DVD Be Gone

I hoped I had heard the last of the Lead Participant and her Albatross- around-our-necks DVD. I’d tried to blot it out since last mentioned at the beginning of last month – that long? – when the interviews were stitched together and my part in the process was done.

After that it had been turned over to Work Buddy to sort out a couple of Easter Eggs, author it and... well, fire it out of a cannon for all I cared. The reply from the Lead Participant had not been immediate, even though there was a time factor involved. In fact, Work Buddy only mentioned her eventual response last week while my internet service was taking a break.

After whining that she had felt left out of the final stages of the creative process – intentional on our part because she had proved to lack any creativity – the Lead Participant’s chief concerns centred on the interview segment. Rather than congratulate us on expertly salvaging material that she had done her very best to bugger up with her lamentable interview technique, she bemoaned the fact that specific clips had been omitted from the finished piece.

The Lead Participant wanted them in. It didn’t matter that they didn’t contribute one jot to the carefully structured through-line narrative. What did that matter? They were clips of her talking to camera and the Lead Participant wanted them in. The reason for their inclusion was because they were, in her words, “funny”. In my words, they were funny only in the way that being repeatedly punched in the eyes is funny.

We discussed our options and eventually came to the conclusion that reinstating the footage, even though it didn’t fit and made her contribution to the interview sequence wildly disproportionate, meant that we could just be rid of the damn thing, once and for all.

Calling late this afternoon to clue me in on a potential new client meeting, Work Buddy noted that the revised DVD had been posted off. That was it. Done. Goodbye. Never darken our hard drives again.