The Mad Hatter's Video Production House

It's been bedlam at work all this week. I have three sets of projects in various stages of completion fighting for memory on my hard drive, and every time I think I can finally delete one, the projects are re-prioritised, urgent new deadlines are issued, and the projects get shuffled around and around and around.

Then it turns out I can't output any of the completed projects anyway because one of the DV machine's been in the shop for the past month, the other one works fine unless you want to use the firewire port which doesn't work, two of the 3-chip Sonys are also in the shop, and the third doesn't have a working firewire port either. Okay, so I'll just have to use one of the Panasonics instead. Whoops. They use a single RCA jack instead of the standard 3-headed ones, and there don't appear to be any.

I couldn't even snaffle any of the brand spanking new hi-def cams because they were *all* out on a shoot, even the one with the non-working firewire port. Yes, even among the new hi-def cams one will not speak to the computers.

"Yes, this is not funny anymore," says the Mad Hungarian. "You know you can use the S-video port to output? Nobody uses them at all."

"Because we don't have any S-video cables," I point out.

"Ah," says the Mad Hungarian sagely. "Why don't we have any S-video cables?"

I don't know, it's your production house. Why does it seem like we're always having to scrounge for equipment?

And that's just this end of the production line. At the other end, there's Access 31. Who have once again screwed up the Gallery Watch schedule. One of the inconvenienced galleries called them up *five* times before they got an apology. And then they screened a Treasure Hunt episode last week that wasn't due to be broadcast until October. It was Part One of a two-parter, and they had the cheek to call us and complain that we hadn't delivered Part Two and so they'll be forced to repeat Part One. And we can't find out why this has happened at all because the Programming Manager is never there.

But the upshot is I need to output Part Two and a Gallery Watch ep NOW. Now now now now now. And I have to man the phones downstairs at the same time. I think I managed to answer one out five calls.

I'm a masochist - a stress fetishist or something. There's no other sensible explanation for why I put up with this chaos week after week.