Between Keyboard and Chair...

I don't know if I've mentioned this recently, but I'm really tired of the movie project. At first it was a fun, creative process, allowing me use of lots of artistic skill and imagination (as well as a fair bit of technical skill). And now...

*bitch*whine*moan*

When I first met with the movie's writer in July, I said, "Get me this, this, and this, work on these things, and I can have this for you then." Based on my original estimation, I would've been done with my role in the project by now. Of course, it's an indie film trying to look like a professional, big-budget horror film, so not everything is going to go smoothly and quickly. Not that I don't think they'll succeed; if everything goes as it is the movie will eventually be done and probably be well received. But I wasn't necessarily expecting to be in this long-term.

I'll admit, I have problems communicating with clients the longer it takes to get a project done. If a person expects me to be on top of my job, fulfilling what I quote to them and answering their questions as soon and as thoroughly as possible, I expect the same of them. So when months ago I said, "these are the things I need to do this," and now somewhere around half of them have actually been completed, well. Yeah. I don't want to babysit anyone's creative process.

Given this, when a project with a client gets to this point--where indecision, short-sightedness, and stubbornness abound--I'm going to need to step back a little. I'm not going to respond to every email the day it comes in, nor get requests done within an hour from receiving them. I will wait, gather information and needs, and work on everything in one large chunk though. But the former is just more unproductive than the latter, and allows the client to nit-pick on fine-tuning an aspect of my work that is irrelevant and unnecessary to the current needs.

If only once I could meet up with a prospective client and have them say something to the effect of, "I have everything, but I need you to make it work." If they could give me the foundation concept and materials, I could have a wicked awesome website done within a week. The uber-effective marketing campaign would be implemented over the next month, and much profit would be had. Sadly, that never seems to be the case. I consistently find clients who have great potential and in the end can't make the time or mental commitment to working with someone outside their business.

I've put in so many hours on an excellent site design and shopping cart system, only to have the client lose interest when it's time for them to do product photography and descriptions. I have a handful of websites that have gone this route; several hundreds of dollars of work on my part, as well as a serious dedication of time and energy. These were projects I was committed to, and for the time I worked on them, they were my baby. Too bad I'll never see any pay for them; too bad the client will never see any profit from them. If only they knew.

Right now, I'm fielding phone calls and emails from both the movie's writer (J) and the production assistant. The PA says, "I'm trying to do this and it doesn't work, so you need to contact these people and fix the problem ASAP." Then J writes me an email and says, "She's having this problem, and you need to fix it for her." Then PA calls and leaves a message with the same content, followed by J's message of "She's going to call you about this problem." Now repeat that email bit two more times, and you'll have a concept of the redundancy these people are enacting. In the end, it's not the problem they think it is, and there's certainly nothing I can do about it. It's a case of PEBKAC, to be sure.

I don't want to deal with this anymore. :P