The other night, I was sitting in a anonymous playout suite in West London, in charge of an anonymous channel. It was around 1am. Some people are surprised to learn that there is, in fact, plenty to do in a darkened playout suite at 1am. Thoroughly checking the next day’s schedule is one of those things. It’s better to find out you have a problem with your 3pm programme a full twelve hours before it airs, rather than twelve minutes.
So there I was, watching a programme – yes, an anonymous programme – which was going out in a few hours’ time. In general, we watch the opening minute and the closing minute of each show, to make sure all is well. Opening minute, fine. Closing minute, fi… hang on, what was that? A brief flicker on the end credits? What caused that? It wasn’t the credit squeeze, was it? Or the monitor wall having a funny? Let’s run it through again.
No, it’s still there. Hmmmmm.
I load the material up on the desktop PC in the suite, and step through the offending section frame-by-frame. There we have it. A single erroneous frame in the end credits, where the moving background jumps ahead unexpectedly.
A single erroneous frame. A flash frame, in fact. Completely 100% unintentional; just an editing error, rather than any kind of deliberate nonsense. But nonetheless, there it is: a sodding flash frame. I spend months and months researching and writing about them at home, and then one pops up at work too.
I need a new hobby. One that has nothing to do with my job. In fact, one that absolutely, categorically does not involve any kind of screen.
Knitting, maybe. Or orienteering. Cheesemaking?