Bitchin’ Fridays: Dropping the Ball

           

            Dropping the ball is an expression correlating to someone who has made a mistake through carelessness, inattention or incompetence.  Originally started in sports (unknown to which particular sport it is) in which a player’s error causes difficulty for there team.  In the 40’s it became a popular expression to point out a person’s error.

            Now you must be thinking this is interesting but what has this have to do with what you said in yesterday’s blog.  Well I am getting to that now. 

            Two days ago I received an email from the director/producer of a pro bono job that I agreed to do.  In this email she was asked how the sound design was coming along, the music is nearly done, and wanting to know the ETA for the final mix.  I will now give you a brief recap of everything up to this point:

            Back in January I meet with the director/producer to interview for the sound designer and post mixing job.  I agreed to do this work pro bono with the possibility of if this web series takes off their will be pay for future episodes.  I later get a phone call from the director (about two weeks later) telling me the onset sound guy ( I call him the kid) would not work for them unless he did the post sound design.  The director still wanted me to do the mix for the film but what pissed me off was the fact she didn’t put her foot down and tell the kid no.  I still agreed to do the final mix for her but told her that in the future I would like to do the editing as well. 

            After a few rounds or email from the post production team, the kid chimed in the discussion that he was the all around sound guy for this project and that he was doing the editing and mixing as well.  The kid was already on thin ice with me, so naturally went in the discussion forums to correct his mistake.  In a private email is disclosed exactly what I wanted from the final product out of him.  I high doubt he understood half the shit I said. 

            Months go by and they take forever to do the editing, of course all the work is being done for free so you can’t really expect this to be a fast production.  Finally at the end of May the sound team could finally go to work.  I get an email from the kid saying he can’t work on it for another 2-4 weeks.  I told him he can do one of two thing; give me what ever he has done up to that point now or give me it to me when the composer is finished which I predicted to be after the 4^th of July.  I was such a good guesser, but the thing is I never heard back from the kid.  That is until the latest email came out, and now back to the present BOOM!

            In response to the initial email I called out the kid for not giving me the sound edits, in a nice way.  I am not a complete bitch.  The kid finally reposed.  His first line in the email is “my bad, I dropped the ball.”  Well no shit kid.  I get that you have two jobs and remodeling your house but I expressed to you on more than one occasion that if you can’t do this tell me and let me go on my way.  Also I don’t want to hear your excuses.  Unless a family member died or is in the hospital, you can work on this on your off hours.  Hell I’ve done it before, come home and work on side projects for a few hours or even an hour each night.   

            What really bugged me was the fact that he used dropping the ball as a crutch and didn’t have anyway to remedy the situation.  Also the director took the “dropped ball” as an excuse.  I understand you don’t really want to rock the boat since everyone is working for free, but this project should have been done no later than May.  I believe when you dropped the ball you should do everything in your power to help remedy the situation and not sit back and use it as a crutch.

            I would love to thank wisegeek.com for there in-depth analysis of the expression dropping the ball and its origin.  If you have any suggestions on what I should bitch about next week leave me a comment or any of your own personal stories of the ball being dropped on you.  See you Monday for a wrap up of my week.

See you on the other side.