18

My wish here is to be descriptive about my editing process and so open a discussion that may provide an insight into what I will be writing about in my PhD.
To date that is not happening.
It’s soul destroying to have to redo work that’s lost on a computer. This is the third time in a year and hopefully the last.
Though I am inspired to work/edit by the documentary roundtable and have people waiting to help me as soon as I’ve done the work I am paralyzed by my 500G LaCie drive having corrupted itself. La Cie just replaced it, but I have lost all the media, and I now have to reinstall my film. ANU provide mass data storage where I have put all my DV material so luckily I can retrieve it. However the process is not automatic because the files loose their file types when they are stored and when they come back I will have to automate adding .mov to them all.

It is an inforced cleaning out process which makes me re-evaluate where I am at and what I’m doing. As I have just gone up to Tiger OS 10.4.2 I found the backup from Deja Vu no longer worked and I spent 2 days mucking around with other programs to try and find something reasonable and reliable to replace it with.

Having wasted the last two days on sorting out backup (and loosing some stuff with Superduper) my advice is don’t use:
ibackup
backup scripts with automator (part of Tiger)
iMsafe or
Superduper

I have gone back to Deja Vu, using the update for Tiger, which I will have to pay for in a month. It originally came free bundled with Roxio Toast 6 but now requires an update which is not free.

In the meantime I have increased the ability of my workhorse. I upped my G3 laptop to G4 status with a 550 mhz processor, added a 5400rpm 60G drive and put in a dual layer DVD burner. I can now use Final Cut Pro 4 at home. FCP4 has much better sound control. This will see me through to the end of this project.

So what am I doing?
On suspension from my PhD in order to use this unpaid time to finish my film I look forward to the luxury of $350 a week scholarship money to write the PhD when I resume.
I have been looking for work and have found some meagre channels which are hardly sustainable.
My credit card it at it’s $4000 limit so I now spend what little I have keeping that at bay.
Some WW1 research for a history writer came up and I am potentially selling coffee machines in Shopping centres- both at $20 an hour.

Back in Ngarinyin country, another of the main performers, well known for performing the argula mask, died last week. I am quite distressed by the passing away of 5 key people involved in this research project. These people were all a major part of what I am doing, thinking and feeling. The argula mask is all about death and it is really coming home to rest with me in a way I never could have imagined. It is a heavy burden living with the dead; such a major part of this cultural practice.

Lat night I was listening to Howard Morphy on AWAYE Radio National talking with Djon Mundine, Marcia Langton and others. He said that he wasn’t convinced by a remote/urban divide in the same way I have been talking about for the past two years. People who live in their country are not isolated or remote. They are at home.
Now that sounds like Michael Jackson when I think about it.
Is it my idea, is it Howard’s idea, is it an old idea or are we both taking it from someone else?