Sunday, February 1, 2009

Typos

The unintended reflection of light into the lens of a camera can create a beautiful affect. The unexpected crack in a singer's voice can lend raw emotion to a song . The accidental smudge of paint on a piece of artwork can add character. But typos are evil. There is no beauty in the blemish of a misspelled word or unintentional use of poor grammar.
Next week at work I am sharing the movie I made of the house our missions team built in Jamaica. I was watching through the movie yesterday, trying to casually organize some thoughts to share when I show the video.
That's when I happened to notice two typos. I was instantly irate. I did a rough estimate, and around nineteen people watched this movie while it was still in it's stages of development, and no one noticed, or at least mentioned, these typos.
The video was shared during both services at church last Sunday, between PK and I's blog it has been watched 120 times according to Vimeo's counter, and it's also been watched on Milah's blog, Facebook, and YouTube several times. I understand that these numbers are no where near impressive in the scheme of online media, but it's enough viewings to make me really frustrated that I had two typos! So, I obviously wanted to correct these errors before sharing the movie at work this coming week, but the movie was created on Brian Cline's laptop, not my own, so I couldn't edit it. My only option was to recreate it. Now, I wasn't about to spend a couple of hours making a movie that I've already made, so to make the process a little less frustrating, I did make it slightly different. Oh, if I was only such a perfectionist in more useful areas of life . . .
Jamaica 2009 FFC Missions Trip from Nathan Harris on Vimeo.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Nathan, Honestly, I did not notice it the first two times I watched it. I was more focused on the pictures than print, but I do know how you feel. I hate when I make mistakes, especially when I have an audience... trust me though, it did not take away from the message one bit!

-j said...

not lieing but i actually noticed them but didn't know if I should say anything.

luv ya-intentional typo! haha

Nathan said...

Milah- Thanks!

Jessie- ALWAYS point out typos ;o)