How many of you remember waiting all week for your favorite show to be played on television? Be it a situation comedy like "Gilligan's Island," a musical comedy hour like "The Carol Burnett Show," or even a new cartoon show like "The Flintstones," you planned your life around being free for that short half hour during the evening.
(We kids didn't get to watch TV during the day, except maybe cartoons early on Saturday morning.)
We are so accustomed now to being able to stream almost any entertainment at any time. We can start it or stop it for any reason. We can even roll it back if we miss something or run it forward to skip parts we don't like. We don't even have to sit through commercials if we don't want to. Schedule --- schmedule --- who needs to stick to a schedule?
(We kids didn't get to watch TV during the day, except maybe cartoons early on Saturday morning.)
We are so accustomed now to being able to stream almost any entertainment at any time. We can start it or stop it for any reason. We can even roll it back if we miss something or run it forward to skip parts we don't like. We don't even have to sit through commercials if we don't want to. Schedule --- schmedule --- who needs to stick to a schedule?
I wonder, though, if we have gotten so comfortable with doing things at our own whim that we are less inclined to stick to a schedule, especially one that is planned by someone else, like an organization. Even school schedules are not as strict and may be rather changeable nowadays compared to how they have been in the past.
Last night I watched a biopic about Max Steiner, a composer who worked in the early film industry for many, many years. In fact, he is credited with "teaching" the movies to have emotion and dramatic crescendos. He himself said that he was just following in the footsteps of the great Austrian theatrical composers who knew how to create "leit motives" for individual characters and use those themes throughout the underscoring of the entire movie. And he was the first to do so. He wrote countless movie scores that are still remembered today. Some of the best are "King Kong," "Casablanca," and "Gone with the Wind."
What was quite impressive, and sad at the same time, was how he and his collaborators worked and worked to keep to the schedules. For example, instead of giving in to exhaustion and just walking away from the projects, or demanding more time (as in his situation with scoring "Gone with the Wind" in 1938), he went without sleep to get the composing finished. Unfortunately, the demands of strict schedules also cost him two marriages, and his health.
As I am now planning a Summer Theater Camp, I have to think about our schedule. We will have two weeks, that's 10 days, or just 30 hours, to accomplish everything it takes to put on a pleasing show. That's hard for seasoned professionals, let alone for inexperienced young children. Yet I have been pleased with the work of all the young thespians that have been in my camps before. So I have every hope that they can rise to the occasion and do it again.
Just hoping as time goes by that enough people will continue to understand and value the importance of things like coming on time, being prepared, and sticking to a schedule!
Just hoping as time goes by that enough people will continue to understand and value the importance of things like coming on time, being prepared, and sticking to a schedule!
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