects had eaten the RAM and crunched on my platter.
I sprang to my desk and quick as a flash,
Shut down iTunes for the fast final dash.

As soon as free resources had hit a new low,
The circuit overloaded and my power strip did blow!
Thank God for Autosave; my files were fine;
My nerves were not--I 'bout lost my mind.

My rendering sure wasn't moving too quick,
Time, on the other hand, was continuing to tick.
Faster than sound the deadline approached,
But then I remembered how I'd been coached:

"Bake cookies!" I shouted up, "Raisin!"
"Chocolate, Oatmeal," to tempt the mailman!
Let me print up the cover, clean up that shot,
Finish my render, and you'll have the lot!...

Hope this helps relieve some stress for a filmmaker rapidly approaching a deadline!

IHS,

John Calvin Young