TMI

This week has been stressful. Not because of the end of the semester - finishing the film on Tuesday, screening it last night, having my committee review meeting next Monday morning - that's all to be expected at the end of the first year of school. It's the health thing (giant fibroids that I've been referring to as my basketball, if there's anyone not up to date). But even that wasn't stressful in the way that I think other people might have been stressed. There was no need to think it might be cancer so I wasn't worried about the diagnosis. It was just that until I got my official diagnosis I couldn't really make any other plans. Earlier in the semester I had gotten myself all worked up about squeezing every ounce of experience I could out of my time here and I put all sorts of irons in the fire to try to get meaningful work for the summer. Now suddenly I can't work all summer and don't know what part of the summer I might be able to work. I hate not knowing and not being able to plan. Being a pathologically organized person that little cloud of chaos in my life was making me crazy all week.

Writing for television

We have a series at school that they call cinemateque that is screenings with discussions held about 6 times each semester. Everyone in the department is required to go to at least 2. I think I did 4 this term because they're really quite interesting most of the time. The last one of the semester was on Friday with a woman who writes for television. We screened episodes from 2 very different shows that she's written for and then had a great Q&A with her. One of my friends asked what she talked about and after I realized there's probably several friends who might find this interesting.

I'm not sure what to do with myself

Yesterday was the last day of classes. How did that happen? Wasn't I just whining about packing my house up? On the other hand, I've shot 6 short films, written about 10 short scripts (some of them very very short), learned to use Avid, played with lots of different cameras, so I suppose that's a year's worth of things.

Log line for Take Out

On Wednesday I have to have a log line for Take Out for class. A log line is 1 to 2 sentences that describe the film in a teasing sort of way that doesn't give away the ending. It's most often used for programs and website at screenings. So if there are several blocks of shorts and you want to pick which one to see but you've never heard of any of them, you look at the titles and the photos and read the log lines to see what sounds good to you.

My log line for Killer is: Sometimes waiting for the bus can be the most dangerous part of your day.

Anybody have any good ideas? The comment section is open for brainstorming.

An award winning film

So I had a good weekend. I didn't network nearly as much as I should. It was the closing night party before I really started talking to people. That seems about typical for me: 4 days to break the ice. But in the meantime I saw a lot of good films, many of them under 5 minutes which is the qualification for being a short short. On Saturday though, I left after the afternoon screenings because I was having dinner with Mom and Dad. Dad asked me what I was missing by having dinner with them and I said the Jury Awards and then 2 more screenings. He asked why I didn't want to stay for the awards and I said I wasn't in competition so whatever. (Passing was in competition for a Jury prize at Woods Hole and they had asked me to send extra DVDs to give to the jury judges.) Then the next morning I was checking Facebook and the festival had listed the award winners so I looked.

Killer won for best short short.

One week left

I only have 2 big things left to do in the next week.

1) I have to finish Take Out. Sam thinks it needs a better title. I know I will never come up with a better title, but if anyone has a sudden inspiration feel free to share it. He said what about even Take Away, but I said that sounds too British. He thought it was a bit too generic and didn't say enough about what kind of film it was. Apart from potentially changing the title though, I think it's coming along very well. I'm at picture lock. John has a copy and is working on the score. I'm starting the rest of the sound design. And then I'll do color correction. Though in fact we get finals week to work on it as well. My last class is Wednesday the 1st, but we have until the 6th to turn in the copy for screening on the 8th.

2) I have to write an 8 page paper for Thesis Prep. That's not a lot of writing since she wants it double spaced, but it will take a lot of thought. We had one on one meetings with Mary Jane instead of a regular class today. We could ask her about the paper. I got one point clarified. Apparently the boys haven't even read the directions yet. Mostly we talked about my latest version of Grandpa's Getaways. She started out with "How much do you really want to pitch this for your thesis?" And I said I'd rather pitch the one I wrote for Debbie's class. She was relieved by that.

2 dozen people and the ice cream truck

Do none of them know what "Shelter in place" means?