Hey, kids! It's been a crazy week or so. Here's a nice little recap of things and what's gone down.
I finished my filmie on Monday night thanks to 'round the clock efforts of Josh, my sound designer. I got a whopping 3 hours sleep that night, which was the opposite of awesome. But we finished and I was pretty happy with it.
The SDSU Film Festival jury had viewed the film prior to Monday, without most of the sound, and they deemed in unworthy of making the half of the festival that people would have to pay to see. Needless to say, I was bummed. Most of my friends' films had made it and that made it all the harder. It was no consolation to me that we were still in the free festival and people would still get to see my work. After all the effort I had put into my filmie and it being the culmination of my academic career, having my filmie relegated to the red-headed stepchild festival felt like an indictment on me. It hurt bad.
But when the sound was finished (for now), the filmie was twice as good as before. So there was some hope, though it seemed fleeting, that a change would get made and it would get bumped up to the big-time.
Meanwhile, I had other stuff to get done. I had a 30-page First Act screenplay to write for Friday. I had at that point (Monday) only written about 3 and an 1/8th pages, and one of those pages needed to be re-worked.
I pissed away Tuesday somewhat by watching TV and nonsense (I'm sure I was also on here too much) and I typed a few things for directing class. So on Wednesday I set out to pretty much write the whole damned thing. I'm not gonna lie, it turned out pretty damned good. It ended up only being 21 pages but the story was there and moving and it was only the first draft. It was really nice to have that done and under my belt for the rest of the week.
My printer cartridge had slightly different ideas. The black ink ran out, wouldn't ya know it. I had to print out at school which was a minor inconvenience/annoyance.
On Thursday, I grudgingly used my filmie as my final project in my directing class. I had wanted to do something unique but my time was clearly devoted to my filmie and so things had to work out this way. I still felt like I had let my jolly professor, Peter, down. On a side note, I had seen him really yell at somebody the previous week and it made me more than slightly afraid of him (like I said, he's always very jolly). But I digress... So I showed my filmie in class and the response was pretty positive, though we watched it on a really shitty TV. So that was comforting but I did notice areas that we could tighten up later. Much later.
That night was the festival. Early Thursday morning, I received an email about my filmie making the paid portion of the festival. I was really happy about that but also sad that my actors probably wouldn't have enough notice to be there for it. But at least it meant that my filmie was worth paying to see. It made me feel like a professional filmmaker.
When it came time for my filmie, I slumped down in my seat and hyperventilated, waiting to be booed off of the campus. Of course that didn't happen, nor would it have but I can be quite ridiculous with myself. We actually got a really great response. They laughed in all the right spots and everyone was very complimentary afterwards. I was and am quite pleased. This festival was going to be my litmus test of where this film would go, either to more festivals or into the vault, never to be seen again. I'm touched to say that the former is far more likely. High-Five!
On Friday morning, I delivered my screenplay to my professor and Erik and I ate a celebratory lunch, at Sbarros! We had both done it, we graduated. Holy smokes! Done. Cah-put. It's a good feeling but I know I'm going to miss a lot of people. Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeggggg!
On Saturday, I went to work at the Convention Center for the very last time, fully expecting some sort of celebration. And... ...that's a negative. Nothing. A lump of coal might have been more enthusiastic. I was really disappointed. I spent 5 years at that building, over 1/5th of my life. My friend Tony and I sprung for pizza and so I drowned myself in that. I also spent the last half-hour or so in the bathroom. Seriously, who needs alcohol?! Again, it was good to be moving on but I will miss many people. I still have to call a few people to say proper good-byes.
So, I'm a college graduate. I'm unemployed. I'm 23Gs in debt. And I'm overweight (mostly unrelated, just figured I'd throw that in).
Christmas is coming though and so is much leisure. I have shopping to do and DVDs to watch. More blogs will be coming too, kids. Oh yeah. :-P Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbth!!!
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