The Plane Has Crashed Into the Mountain

Let me take you on a thought journey for a moment.

A few months ago, you directed your first feature-length film. Since then, you have been spending 2-10 hours every day editing that raw footage into a semi-polished gem. On the evening of Monday July 25th, you finished the film! One hour, 15 minutes long. You export it in preparation for the following day's meeting with the Sound Editor and Soundtrack Composer. You go to bed happy, because YOU JUST MADE A FREAKING MOVIE.

Tuesday morning, July 26th. You wake up to see a somber face hesitantly informing you that last night, your laptop was dropped by a friend and the hard drive is seriously damaged. You, in your infinite wisdom, did not have a backup copy of the film.* The film is, in all likelihood, destroyed. You have the tapes full of raw footage still, so refilming shouldn't be necessary, but the 350-400 hours put into editing and polishing your baby are gone, flung into the void.

Oh, also, you're moving to Chicago on Monday.

That's been my week.

But! No time for self-pity. I've already taken stock of what survived the fall and what did not (survived: 2/3rds of raw video files, most of the still photos and sound files. perished: 1/3 of raw video and, most crucially, the Final Cut file itself, where all of the editing work was stored)... with a little bit of help and a lot of determination, I shall make it again.

It's kinda like this. (Emphasis on :30 and :43.)

*I really feel the need to explain myself here, because I KNOW it's incredibly unwise not to have everything backed up, let alone something of this importance. But HD film is so enormous that the movie didn't fit on my external hard drive, and I'm Totally Poor so I couldn't afford to buy a new hard drive just yet. Hence, my laptop was the only place the film existed. Past tense. Sigh.