Oh, the Joy...

So, our audio editing system (Fairlight) has been a real stable, rock-solid platform for producing Gilead almost since the beginning of the series back in 2001.  But (as computer systems go), she's getting kinda old, and this season has been riddled with crashes and system failures such as we have never seen since we began.  Our plan was to try to limp along through Season 9 until we had a little down time to address the problems and get some much needed upgrades.  But, oh yeah, we're producing 2 holiday specials this year...

No problem, what harm could come from trying to do just 2 more shows?  Well, because of having to nurse Fairlight so much, we've been seriously delayed ...

Well, it seems at the end of every season it gets pretty tight, so I shouldn't be surprised... right?

But I think we went into this season already behind--with the comittment to not split the season into two parts like we've had to do in almost every previous season.  Then in August, I got the "go ahead"  to hire Cal to help out part time with post production--what a relief that was!

UNTIL

We started having equipment problems in totally unrelated componets that put the porduction process into a near stand-still.  Over the course of about 3 weeks, we were very "stop & go" which seriously set us back.  Three weeks may not seem like much, but when you're already right on your deadlines (or a week late), that much time really puts a squeeze on ya.

So here we are in the middle of post production on episodes 10 and 11, the first of which wi ...