Everything is packed up and now in Adrian’s trunk. We left a few cables, my little crap monitor and a spattering of movie making paraphernalia laying on the floor, but the green screen is gone, the equipment is missing and the lights are no longer standing. Adrian is supposedly going to clean up the rest this weekend.

As much as I’m really happy to see this all over with and as much as I’m happy to be away from Adrian for a few days (weeks) it was pretty sad leaving the studio tonight for the last time. We all checked our bags to make sure we had everything that we needed, I fumbled around looking for my keys and left a Lunchables in the fridge for Matt for later. We crawled into the little elevator together after taking one last stride through the floor looking at the many empty offices turned into studios and spying the lit South Bend skyline (as puny as it might be) a ways away through the windows. Something about this process, about coming here every day for the last week, about having somewhere else to go has been an acknowledgment that we’re trying to do something real. And I seriously fear that if this doesn’t all work out (probably won’t) this will be the last time we roll on anything related to Myst, and possibly (if our hearts are set on it) the last time we roll anything after getting that expected letter from Rand’s attorney that says what we’ve used as the most repeated line in the presentation outtakes to break the tension: guys, you gotta be f****** kidding me.

I took a hard look at the building as we were walking down the steps of the entry way and into the parking lot. And if you look back, further away from the road, you can see how large this building really is and it was indeed fun to explore the dark passages that extend down into the areas where the building hasn’t been restored. It has to be hundreds of thousands of square feet counting all of the levels, and back there in the dark its dank brick looks like it goes on forever. And then we headed to our cars.

It was about midnight, but I wanted to celebrate. Go to Denny’s and have a bite to eat - do something to record that we’d really done all of this. Next month when this thing comes together and it’s damn horrible, it’ll be nice to be able to look back and remember how grand a waste of time this all was. But Adrian wasn’t having it. Almost as soon as we got to the parking lot he was in his car and headed to [the girlfriend]’s place. We paused to finish one smoke, but no one said a word. There was no ‘good job’ or ‘well, it’s been a blast’ just grunting and sighing and a collective recognition that we just seriously wasted our time. I’m hoping Ryan isn’t in trouble; he took one sick day and another PTO day to be here with us, and I don’t think he feels that we’re thankful at all. We are. Especially since Matt’s been nowhere to be found.

I’ll feel better in a couple of days. Adrian will come over and we’ll go through the rest of the footage, and he’ll sit on the love seat that faces the monitors and writhe around about how horrible it all is and damn me and Ryan for not knowing that XL-1s’s reset to auto focus if you turn them off. He’ll have stories about [the girlfriend] and he’ll bitch about that whole deal, and I’ll tell him that he needs to break up with her because she’s too needy and he’ll say he can’t and he’ll get mad at me. And then I’ll apologize and say I’m grumpy cause I’m working with key frames.

Adrian’s performance tonight was much better than yesterday, even if he doesn’t think so. He feels like he looks manic but it’s better than how dead he was before. And I’ve decided that I’ll never tell him that the audio wasn’t really bad — I just had no other idea on how to make him do it again. Do it again with his cellphone off so we didn’t have to watch his frustration mount each and every time that [the girlfriend] sent one of her loaded texts. I’m surprised that I didn’t throw that damn thing out the window yesterday. Ryan and I were seriously thinking about it.

They both drove off and I lingered in the parking lot. I bet they’d call me self-centered but I wonder if I take it all a little bit differently. I’ve been riding on this dream for a lot longer than both of them. Chris has known about it for years; Mom knew about it — she even did her cursing thing with me when I told her about Sci-Fi Channel right after I found out a few years ago. I never really told her what we were up to before she died. I wonder if she’s watching all of this. I wonder if she knows what will happen.

I wish she would tell me if this is all a waste of time.

1:46 am

tags: dreams, girlfriend, greenscreen, mom, myst, myst miniseries, presentation, studio