MRFH: Behind the Scenes!

Okay, it's not the most exciting thing in the world, but since blogs are all about dumping parts of our lives into your laps, I thought I'd share what an average week of MRFH-related work goes on.

Each of the staff submits material on their own time, sometimes in a batch, sometimes one thing at a time. These get thrown into a very special e-mail folder called "MRFH To Do", and I am a happy man when it overflows with submitted goodness. As for myself, I probably watch about 2-3 movies a week -- sometimes on the big TV with my wife, sometimes on my trusty portable 7" DVD player -- and hack out reviews when I have the time.

Back in the day, we used to update MRFH about 3 times a week, and these updates would take place in the evening. I've long since switched to morning updates as the process got more streamlined. Monday through Friday, I'll jump out of bed, shower and then spend a half hour getting an update online. Some of these go extremely fast, and some take some time, but an average review page takes about 20 minutes to gather graphics, information, and format. Although I jokingly call myself an editor, I only read through the material about once (due to the need to, you know, get to work) before it goes up.

Thursdays are more or less "article day", because articles take considerably longer to work up, and that's my day off of work for the week. Saturday updates depend on what I have going on -- sometimes I'll get an update out, sometimes not. I also lean more toward doing "grab bags" and other non-review/article updates on those days. Sunday, I have no underpants because of God, and we have no updates.

So, really, not terribly exciting, but always satisfying. I do enjoy uploading my reviews -- as would anyone -- and I really enjoy reading a staff-submitted review for the first time. The rule for review pages is that anyone who does a particular movie FIRST gets to do all the fun extras -- such as choosing the graphics/captions, the top page quote, the Mutant Meter and so on. Additional reviews can add to the extras but never take them away. I reserve special Head Mutant rights to cull through a review and select the quote that appears in the garish green sidebar, which fascinates the staff, who always try to guess what sentence I'm going to pull ahead of time.


There ya go!