The main thing that has been occupying me is moving, which is one of the more horrifying self-inflicted experiences one can encounter. Moving sucks even more than looking for apartments, although at least when you're moving, there's an end in sight. Sort of.
Leaving Li-Wei's house was weird. I didn't have to move-- she bought a condo that is still being built, and it won't be done until about January. But I needed someone to move in with (because living alone is ridiculously expensive), and Kara needed to move out of her place, so we found a place together. For awhile we toyed with the idea of living with Will, but that didn't work out, even though it would have meant having constant access to lots of amazing board games, not to mention Rock Band AND Guitar Hero. But it was not to be. We found a place in Los Feliz, four blocks from school. Ironic that I moved closer to school once I graduated, isn't it? I can frickin' walk there now, which would have been nice first year, but now is mostly useful to go print things out, or to park my car when there's no parking. Our new place only has one parking spot for the both of us. It hasn't been a problem yet, but it may be eventually. I'll put some pictures of the new place up here soon, once my room doesn't look like a giant jumble of stuff. My room is really small, which means it consists mostly of my gigantic bed and whatever I can squeeze around it. My bed used to belong to Steve, who is 6'7, so it's bigger than normal beds. Kind of silly for someone who is 5'3.5".
Mom and Dad sent down our old dining room table and chairs for us, which is cool, and Aunt Kim gave us a pink chair that used to be in their house. I don't remember it from any of their houses, but it's comfy and just barely fits in our skinny living room. Between the pink chair and our craigslisted purple couch, we have a kind of girly living room, but hey... it was cheap, and it's comfortable. Having the table and chairs makes me really happy. They remind me of home. I am determined to keep them nice and in good condition, which means no cup rings or scratches. I should probably get a table cloth to help me out there for parties.
Speaking of which, we're having our housewarming party on Friday! It is pirate-themed, which means we'll have some lame decorations and prizes for anyone who comes dressed as a pirate. Maybe we'll also feature rum as the alcohol of choice. Who knows. It will be fun in any case, and I just hope people come. But not everyone... we invited about 100 people, and there's no way we'd fit them all in our place. Besides, that would be a LOT of guacamole to make.
I just did laundry in our new building for the first time (the most amazing thing about moving was discovering how many socks I own, despite the fact that I can never seem to find any), and the laundry room reminds me a bit of the good old Ridge and Church laundry rooms. You have to go outside to get there, and there's something about the painted cement floor that's the same... of course, there are only four machines, so it's not nearly big enough for even a modest game of Laundry Ball, and I wouldn't dream of shooting a film project down there, but still... it is pleasantly reminiscent of things past. And you know how I like reminiscing.
I'm also getting ready to (finally) do the reshoots for my thesis. Our main actor, Tony Todd, was cast as the new villain guy on 24, a show I couldn't care less about, but which I acknowledge is a pretty cool gig to get. Tony's already decently famous, but he'll be even more so now, which may end up helping our film on the festival circuit. Our film has been received ok so far, which is good, but we want it to really be something people remember. With reshoots we're trying to make our main character's objectives a little clearer without overtly stating them-- the comments we've gotten have been a mix of "it was too obvious" and "i don't understand the character." So Nick added a scene, and we're doing a lot of shots to strengthen other scenes. I'm pretty nervous about making things match... especially since I don't have particularly good camera notes from half my shoot. Rrrrg.
The grant we got for the film, from Fuji, prompted the magazine Fuji puts out (it's called Exposure) to call me to interview me. Me! Weird, huh? I'm pretty sure it's just going to be a little sidebar article or something, but I guess they want to do it because we're the first people to get the grant. Or maybe they just needed more stuff to put in the next issue. In any case, last week, Letia invited us to her mom's insanely nice apartment in Santa Monica, as a sort of wrap party for AB Negative, her thesis film along with Bre, Chris Burgon and Naomi. So we were sitting at the rooftop pool, overlooking the incredible view of the Santa Monica and Malibu coastline, and this guy from Exposure calls to interview me. I felt like someone super important, sitting in this fancy setting:
which had its own kitchen and endless supply of creamer:
and being interviewed about a film I shot. I kind of wanted it to be a super techy interview like the ones in American Cinematographer, where they ask about film stocks and lights that were used and all sorts of fun fancy stuff... and there was a bit of that. He asked about the camera and the film stock, but that's about it. He asked about how Nick and I worked together, and about the weather at the beach and if it held up for us. So I think it will be a short, but hopefully good article. I hope I didn't sound too nervous or inexperienced. I know our film like the back of my hand, but when I get nervous I don't necessarily express it well. I think I did well. Didn't mention a single thing about crazy Steadicam issues or almost getting kicked off beaches! Huzzah. I will link to the article, if it's ever put up online, when it comes out... or, if it's terrible, I'll skirt the issue and you guys will eventually deduce that things did not go well.
Must get the laundry now and then get to bed. Chris Freilich's reshoots are tomorrow, and then I'm TAing for Fred's 7am class with the new 2nd years on Tuesday. It's going to be a busy week between those things and planning for reshoots-- but I should get some more writing done at some point. Because you all missed me so much, didn't you?
