Episode Two is finally on the way!

Ahoy, mateys! (Or is that 'maties'? Whatever)

First, we must apologize for taking SO long to release the second episode of Rock This Boat. Believe me, we have an excuse.

We shot all of the video for the second episode last summer over a month or so. I was entrusted with the hard drive that contained all the video. Yes, you can see what's coming. Before I could back it all up, the hard drive crashed. I mean crashed hard. 

Still shot from Episode 2 of Rock This Boat

I had a couple of folks look at it. They said it was shot. The second company said they could send it off to their forensics lab in Illinois to see what could be done, but it was a long shot. I said, "What the heck. Let's do it." I didn't hear from them for months. When I did, it was partially good news. They thought they could reconstruct some of the video, but they had no way of knowing how much. I had to give an authorization to do it, which would be very expensive. I decided to go for it.

Long story short, they were able to reconstruct 80 to 90 percent of what we shot. Some of the clips were partial recoveries. There were some key elements missing that included my sons who had helped me so I had to wait until college was out for the summer to re-shoot some of those scenes.

We finally completed production and the episode is currently in post-production for editing. It should be out very soon. The third episode is also missing some pieces so we'll have to re-shoot those, but we plan to start on that immediately. Hopefully, Episode 3 follows closely on the heels of Episode 2.

I always look for the silver lining and the expensive lesson I learned (that hopefully you'll learn from my stupidity) is to back up everything often. We now have couple of backup drives in different locations plus a cloud account. What a sickening feeling that was and I hope you never have to experience it.

All that to say that we're back in business. Let's Rock This Boat!

Phil Valentine