Time Flies is currently on hold for perhaps silly reasons. The relationship between Nick Da Silva and myself has deteriorated quite badly, with no hope in sight. Maybe he's a jerk, maybe i am a jerk. In my regular job, i always focus on relationships and communication to ensure projects work well. I am pretty successful at it. Also, i generally assume good faith from people: when people work together on a project, they try to put their differences aside for the good of the project and the client. I handle that with confidence because i know i am good at what i do.

With Nick however, it all fell apart and i am at a complete loss. I am simply ready to drop the towel. Whatever i say, no matter how innocent, is taken as a direct attack. He's the entertainment professional with experience and i am the rookie in this project. Basically, he claims extortion because i got pulled into working hard to deliver high quality work and blew our schedule, and Rafael was closely involved and pulled into this delays too. He over-delivered in quality and quantity and that had some personal cost. Well, at least, that's how i perceive it. If you talked to Nick, he'd have a different point of view of course, and i cannot seem to figure it out.

He's angry at me for a number of reasons and claims ill intent on my side. This all comes from the left field to me and has been very distressing. Not only is Time Flies on hold right now, but Nick and I cannot seem to communicate anymore. We have a call together this weekend and i hope i can patch things up. Otherwise, i am afraid Time Flies will be just another entry in a long list of failed projects because of messed up communication and relationships.

Another thing of course is the legal contract we have between us. Of course, i can't divulge the details in here, but suffice to say that we made a significant mistake: the contract assumed everything would go well and did not have any "out" clauses. So, as a piece of advice to any person getting into a relationship over a project, make sure that you clearly spell out out-clauses, no matter how solid, trustworthy and friendly the relationship is at the beginning. We entered this all in good faith, and both parties believe they made a best effort. Yet, the project was late. Because the panels were not ready in time, Nick who has planned the summer for the editing job was not able to do it at that time. Also, because Rafael has been dragged into this for essentially an extra 3 months, financial pressures mounted on his side. Additionally, putting together the full soundtrack took me much longer than i had expected and i easily took 2-4 weeks longer than i originally thought.

Basically, instead of being ready to start animation in early July and have a finished soundtrack in early August,
we had all those pieces ready in late September. So, our contract completely lacked any out clauses in terms of delays, B plans and so on. Make sure you do not repeat this error and clearly lay out in the contract alternatives in case deadlines are blown... And most creative projects with almost no money will surely face delays. Those out-clauses are nto punishments, but set expectations from both parties in case things turn south. We didn't do it, and now both parties feel wronged, and legally, we are somewhat stuck.