Ego? Id? Or... Suuuuuper Ego?
Woo - been a while since I last entered here. Been pretty busy.. but lets backtrack a bit, shall we?

Okay, so many days ago I went out to dinner with my cousin, Colin, and his fiance, Phyllis. I had a really great time - their loft is fucking gorgeous and it's loaded with cool gadgets. They even have an LD player (albeit, currently out of comission). We hung out there for a while having some drinks and talking, then headed out for a really good Japanese dinner. Afterwards we went bar hopping. I had my Production 1 final the next morning, but for better or worse that didn't stop me from partaking in several rounds of drinks.

We parted ways around 11 (it felt like 3), and by the time I got back to the apt I felt totally shit-faced. I don't think it was the quantity of alcohol so much as the mixture of wine, beer and hard stuff. I always get fucked up when I mix the 3, or really whenever I drink anything with beer. Whatever. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to doing it again.

Lets see - last weekend I was in Branson with my family for a sort of end of summer vacation. I was kinda against the whole trip at first, and on a really bad sleeping schedule, but in the end I really enjoyed it. Granted, Branson is hardly #1 on my picks of vacation destinations for 21 year olds - but as it was, it was cute and fun. I saw Kirby VanBurch's magic show again - for like the 4th time. Unfortunately, he doesn't really seem to have grown much in terms of performance. In fact, it seems to me like he's sort of gone down some notches. For one thing he's in a smaller theater now. For another, he didn't do anything really new since the last time I saw him - many many years ago. That sucks. Like all entertainers, you really need to keep things fresh and new. If youre performance becomes stagnant, you become stagnant as a performer. That's probably why he's gone to smaller theater than before... meh.

However, it was fun to see Phillip Wellford back with Kirby. Wellford is a comedian/juggler that was with Kirby the first time I saw him. He's got some great routines and is a lot of fun and a great showman. Nice surprise that he was back.

I also saw two other great shows - Gregory Popovich who has done the impossible and trained regular house cats to do tricks that one usually thinks of as reserved for dogs, and Cirque, which was sort of a mini Cirque du Soleiel - but none less impressive.


This past week I finished my Production 1 class. I was relatively pleased with my final film - starring David and Stu - but unfortunately it ended up being a little shorter than I'd have liked and in the end and while I got through the class critique unscathed and everyone seemed to like it, I only got One vote for 'best in class' (better than zero like some films got, I suppose :P) and the winners got like 8/9 votes. To be fair, however, the winner from the class vote was very good and deserving of the votes (hell, I voted for it too). The winner of the teacher selection - or I should say the film that I suspect got the teacher selection - was also extremely well photographed with awsome visuals.

But one thing did really piss me off about the winning film and the runner up. The whole point of our second project assignment was to work with interior lighting and arrangement - which is a fucking bitch and taks a lot of time to properly set up, hell it takes a lot of time to improperly set up too! The teacher said we could have a few outside scenes, which would be lit by sunlight, which is a lot easier and more efficient to work with, especially on a bright day. Anyway - my entire film is interior with the whole thing lit with quartz bulb film lamps. These things get extremely hot, are extremely bright, and very taxing on both the actors and filmmaker.

The winning film had like 1 scene that was lit by interior lighting, and the rest was all outdoor lighting. The runner up film had zero interior shots. What the fuck? Okay, so if I'd broken the guidelines - or at least taken them less seriously - I'd have had a lot more freedom and the extra time it would take to light the shots could have been spent, you know, shooting, and developing the story.... I know that sounds like a jealous sore loser talking, but come on. If you're not going to hold the films to your guidelines, don't make the fucking guidelines.

It really hit me, watching these other 2 films, that I tend to do things really half-assed at the last moment but still end up pulling it off well - whether it's a film, a paper or any other academic project. Which has lead me to wonder how well I could actually do if I used my whole ass and was a little more put together and well organized to begin with. Honestly, I really wanted to get into the Best Of selections because then you have the chance of being in the Best of Production 1 film festival - which would have been great. Oh well. I guess that for Production 2 I'll have to try harder and get my head around something that will work a lot better. Here's hoping.

I'll have my Production 1 films online as soon as I can figure out how to get an okay digitized version of them. You see, we don't get a telecine video transfer of these movies and all I have in my possession is the original camera reversal 16mm film. The only way I can get a video version - for free anyway - is to be ghetto and videotape the screen projection of the films. Which is what I may end up doing... meh.

Until I can get that tapes though - here's a few pics from the shoot. They're in b&w to look more like they would on the 16mm b&w film stock:



The lamps were so bright, Stu and David had to wear sunglasses so as to not, you know, go blind.



Stu asking me if we really need to re-do this shot... heh.

- posted by Brendan @ 1:18 PM 0 comments