Post-practica - the lonely celebration

So Match, Set, Game - the cleverly titled final practica that had been painstakingly assembled over the course of a semester (or in reality, three weeks) by David and myself, has completed its season.

I say season in the broadest possible sense, seeing how in reality it was only two shows, but I enjoy using the term season. After all, if Bonnie Tyler can only put on two shows, then so can we, dammit! (And the fact that I know the amount of shows Bonnie Tyler is putting on suggests that I hang around Crown far too often)

So what can I say? In two shows, we've come a long way, baby.
The first show, on Tuesday the 28th of October, was a learning experience to be sure. Let me give you the play by play; the theme is a rather ecclectic mix of performances, akin to the programs flicking past the eyes of an overzealous channel-surfer. To open, David and I boogied to the Proclaimers' I'm Gonna Be like hoons (more commonly referred to as 500 Miles by the uninformed), and already there were issues - we had organised dance moves, but there was a part where we were meant to basically just go nuts - I wasn't sure exactly how nuts I should be going. Should I be a conservative acorn? Or should I be letting it out in the full-blown ludicrousy of a water chestnut?
Tragically, I was acorning while David was chestnutting all over the place, so it looked rather disjointed. At this point, I, and no doubt Dave, were realising the value of doing at least one run through rather than simply leaping into it with both feet.

From there, things took a turn for the worst. The original intention, and the way things worked today, was that we had two television sets that would show two videos that were timed to run nearly exactly together. In one video, David was playing the lead role and in the other, I was the lead. Unfortunately, we learnt far too late that iMovie is one of the most infuriatingly incapable editing programs we have ever had the misfortune of dealing with, and its ridiculous 'non-destructive editing' had us going right up the wall. For those of you uninformed, non-destructive editing means that, even if you've deleted part of a clip, the computer will retain the data for the original information, in addition to whatever you've done to change it. Sounds all well and dandy, but if you've got a lot of scrap film to do away with, a 22-minute film can devour away 20 GBs of hard-drive space. Frustrating if you want to keep it, downright unserviceable when you're doing your work on a laptop with limited space. It came to the point where transferring six seconds of footage over to another file took five minutes apiece, and there wasn't even enough KB left on the poor laptop to even open the damned program.

Here's a pro-tip for you idiots at Apple - when we've deleted something on a program, we're given enough friggin' options to recover it as it is. We have our own moment of judgement, a fancy little undo feature and then, finally, the option of simply not saving the changes we've made if we discover we've deleted too much. And, if we're really uncertain of the changes we're to make, we have the option of saving the original footage in its own separate file, completely safe from our edit-happy clicking fingers.
So to be completely clear, if we delete something, the most likely reason we've done that is because we'd like to, oh I don't know... DELETE IT.

While scouring the Internet for a way to turn off this moronic, space-eating feature, I found people scratching their heads just like me about its very existence. Mac enthusiasts have this to say -
...you can't turn that off, that's how iMovie '06 works.

...Funny, because it appears to me that because of this feature, iMovie in fact does not work.

Anyhow, it came to the point where the laptop was so bogged down with un-edited and edited footage that it couldn't even muster up the strength to burn the project. So instead of having two televisions playing two similar videos, we were going to play one video after the other from the camera through the television. A tragic sacrifice in any event, but one we were prepared to make.

So unfortunate then, when the projects hadn't been able to save properly in their editing that halfway through David's version, the film actually stopped, and then started with my version. ...And then started over again.

I wouldn't say it was all downhill from there, as that was just about rock bottom, but it certainly didn't get any better - we had had the wind knocked out of our sails, and though the next couple segments where I listed all of the stupidest things I've done in life followed by a brief rap session from sock puppets (you'd have to be there) were received fairly well, nothing really got the audience rocking as we'd hoped.

Next, we headed up to the balcony to insult the practica itself in the same vein as the Muppets' Statler and Waldorf. A nice idea... except when we got up there, we realised we had no insults prepared. Crap.
After reeling off some of the lamest and lowbrow quips we could muster, our beloved stagehand Sean was to start up a video on the television down below.

Of course, this was going to be running off the camera. ...The camera which Sean had never operated before. Although the simultaneous videos fiasco was the worst part of the performance, there was nothing quite as nerve-racking as those painful moments when everyone in the room realised that nobody had told Sean how to start the camera up.
I didn't know what to expect. Would I have to go down there and do it myself? Was someone in the audience just going to say 'Enough of this rubbish!', illuminating the whole space and smashing our practica to bits, or were David and I just going to take the easy way out and simply leap over the balcony to our doom?

