Deck Crisis 2008 Part III

Looks like my deck will be repaired after all. Hopefully. RadioShack Mike called the RS repair center and they said they work on my model of DV deck. Said he can't guarantee they'll fix it once the get it in but said they usually do if they accept the initial inquiry. It just seems to be a power supply issue, not a tape drive issue, so I don't think it's a problem super-specific to my years-old deck.

Good thing it could work out. I called up a local film equipment place, and they rent out decks for $125 a day or $375 per week. Hella expensive considering I bought mine for the price of four days' rental. I might ask if they do dubs, since my deck can't slave timecode and I'm not 100% comfortable capturing my masters. I'm not one to fall into that sort of fringe paranoia (like backing up the back-up of the initial back-up, mostly since I just back up my project files, and recapturing logged clips wouldn't be any more stressful than having a drive crash), but accidents happen; case in point, my tripod, camera, and deck have all broke or malfunctioned during making this film. If I get to a point of desperation, I can send the tapes to my Post Production Adviser in Chicago and she could make timecode-slaved dubs at her workplace, probably. Or have her bring them to my alma mater, Columbia College, and use her boss's clout (as part of the faculty) to get the job done. For free. (Barring the fact that the years of nasty tapes run through their decks have put goobers on most of my personal tapes I've run through them.)

Because, like all films, this is just a money thing. For the physical production of the film, my only expenses were clothes (much of which was unnecessary), DV tapes, and a new tripod, all of which totaled under $200. (Barring the cost of the Canon GL2 I have, which I bought in 2003 for about $2300 and have a somewhat-falling-apart shotgun mic attachment that was $150 and a "wide angle adapter" that cost $200.) People all talk about how the Digital Age of filmmaking makes everything cheap. True to a point. Production is cheaper, yeah, but post? So far, my editing expensive have been a $2500 iMac, $200 Final Cut Express (e.g. Final Cut Gimped), a $500 deck (and an unknown price to repair it that I hope is under $100), and a $220 external hard drive.

Granted, I'll be using all that stuff for future work, so the next thing I have in mind, assuming I shoot it on my current camera (though I think it's time for an upgrade to at least something 24P capable), could cost under $200. However, I'd probably involve some other people, so add in food and whatnot and it'd probably bloat up to $500. But that's cheap for a feature. And besides, what the hell else am I going to spend my money on?