Sunday, 20 November 2005
11:59pm
F
ilm school has been amazing. It's every bit as intensive as advertised. Tomorrow is the first day of my fourth week. Earlier tonight I shot my 3rd film project. Wednesday I shoot my fourth one and I'll be directing a crew of 10 guys. And I've worked on or been in at least 5 other people's projects. It's busy as heck, and I've got no time for anything. I'm sitting inside classrooms 35+ hours a week plus having to eat lunch, dinner, plan and shoot my projects, work on other people's projects... I barely have enough to poop. Probably the last time I was this busy was when I was simultaneously working full time at CAPE and then at night working on a stage show.
But I'm having an absolute blast. It's a great kind of busy. I'm starting to adapt to the new timetable. I mean, for like 10 years I never paid attention to what time it was or planned ahead very far. Now I'm having to juggle multiple simultaneous projects plus make it to all my classes. I'm already a lot less dependent on coffee to make it through the day. The first week i was a complete mess.
I'd just returned from my Afghanistan the night before my first day of school. After being up about 36 hours straight, I slept a whopping 4 hours before waking up and going to school. The rest of the week I never got more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. That friday night I told my mom not to wake me up for ANYTHING. Then i went to bed at around 2am and woke up at 6PM on Saturday evening!! I completely missed an entire day. But man, did I ever need that rest.
The following week I actually made it through without feeling like a zombie, though i did still have to drink a crapload of coffee just to stay awake. This past week I hardly needed any coffee at all, and actually wished I had less after I discovered our 25 cent coffee machine has an "extra strong" option button. Man on Friday evening I was almost bounching off the walls while trying to hold a production meeting after drinking like two of those in a row, haha.
Welp it's already almost 2am so I better get to bed since I have to wake up in about 5 hours. I hope y'all are having a great time. I'll try to find some time to post some pics and whatnot.

Thursday, 24 November 2005
3:50pm

D
o I look like I am having a good time in this photo? Because I am :). This pic is from yesterday when as a class we visited Mole-Richardson for the second time. Mole-Richardson is probably the world's leading manufacturer of movie lights, and it's run by a very cool dude named Larry Parker who is in his 60's now but has been working for this company since he was in his teens (family company and all). He actually invented a lot of the designs that are still in use today, though these days he's mostly retired from the inventing side of things and now seems to spend most of his time teaching students from various film schools around Southern California about the technical side of lighting a movie set, from power distribution on down to how to set up and operate all of the lights, stands and related accessories.
Yesterday I directed a scene with a crew of about 10 guys working. The purpose of this exercise I think was just for everyone to see what the different crewmembers roles on set are, since it seems like most people don't really have any idea of how a set is supposed to run. Nobody in my group wanted to direct this thing (there are going to be 2 more scenes like this and we are supposed to rotate crew positions around) so I volunteered. My belief that I don't really think I'd make that good of a director was futher solidified. I mean, I think I was pretty good at getting the work done, but I just don't think the way a director needs to think.
If I were not being advised by one of the teachers, I would have made precisely the exact same mistakes that I was criticized about when we screened my last project the day before. And it's simple stuff that should be like second nature to anybody who is worth a damn as a director... if I forget about that kind of stuff in one day, then to me it seems that I don't really have a natural inclination for this sort of job.
Now lighting on the other hand, I enjoy, and a lot of the concepts that seem obvious or like they should be common sense to me, a lot of other students seem to struggle with. So even though I was criticized from a directorial standpoint on the previous project, I was still happy because at least it looked good. I'd been talking so much crap for years about how poorly lit most Korean dramas seem to be, and that it would be really cheap, and really simple to make it look so much better. And with that project, my goal was to make it look better than a Korean drama. I think I succeeded... not too bad for it being only the second time I've ever worked with lighting, if I do say so myself:


So yeah, I'm more sure than ever that I should spend the rest of my time at L.A. Film School concentrating on cinematography. As a result of that I'm probably going to by Cami's old Corolla station wagon, because my car is too damned small to fit even the smallest, most basic lighting kit that my school has to offer... not exactly a good thing for a person looking to do a lot of lighting and camera work, haha.
But man am I ever busy. Next week I'll be spending 42.5 hours in class. I hardly have any time to think and if today wasn't Thanksgiving, well I certainly wouldn't have any time for typing this, haha. Apparently though, these first eight weeks are really tough (basically a weeding out period of undedicated students) and things get a little bit easier afterwards. If that's the case, then... phew, only 4 more weeks of this crazy schedule to go.