After about fifteen seconds, the film started up. I love you Sean.

In this video, filmed entirely in black and white and with a backing track of Enya's Smaointe, David and I were doing some of that contemptible interpretive dance. Meanwhile, the live David and I were bagging the video to high hell before the on-screen David grew sick of it and told the two of us to shut the hell up, or else he'd kick both our asses. It worked ok, but as our helpful tweaker Chris noted, the on-screen David was actually looking in a different direction from where we were. Whoops.

After this, David and I donned rather smart-looking suits and sang Ol' Man River in tones that, while certainly no great shakes on the great Paul Robeson, sounded pretty good. After the second verse, we completely changed gear, screeching out the notes at a high pitch with the enthusiasm of gospel singers.

The audience was... not amused. You mightn't be surprised to know this part was scrapped for the second performance. Bonus points to me though for including a Damien Cross photo.

Next, and by this point I felt so disparaged that I really didn't care any more, we put on clown makeup, and then started up an instructional video that both of us were rather proud of upon filming.
As German... scientists, for lack of a better title, David and I discussed men, women and relationships. It was really one of those things that, if you were in it, you watch it time and time again and it never gets old. For the audience however, it got old long before the end of its ten minute running time. Hans and Klaus certainly didn't win the people over that night.

Finally, the train wreck concluded with our grand musical number, I'm the One, a song I wrote to the tune of John Tesh's Spanish Steps. David and I hadn't worked on this for some time, and when we did it was mostly without the music to refer to, so it was only fitting when David was singing at a quicker pace than the music behind him, and then I followed that up by flat out just forgetting the lyrics that I myself had penned.

Finally, and in the only part that got any kind of real reaction, Sean came out in a dress and we fought over his/her/its affection. After this, David and I both sat in the wings on opposite sides of the space. We stayed there for several minutes, and though I couldn't see Davey or know for sure what he was thinking, no doubt he was in the same state that I was. Disgusted in myself, completely mortified that I had been part of such a disaster, and just wishing that the empty-feeling applause would go away. I can't remember the last time I've felt quite so low. I can't remember the last time I half-assed something and didn't get away with it. Plus, I burnt my damn finger playing with one of the lights. Those things get friggin' hot.

It was a failure of Michael Gow proportions; it was like somebody had taken the reprehensible Away, thrown in a couple televisions and disguised it as a university project. I had to make sure I wouldn't suffer the same feeling again, so I started the kind of damage control that's usually reserved for the aftermath of Joe Biden speeches.
I told Jess not to come. I told dad not to come. I told you not to come.

And judging by the sparse number of audience members on the second performance today, odds are you didn't come. Thanks.

Today, however, I learnt a valuable lesson. A lesson that I hadn't anticipated learning, and one that is still eating away at me at this moment. Because something unexpected happened today; everything that didn't work in the first performance worked this time. We both went bonkers in the opening, thanks to the tireless efforts of Sara the simultaneous films played alongside one another, the Statler/Waldorf lines were clever and we were positioned right for the threat to actually mean something, people actually laughed at the instructional video and I'm the One (though without John Tesh playing in the background) went without mistake. ...Plus, I didn't burn my finger this time. Bonza.

It was a mixed feeling for me, though. On the one hand, yes we had succeeded and pulled off a pretty good performance. On the other hand, because I had been so paranoid and faithless, Jess wasn't there to see it.
I will probably never see her steal the stage as Audrey in Viewbank's '04 production of Little Shop of Horrors. And similarly, she will never see me be decidedly adequate in Match, Set, Game.

It makes me begin to ponder what's wrong with me, you know? I can't even face my one and only, my teammate, my comrade, my confidant and my partner in more crimes than we'd be willing to confess, in the one time when I expected to be at a low? Wouldn't that be the time you'd most want her out there, being a great audience member, offering her advice after the performance and helping me ease the pain with generous amounts of liquor afterwards?

Nope, instead, after a surprisingly good performance, I had nothing. No Jess, no liquor, no hurrah from that young lass who brightens my day. Of course, I only have myself to blame for that one. I've really got to ship up on this trust thing, methinks, and just allow Jess to be there for me to do just what I know she will; be supportive and wonderful.

Until I can get that through my skull, those liquor-filled nights are going to be a damn side more pathetic-looking.