Down to the Wire!

Last weekend was spent with headphones permanently attached to my head whilst hubby shopped, washed, ironed and hoovered around me.  I needed to complete the editing on 3 amazing interviews and then select and re-edit bite sized chunks for the listening point at the exhibition. From that I had to choose shorter extracts to be presented as text alongside James Sebright’s amazing images of the interviewees.

Monday – just two days before we needed to set up the exhibition at The Oriental Museum, there was still an interview to do with everything that needed to be edited from that.  In addition we were constantly called upon to review press releases and provide text for the display info boards.  As Curator Dr Craig Barclay said ‘We’re down to the wire on this one!’

Our interview and photo session went well.  A Japanese lady, Megumi who had come over to the North East with her family in order for her husband to work at the Nissan Sunderland plant, told us with help from wonderful interpreter, Kyoko, how she was managing to settle in here.

I arrived at The Oriental Museum on Wednesday morning to find that there had been a misunderstanding.  There wasn’t actually a technician available to load my audio files onto an i-pad screen and provide an interface – wasn’t I supposed to be doing that bit? I resolved not to burst into tears – nearly 50 hours spent on editing the audio and there was nothing people could listen on.

I contacted Richard Halling of Iris Digital.  Could they do what was needed and turn it round for the next day?  The result was a fantastic touch screen display which brought up the interviewees and a selection of their anecdotes and conversation.

When I returned to The Oriental Museum, James and Craig were with the technicians just putting the finishing touches to mounting the photos and text boards.  After over a year of planning and working on the exhibition, here at last was the fruits of our labours – and it looked magnificent.  I nearly started to cry again!   Now just the wide screen TV to fire up for our film…