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Are we a wee bit excited? Does a bear wear a funny hat in the woods?

We just got our official version of Final Cut Studio 2 for the office. Let the jump cuts and spinny titles begin!

While video is something Marlin has gleefully done for our clients again and again — a fact that actually prompted the aforementioned purchase — until now we’ve either used outside resources exclusively or simply “found a way to do it.” (Oh sweet quotation marks, how do you manage to imply so much?) We’re now starting to change that admirably scrappy but ultimately pain-in-the-ass approach. Purchasing Final Cut is a first step.

A first step that apparently weighs twelve hundred pounds. Seriously, the box for this thing seems like it’s made out of physics-defying, denser-than-the-sun matter. (Buy Final Cut today and we’ll throw in a neutron star absolutely FREE!) Quentin’s arms were shaking when we took the above photo. We had two Hungarian weightlifters as spotters. On each side. (Ok, enough.)

So yes, we’re excited to have it. We’re also happy to have the skills to know which buttons to push. Quentin Brown, design intern extraordinaire pictured above, has extensive, hands-on training from his days at Drury University, and has proven himself more than worthy to JKL even the orneriest footage. Most other Marlinites have firsthand experience producing tv commercials, corporate videos, even PBS documentaries. So hopefully this little experiment will look more like a professional extension of our branding skills and less like that bunch of monkeys throwing stuff at the obelisk in 2001.

This is a little tardy (because we’re still freakin’ busy), but just over a week ago The Marlin Network held its quarterly meeting. Unlike the term “quarterly meeting,” it was actually fun. We met for breakfast at The Moxie, Springfield’s only indie movie house, and quite the little startup by a couple of MU alumns.

What was for breakfast, you ask? Your choice of falafel or rye bread with some cheese on it, Dane-style, which I guess is called Smørrebrød. Why was it that, you ask? Read on!

We had a quickie update on what all the different cogs o’ Marlin are currently up to, met a few new people, then enjoyed two fantastic short films.

The first was “West Bank Story,” a fantastic send-up of West Side Story a la the Gaza Strip. It’s the Kosher King versus the Hummus Hut, and there’s even a dancing menora. And that’s why we had falafel staring at us at 8:30 in the morning.

The second was a sweet little animated short that won an Academy Award, “The Danish Poet.” Thus, the Smørrebrød.

Marlin meetings are always events. This one was no exception. Gotta run.

We baptized the intimidatingly huge flat-screen tv in the main conference room with the first of our monthly matinees. The movie was Vernon, Florida, the 1981 Errol Morris documentary about eccentrics in a small Florida swamp town, and what it lacked in surround sound, it more than made up for in quirkiness. Even better that The Office made fun of corporate movie time in this week’s episode.