Putting film before friend

Location Royal Free Hospital waiting room | Mood Guilty | Date 3 November 2005
Filed in:
Author (full name): 
Franny Armstrong
Location: 
Royal Free Hospital waiting room
Mood: 
Guilty
Soundtrack: 
Ward phones ringing and ringing
Ailments: 
Hunger
Date: 
3 November 2005
Current crisis: 
International film network in tatters
Current silver lining: 
Um?
Next job: 
Windfarms

Everything's gone pear-shaped. The surgeon sprang a last-minute major decision on Best Pal just before she had to go in for the operation. Exactly the reason she'd wanted me to always be there - to help disentangle the jargon. But I wasn't, and now she thinks she made the wrong decision and isn't blaming me as such, but did say, "I've never needed anyone as much as I needed you then, and you weren't there". So now I'm feeling guilt-stricken that I put my film before my friend.

Next great news of the day is that the Indian film crew I employed somehow managed to change the settings on the camera I'd hired for them FROM the correct ones TO the lower quality ones. Which means all 8 hours of stuff they've shot is completely unusable. And just to be even more annoying, they've got loads of really good bits, which I'm sure we would have used, but can't. Fuck.

And the Beijing crew's tape arrived, but was completely blank. FedEx thinks it was probably wiped by security leaving China. Unfortunately there is no way for a tape to leave China (by courier) without being wiped. You'd think that FedEx would mention this important fact. Luckily the Beijing cameraman had made a backup, but until someone goes to China, we won't be able to see whether they filmed on the wrong format too.