La Mancha

Last night we went out to see Terry Gilliam's Lost in La Mancha (sans kids who had been abducted by a school music camp). This is a "making of" documentary for a film that disintegrated before it could be completed. It provided some insight into the difficulties of making a huge-concept film on a very tight budget. I wasn't expecting knuckle-whitening action, but I did feel the documentary whimpered out towards the end. There was no critical decision point hinging the destiny of the participants. It just got worse and worse till all could see that the film was not going to be made.

While watching the discussion of project schedules I couldn't help being reminded of a particular project at work. The La Mancha crew were forced to work with an extremely tight schedule with absolutely no room for error or mishap. With a film production as with a technical project there are too many things that can and will go wrong. If you have no contingency, you will fail. It's not a case of hoping to be lucky. It's not just a case of allowing a little extra time for the unknown creative parts. Problems occur in the parts of the project that should be routine. There are humans involved.