Friday, June 19, 2009

Zombie Consultant is an overlooked profession.

I'm going to be --hopefully -- collaborating on a script with a group of filmmakers in Milwaukee. (My role? To zombie it up a bit.)(Mom would be so proud.)

That's going to require me to not only get copies of their script and shooting notes and... um... other movie stuff, but also to watch rough cuts of the film and see what the director is looking at and things like that. In the olden days (2002) that would mean lots and lots of trips to Milwaukee, plus cumbersome emailing of attachments back and forth and highlighting and redlining changes to the script and saving multiple copies of the same thing. What a pain, right?

Luckily, I don't live in the olden days (2002); I live in NOW. Which means I don't have to keep driving to Milwaukee and/or use my entire computer memory to save 33 different versions of the script. I just have to make sure I and the director both have Proxy Pro 6 -- remote control software that lets me view his desktop as though it was my own, or vice versa. Or the other way around in reverse.

Proxy Pro 6 has 256-bit encryption; you don't need to know EXACTLY what that is to know that it means your files and desktop will be more secure than any other computer's -- 256-bits is the highest in its class. That ensures security while I'm logging onto the Director's computer and having his desktop become mine, too, so that both of us are looking at the same clips of the movie and the same draft of the script while talking about it on the phone. We watch a clip, punch up the script, decide what the scenes should be, make a few edits, and both save and there you go: Instant collaboration and no extra memory used, no time constraints, no driving.

Proxy Pro 6 can be used for more than just making a zombie movie; it could be invaluable to hold meetings with far-flung collaborators in any business: everyone's got the same thing on their screen. Or it could be used by an IT company's help desk so that the helper can just log onto the caller's computer and fix the problem.

But it's best use for me is avoiding that drive to Milwaukee. So I will be a Zombie Consultant just as soon as we can get that onto everyone's computers, and then cast some Undead.

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