(no subject)
Uni day has swung around again. I actually made the trek to the university on the previous Wednesday because 1) I had papers I wanted to hand in to a particular lecturer and 2) the original plan was for the group to do some practice shooting for the video production. Unfortunately, two things ensured that this did not happen according to plan. First of all, a huge dust storm that originated in Sydney made its way along the East Coast and spread across the city of Brisbane. The part of Brisbane I am in, and the part where the university campus is located, is more or less the outer North band of the city. Sydney residents, if you know the Richmond area that basically represents the last stop on the Western train line before one goes up into the Blue Mountains and Katoomba, then you know the sort of relative location I am talking about. But for this much dust to go through the South end of the city and travel that far through the North, it just gives one such a humbling perspective on natural pollution compared to man-made pollution. Smithfield, the industrial sector near where I grew up, barely had that much smog over its factories on a bad day.
"All I had inside, I gave to you; I wanted you to give me the same..."
Unfortunately, being that I have some sensitivity to dust, I ended up finding it difficult to breathe. My skin also wanted to take leave of my body and hide in another dimension, which would not have been such a bad idea except for needing skin to keep the dust off my nerves. So I sat up for a good portion of the night trying to get to sleep with serious itching and sinusitis. Not fun. I even had to get up a couple of times during the night and have a cold shower in order to get my skin to stop burning. There was literally a pervasive feeling of dust all through the air that was like smoking half a dozen cigarettes at once. Funny thing is, I never had reactions like this to the smog from Smithfield or the soap/detergent/whatever products that followed my dad home from his job at a factory in Villawood (that suburb also happens to be the home of one of those refugee detention centres, funnily enough). Come to think of it, every allergic reaction I have ever had, including the generalised one that had me swollen all over, has been to something natural. And they wonder why people like the Soviets saw nature as an enemy to be conquered!
Oh yeah, the photo. I am sure you are wondering by now where this image came from. Well, about a fortnight after I finished shooting the video with Solstice and trying to figure out how to put it together, I decided I needed a new shelf unit to put things in. So I bought a shelf unit from the local branch of the Reject Shop (yes, that is what it is called), and I decided to take some photos of the bears around it whilst I put it together. So this is another instance where you, the readers, get to influence what I do in future editions of this dismal journal. Do you think I should post a pictorial of Solstice, Firoth, Summer, and William observing the construction of the shelving unit? Or should I just delete the whole bunch of pics and be done with it? Be creative with your answers, guys. Actually, better yet, do not answer, because I think I am going to post the pictures eventually in order to show Summer with some engineering-related dialogue ("oooo!"). And the person whose opinion matters most to me in the subject has just departed in order to attend someone's eighteenth birthday party, so I am not going to make any decision before I hear from them again. Which may or may not take a while.
So, this week, we sat and watched a few videos that were basically tutorials in the use of the Avid editing system, tried to explain why our classmates were late again, and just basically tried to get through another day. It started at about 0630 for me with family calling me up on the landline and saying it was time I got my arse out of bed and went to the university. I went along a different route than usual this time, stopping by the McDonald's on the highway rather than going straight to the shopping centre and its bus terminal. I left the house at about 0650, so I could spare the time. So after a McDonald's breakfast, I got to the shopping centre and hopped on the bus to the train station. Then I hung around the train station for about forty-five or so minutes, meeting with one of my classmates there, and getting on the bus to the university with them. And then I got to the university at about 0840 or thereabouts. Yes, you read that right. I have to get out of the house at ten minutes to seven so I can eat breakfast and get to the school about twenty minutes before the lecture begins. And mind you, when one goes from my current abode to this unversity campus by car, it takes twenty minutes at the most. What is wrong with this picture?
Anyway, the arrivals sort of happened in a staggered pattern. The classmate I want to see making more videos and I got there early, one guy came in about twenty or thirty minutes late, another guy came in about ten or twenty minutes after that, and one woman came in about eighty minutes into the lecture. Enthusiasm, thy name is university. *chuckles* I tell you, everything I had been led to expect or hope for has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Anyway, we all passed around copies of shotlists and shooting schedules that each of us had assembled. I was glad to have finished one myself, but really, I do not want the damned thing being used for anything. It is terrible, and I do not mind telling anyone that. One comment that the lecturer had about my shotlist was that I cut back and forth a lot between wide shots and close-ups in the first scene. I am here thinking "well, yeah...". I did that because I want to dissolve back and forth between a perspective of the person and where she is going. Maybe it is not such a great idea, I do not know, but I wanted to do it anyway because I felt like shaking things up a bit. Ah well, I will leave that to the others to sort out.
So the current plan is for the appointed director to decide which production schedule and shotlist we are going to use for principal photography by the coming Monday, then we are going to do a practice shoot on the following Monday and start principal photography some time after that. Phew. Talk about cutting it close. This is bringing back memories of the end of last semester, in which footage was shot mere days before the final assignment's due date and had to be hastily edited together without any time to reshoot or shoot additional footage to cover gaps. Of which there were plenty. Ah, why am I still bitching so much about this assignment when it is now months behind me? Maybe I am just having trouble with letting go of it, I do not know. Even though I think the people I worked with on that assignment were fine people (one of them is in fact in my current class), I just wish I had taken more of an authoriative direction with them and got them to get the coverage we really needed in order to make a solid three-minute video. Or not. Either way, I was just glad to be finished with that assignment, and I am really sick of revisiting the whole thing in the horror show that is my memory.
