Perhaps I am asking too much for perfection in an experience that clearly is not in my hands. Requesting exactly what we want in life when so many factors may mitigate the actual performance is probably unattainable for me in this endeavor. I have spoken very often about that concept on this blog, but being sort of a perfectionist or at least someone who wants to be as good as I am capable of being, I have come to expect difficulty. Last evening exemplified that. I arrived at the studio a bit later than usual because I am just so busy doing many other things.
It all began with the studio tech calling and leaving a message that the studio will be closed starting Monday so that he could move everything back to the new one in the refurbished community center. I was happy about that for several reasons. First, I need a break so that I could develop some new shows. Second, it would be nice to have a bathroom handy. It is just too stressful to not have one available for the one hour broadcast plus the extra time before and after. Third, perhaps more room would benefit my engineer who is clearly cramped most of the time. In fact we are both continually tripping over wires, equipment, and each other. Fourth, the actual workings of the console and cameras might also be better. Ellen corrected me when I told her that Richard had called me indicating that the closing would be next week not this. I told her for me this will be the last show for a while; she indicated probably December, but I will not use that as my target.
With only about 10 minutes to air time, Ellen gave me the video for show # 116 that she had edited, and then I sat at the table getting organized. With about five minutes to go, she lost the color on the tri-caster called Richard who told her what to do to fix the problem and off we went through the broadcast. From that point on things were very smooth. After all that is the only time I am actually in almost total control, and I was ready having already performed that show several weeks ago. As we concluded the show and the "outro" was being played, she inexplicably closed down the video with the song and the visual images not quite finished. She suggested that I give her the dvd and she would edited the full "outro" back into the video, but I declined and told her that I would edit that part of the show myself when I uploaded to Youtube so that the new ending would stop after the first song instead of both songs as we are used to doing.
On the way home I stopped off at an event at the Woodstock Artist Association for about an hour and then hurried home for dinner, to get ready for the start of the Division Series between the Mets and the Dodgers, and the hopefully spend time with the two videos. The first video of show 116 was perfectly edited by Ellen and I uploaded to Youtube, but there was a problem. I am used to choosing the lead photo that people see when they look at the video on my Youtube Channel, but that was not going smoothly. Otherwise Youtube chooses the image themselves randomly which is rarely suitable. I couldn't be bothered at that time, so I went ahead to the video for 117. The first thing I realized was that the intro sounded a bit strange, and even worse when I began speaking there was an echo. The echo only lasted slightly less than 60 seconds, so I uploaded anyway to Youtube. So....if you hear the sound as a bit strange, be patient because the sound improves very quickly thereafter.
In the morning I told Laura my dilemma with the lead photo on the channel for the two shows and she showed me another way to compress the photo on my computer than I had been using. That was the problem and now I have it exactly how I want it, EXCEPT those first 45 or so seconds when my voice has an echo.
So now I take a well earned hiatus, step back from the show for a couple of months. I will try to get some of my enthusiasm back that I had during the first three years. Honestly, I am getting a bit tired of the whole thing especially when I have all this extraneous stuff with which to contend. If I am successful I will finish the show # 118 on Fioralle, a stunning small town near Badia a Pasignano, and then I have about 10 more ideas including some on the air interviews. If I am able to get the enthusiasm back to continue, my biggest issue will be that we are not going to Italy next year!!! There are several reasons for this, but I will not get into them here. I anticipate, if possible, to return to Italy during April of 2017, although the details are far from being worked out. So if I must sustain the show, I will have difficulty finding suitable material for future broadcasts, but as I told Laura, "I have about 25,000 photos from trips going back years. I should be able to come up with something!!!" Stay tuned.
