Well, I survived another Halloween. I stayed up and skipped work for the last 3 days to finish the two new songs and Mac Adobe Premiere switchover. I am now very tired!
This was the tightest year yet.. I finally finished arranging and recording my new songs about 4pm on Thursday. Then I spent from 7 till 11 in that horrible makeup with my teeth itching something fierce! I figured it was time for the all nighter, so I worked until 5 in the morning laying out the rest of the new song effects (including the all important faces). It looked ok, I hadn't tested it or anything, but I was exhausted after a week of 3am nights.
I crashed while it rendered. My wife is great, and my kids had school off, I got up at about 9 helped my wife for a minute. She took them away to the children's museum so I could work and they could enjoy the Halloween activities there. I had messaged my boss to tell him I was still going to try to work a half day, but after crashing until 11 when the render was to complete, and finding that I had too many problems to try to use the render. I worked feverishly to fix the bugs and get the render started. During this time my boss said I shouldn't try to come in. Thanks Mike! I was still adding effects to the movie at 1pm on Halloween. Then I had a 6 hour render ahead of me (I was hoping it would be a bit faster).
Premiere kept crashing the whole time because my movie is getting too hard for it I guess. However it was rock solid in the renders (thank goodness!) In the old days of Premiere 2.0 all the way to 7.0 they had problems where I would get half way through the render and then have a crash. Or worse there was one bug where the whole render would complete, but it would not finish "blessing" the movie file to make it work! I am very happy now but I need to start doing some simplification of the movie (pre-render more parts) to bring it back to safety.
I spent the afternoon doing the rest of the physical setup that I hadn't done last week, and at 6:45 I carried out two laptops which were copying the movie between each other over to my projector. By 7 we were on our way!
The two new songs were a hit. Everyone especially loves the Kiss face makeup for the Pumpkin Rot song. I am so glad they are fairly recognizable. Everyone came by. Old friends and many family members. Gordon had his awesome new costume for the year, as well as Madeline and Josh. I was so nice to see everyone, and have a chance to watch the show together. What a fun time, pigging out on candy and talking. All in all we probably had about 5-6 hundred visitors that got treats. Then by about 10:30 everyone had left. I spent about another hour and a half taking pictures etc. Then cleanup, and bed by 3 again.
Anyway, that was the crazy day, and the end of the crazy week at the Bates Haunt.
Halloween is a great holiday. I realized the other day that Halloween is a holiday that is more about neighbors than it is about family... An unusual thing, and very nice. I think we should make it a paid holiday since I know I will never work on it at my day job.
Thanks to everyone that supports me this time of year, and gives me nice compliments.! I'm so glad we can give everyone a good time, and give me an outlet for my creative juices.
