It's not the takes that take the time to take the takes, it's the time between the takes that really takes the time to take the takes.

This is a little saying that gets bandied about in production circles. The "takes," of course, are movie lingo - does that help it make more sense?

Shooting a scene of the hero walking down the alley takes twenty seconds. But setting up the camera, the lights, the props, rigging sound and rehearsals can take hours. Even in the kind of shooting we do, set up and break down can take far longer than the shoot itself. And most people have no idea of how long it takes to plan, shoot, edit and master a 30 minute TV program. And I have no idea, for example, how long it takes to, say, make a pair of shoes.

It was in college that I first became aware of how little we know about the time and effort it takes to create things outside our area of expertise. I was working part time in the school's graphic department, and the president walked in with a list of the school's administrators and said, "I need an organization chart of the administration for a meeting tonight," and left.

It became my job for the day. This was before computers; charts were hand drawn on a drafting table with indian ink, on special coated paper. Took all day. I kept wondering if the president had any idea how much time/money this simple little thing was costing the school.

I find myself musing on this once again tonight. Tomorrow, we're having a LifeLine 20th anniversary meeting. The sponsoring churches contacted us last week and said, we'd really like to show clips of all the LifeLines that feature guests from our prefecture, Gunma. Simple little email. That became one of my jobs this week.

Thirteen programs to load into the editing computer, editing 30 minutes down to 2 minutes for each, string 'em all together and burn a DVD. Loading and editing, a full two days. Double checking, correcting edits/titles and burning DVD -- from about 4 pm today until now, um, exactly 11:55 p.m. Two misfires on the DVD, which take a crazy long time to burn, third one's in the "oven." Let's hope third time's a charm. The computer says it'll be ready in a couple minutes.

Well, on the upside, it did give me time to write a post. Ooh, hey, the DVD just popped out. Need to give it a quick check and go to bed; hit the road at 8 tomorrow morning.

I'm sure they had no idea what they were asking for in terms of time needed to make this DVD. As I have no idea how much time and effort I've caused you. (Well, Mom, maybe except for you... kinda know how much grief I've caused you...)

For everyone else who has spent inordinate amounts of time on Aileen and I (and the kids), that we are totally unaware of, Thank You Very Much!

G'nite,