Whew. It's been a hard slog but I'm coming out the other end of the festival-publication-machine and I'm not too battered about. The Auckland programme has been out for a while and the Wellington programme just hit the streets on Friday last week. My copy is already well-worn and has around sixty blue asterisks adorning the pages of the films I want to see. This will need to be whittled down to about forty once I work through the logistical complications of fitting this many films into 17 days and dealing with the inevitable clashes that will occur between two films when they happen to screen at the same time. Decisions, decisions! Scheduling my films is almost as gruelling a process as laying out the programmes.
Dunedin went to print last week, Christchurch went to print today and the next thing is the slick Souvenir Programme and the two Schedule Updates (horrible, horrible things to lay out because they are so fiddly and time-consuming).
What's been so crazy about the last couple of months is that without the Film Festival work I would still have been really busy with other clients. As Dave observed, I've essentially been doing two full time jobs. Lunacy, sheer lunacy. I'm going to have to make some tough decisions. I have been doing the film festival contract now for 8 years and my business is growing, so every year I have more "other" work to fit in around the festival work and it sometimes feels like I'm trapped in a bloody nightmare. I get so stressed I don't sleep properly and I get so used to not seeing people on a social basis that when I finish the contract I feel unable to relax, unable to adjust to normal hours and find it very hard to function at a normal level, including normal conversation. I have nothing to add to conversation except festival and film talk cos that's all I've been living and breathing for the past three months. It's very boring! So, do I throw it in? It's a distinct possibility and it feels pretty liberating just thinking about it.
Okay, it's 1.30am and i've just caught up with my admin. Paid bills, typed up invoices, input account data. I guess it's time for bed. If I could just switch off my brain...
