Alternate universe

it's funny. one of the reasons i was ecstatic to be assigned an episodic plug was because i thought it would be easy, and exactly like what i used to do for gma. in fact, those words have popped out of my mouth almost every time i talk about it to someone. but after day one on my first freelance promo project ever, i feel like i'm in an alternate universe.

and it's not bad at all. as i told marlon before he flew off to bangkok this evening, i wouldn't say it was easy, but i wouldn't say it was hard, either. the best thing about it, i think, is that i'm learning. and i know that short of a major fuckup, in at least ten days' time, i will have a piece of my work airing on international cable tv.

i showed up bright and early at the bda office (okay, 10am is not early by the standards of the working world), ready to view my episode of the show. already the jargon is different -- i "log" rather than timecode tapes, make a "log sheet" versus a shotlist, "cut" not script an episode, and produce a "promo" rather than a plug.

instead of a cushy little preview bay, i sat at a high stool in a room full of machines, kind of like the ingest room at post production. one thing carried over from my gma universe though -- the room for previewing tapes was ice cold!

and once i was in there, after a few minutes of help from lay tuan and a guy named raj, i was on my own. no george to teach me about the script format or make me watch showreels, or ayee to ask "sino si hagorn?" and cheer me on my first script, or bj to introduce me around the floor, or marian to squeal for voiceover scripts in the minutes leading up to 7pm, or dino to approve my script.

sorry for the digression. but god, i really miss my team right now.

anyway.

i took a loooong time (by my standards at least) to view the tape -- two hours. i felt rather self-conscious about the time i spent viewing, but i'd like to think the people at bda have better things to do than clock the freelancer. it was kind of like my very first day at gma, when i intently watched an entire half-hour episode of encantadia before going through it a second time to take down my shots. because, apart from the jog-shuttle mechanism on this particular betacam being a little hard to manipulate, my gulay, the material is awesome. complete, beautifully shot, and smart.

this is where i spin off into the aforementioned alternative universe. writing the script back in my cozy, cushy bedroom, i entered a new realm where lightning speed or ingenuously making do suddenly didn't matter so much anymore. with so much well-shot, well-written material on my hands, it began to occur to me that the challenge was not to be glib or slick, but to really figure out what the piece (the piece! i'm already talking about a television program like it's a piece of art!) intended to say, and say it in 30 seconds.

not to shock and awe, but to pare it down to one issue, and keep it simple.

to find the bottom line quickly, and to communicate it elegantly.

which i think i did, but i wouldn't be surprised if i didn't. i find myself excited to wake up tomorrow to find feedback of any sort in my inbox -- and not because i think i'll get rave reviews (although they would certainly be nice).

maybe because i want to know how close, or far, i've come to hitting the mark. because i want to find out my place in this universe, which is both strange and familiar. but most of all, because i want to learn.