Done and Dusted

Well it appears that it's over. The last finals from my bit of HPatOotP were approved today and so I am done, finished and off the project bar the debriefing and archiving of assets. I should be leaping about, singing and getting roaring drunk but I'm not. You'd think 18 months of work, the last 8-9 of it very hard work indeed would be worthy of some kind of massive celebration but it was announced by a short e-mail acknowledged by those of us left on the show with a tired nod and left at that. When you start out in visual effects most of us have the idea that everyone works incredibly hard up to a deadline, the project is delivered and on the crest of a wave of achievement you all go to the pub. Except it never seems to happen like that. The project finishes a bit at a time, many people will already be on other shows as keeping a whole crew on stand-by to look after the last few stragglers is unnecessary, so it tends to be the few members of the core team who are left and they tend to be the most tired.

My current emotion is very similar to those war veterans who have a melancholic depression following their discharge as though they don't quite remember what they used to do before they went off to fight. This film has been so consuming of my time and energy for such a long period of time that having my life back is a very strange feeling. There are so many friends I haven't seen for weeks or months, so many activities I've missed out on that I should be delirious, but much in the manner of the mole poking his nose out of his burrow, still woozy from a long hibernation, it's going to take a little while to get my bearings and put my feet back on the ground.

Looking back I'm sad that the work doesn't look better than it does. There are a host of reasons for that which it would be impolitic to discuss here but, suffice to say, without much work and many late nights it would have been a great deal worse. No-one's going to get sued but I don't think it'll win many awards either. I suppose that's another reason for the malaise, given what we put in I wish we'd got more out. Ho hum, at least it seems it's done at last. And with that I'm off to bed.