Anyway, those that have read this far, thank you for your time and patience. Between now and the next time I write, I want you to ponder the following words of wisdom: Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. It tears the heart right out and crushes it.
"All I had inside, I gave to you; I wanted you to give me the same..."
Unfortunately, being that I have some sensitivity to dust, I ended up finding it difficult to breathe. My skin also wanted to take leave of my body and hide in another dimension, which would not have been such a bad idea except for needing skin to keep the dust off my nerves. So I sat up for a good portion of the night trying to get to sleep with serious itching and sinusitis. Not fun. I even had to get up a couple of times during the night and have a cold shower in order to get my skin to stop burning. There was literally a pervasive feeling of dust all through the air that was like smoking half a dozen cigarettes at once. Funny thing is, I never had reactions like this to the smog from Smithfield or the soap/detergent/whatever products that followed my dad home from his job at a factory in Villawood (that suburb also happens to be the home of one of those refugee detention centres, funnily enough). Come to think of it, every allergic reaction I have ever had, including the generalised one that had me swollen all over, has been to something natural. And they wonder why people like the Soviets saw nature as an enemy to be conquered!
Oh yeah, the photo. I am sure you are wondering by now where this image came from. Well, about a fortnight after I finished shooting the video with Solstice and trying to figure out how to put it together, I decided I needed a new shelf unit to put things in. So I bought a shelf unit from the local branch of the Reject Shop (yes, that is what it is called), and I decided to take some photos of the bears around it whilst I put it together. So this is another instance where you, the readers, get to influence what I do in future editions of this dismal journal. Do you think I should post a pictorial of Solstice, Firoth, Summer, and William observing the construction of the shelving unit? Or should I just delete the whole bunch of pics and be done with it? Be creative with your answers, guys. Actually, better yet, do not answer, because I think I am going to post the pictures eventually in order to show Summer with some engineering-related dialogue ("oooo!"). And the person whose opinion matters most to me in the subject has just departed in order to attend someone's eighteenth birthday party, so I am not going to make any decision before I hear from them again. Which may or may not take a while.
So, this week, we sat and watched a few videos that were basically tutorials in the use of the Avid editing system, tried to explain why our classmates were late again, and just basically tried to get through another day. It started at about 0630 for me with family calling me up on the landline and saying it was time I got my arse out of bed and went to the university. I went along a different route than usual this time, stopping by the McDonald's on the highway rather than going straight to the shopping centre and its bus terminal. I left the house at about 0650, so I could spare the time. So after a McDonald's breakfast, I got to the shopping centre and hopped on the bus to the train station. Then I hung around the train station for about forty-five or so minutes, meeting with one of my classmates there, and getting on the bus to the university with them. And then I got to the university at about 0840 or thereabouts. Yes, you read that right. I have to get out of the house at ten minutes to seven so I can eat breakfast and get to the school about twenty minutes before the lecture begins. And mind you, when one goes from my current abode to this unversity campus by car, it takes twenty minutes at the most. What is wrong with this picture?
Anyway, the arrivals sort of happened in a staggered pattern. The classmate I want to see making more videos and I got there early, one guy came in about twenty or thirty minutes late, another guy came in about ten or twenty minutes after that, and one woman came in about eighty minutes into the lecture. Enthusiasm, thy name is university. *chuckles* I tell you, everything I had been led to expect or hope for has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Anyway, we all passed around copies of shotlists and shooting schedules that each of us had assembled. I was glad to have finished one myself, but really, I do not want the damned thing being used for anything. It is terrible, and I do not mind telling anyone that. One comment that the lecturer had about my shotlist was that I cut back and forth a lot between wide shots and close-ups in the first scene. I am here thinking "well, yeah...". I did that because I want to dissolve back and forth between a perspective of the person and where she is going. Maybe it is not such a great idea, I do not know, but I wanted to do it anyway because I felt like shaking things up a bit. Ah well, I will leave that to the others to sort out.
So the current plan is for the appointed director to decide which production schedule and shotlist we are going to use for principal photography by the coming Monday, then we are going to do a practice shoot on the following Monday and start principal photography some time after that. Phew. Talk about cutting it close. This is bringing back memories of the end of last semester, in which footage was shot mere days before the final assignment's due date and had to be hastily edited together without any time to reshoot or shoot additional footage to cover gaps. Of which there were plenty. Ah, why am I still bitching so much about this assignment when it is now months behind me? Maybe I am just having trouble with letting go of it, I do not know. Even though I think the people I worked with on that assignment were fine people (one of them is in fact in my current class), I just wish I had taken more of an authoriative direction with them and got them to get the coverage we really needed in order to make a solid three-minute video. Or not. Either way, I was just glad to be finished with that assignment, and I am really sick of revisiting the whole thing in the horror show that is my memory.
Anyway, those that have read this far, thank you for your time and patience. Between now and the next time I write, I want you to ponder the following words of wisdom: Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. It tears the heart right out and crushes it.