Baby Sitting the Render Cows

I've been in work for much of the weekend, but this time of my own volition. Having been mortally offended by my home render-machine's ability to destroy my data and finding the idea of another 4 month wait to render it again I decided to do what any sensible person who works for a visual effects studio would do: ask if I could render it on the company render-farm. This I did and was greeted with rather more enthusiasm than I was expecting. One of the directors of the company said that to be honest he was a little disappointed more people didn't work on their own projects as when he was fresh out of college it was what everyone did. He thought for a moment before adding that since there was a recession on at the time there wasn't any actual work to do so doing your own project made sense since there was sod all else.

I've been here for much of the weekend now and with luck I might actually get the whole thing rendered by tomorrow morning. It's a bit of a bind to render because of the software I've been forced into using it's rather unstable, so I'm mostly sat here baby-sitting the computers to make sure they do the calculations correctly but so far, so good. There's a couple of other work chums in today, one of whom is also working on his short film. About a month ago it was looking like I'd be the first to finish, but since my little disaster he's charged ahead and was able to show me a pretty final version today. It looks amazing too, a very fine piece of work. We're discussing renting one of the local cinemas for half an hour or so to show them off when they're both finally complete.

I'm really looking forward to getting this one done as I want to get cracking with the next project and I don't like having one hanging like a sword of Damocles whilst I tinker with the next. Well fingers crossed, with another night's rendering this one will be in the bag and then all I have to do is dub the music, convert it to the various formats (DVD, HD, iPod etc.) and decide what I want to do with it. I should probably get together a list of all the various short film festivals and the like as it might be fun to enter it into them. In order to do that I need a name for the project though, and as of this moment I've not been able to come up with one I like. Answers on a postcard...