The last month has been quite eventful around these parts what with classes and my internship picking up. I suppose I’ll break this update down into three different categories: work, school, and personal life.
Work has been going great. I’m starting to get to know a few of my co-workers and they are trusting me with tasks of increasing difficulty. I started out scanning files, organizing their equipment room (which triples as their filing/server room and makes WIWU’s equipment room look like an OCD sufferers paradise) filing physical forms and their electronic counter parts, mailing....stuff, and copying photos. Now I’m watching unaired, low-res, rough-cut episodes of shows we currently have in development for networks such as E!, A&E, and TLC, taking notes on when people would appear in the background, finding their picture in our database, marking the time-code of their first appearance, and eliminating them from a master list. Sounds easy but it isn’t. Imagine playing Where’s Waldo through a piece of stained glass.
Still, there are some days that are just tedious...like today for example. I spent most of my day in front of the shredder....shredding. Just countless applications of people who wanted to be in one of our new shows and..failed. I even got to shred a few headshots and DVD reels. I ended up filling up to trash cans worth of shredded paper. Occasionally I got asked to come help with something else so there were a few breaks in there. For instance, the main “tech” guy around the office talked to me for the second time (the first time being when he asked if he could borrow my headphones). I thought, “SCHWEET! This guy is always doing cool things like going on shoots and crap, he’ll have something awesome for me to do.” He asked if I was busy, I said no, completely disregarding the huge stack of papers I was about to shred. Guess what he had me do....go ahead. Guess. He had me fold clothes. He said we got this wardrobe in for a shoot tomorrow and it looks like crap* (*my word) so it’d be great if I could just fold them and make them look nice. Again, sounds easy enough, but I don’t know if we’re planning a new docu-series on Sasquatch because these shirts were HUGE! I’ve never handled shirts that big before. In the end, I got the job done but I was so disappointed to have the thin line between work life and personal life blurred.
That’s about as good of a segway as I’ll get so let’s shift gears...
Personal life has had its ups and downs. I’ll start with the ups....combining them to create one giant incline and then combine the downs for one big drop. It’s a perfect roller coaster of life metaphor! Firstly, I got my car back! And it runs like a beaut. Massive shout out to Jay McCoy for finding the problem...(turned out to be a $20 part....natch). Which means I’ve had my first L.A. driving experience! And I didn’t kill anyone! Or any thing! Sure, I only drove it to church a few times and to the grocery store once or twice but so far my record is clean. I still don’t drive the 2-3 miles to Sunset Blvd. every other day for work for the obvious reasons. The first being the exercise. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but I’m all about exercise now. In an industry so shallow, you can’t afford not to be. So, in addition to the walk to work, I’ve been going to the gym about 4 times a week. (I’ve even shaved about 40 seconds off of my mile time.) The second reason is the money. I don’t have to worry about gassing up the car or paying for bus fare. Although, I have taken the bus a few times. The third reason is, of course, the sights. I never know what I might see on my way home. Just a few days ago I saw a guy dressed as Jesus just walking calmly down the street, not a care in the world. You just don’t get that when you ride the bus. Speaking of bus, I did ride the bus today. It was raining for like the first time ever since I’ve been here. It’s actually been overcast and raining on and off for the past three days, a far cry from the record breaking heat we had about a week ago.
Upon arriving at work, I learned that in L.A., rain is the equivalent to snow. Some of the conversations I heard would fit perfectly in Indiana if I replaced “rain” with “snow.” For example: waiting for the elevator to take me up to work, two people we’re talking about the traffic. This is isn’t word for word but the conversation went a little like this - “Yeah, traffic was crazy today.” “Did you take the freeway?” “Yeah, it took me four hours to get here.” “It’s this rain, people are stupid in the rain.” If she thought people were stupid in rain, she must never have seen someone driving in snow.....Another conversation involved my more important superiors or more accurately, the lack of them. A P.A. walks in and asked the assistant where Steve is (the founder of the company). The assistant replied as follows: “Oh, he decided not to come in today because of the rain.” I must say, as a side note, it is really interesting watching the relationship between assistant and boss. At times it’s almost father-daughter, it’s weird. Also, it’s cool to see the assistant receive a phone call, shout out who’s on the line to the boss, who is sitting alone in his office, and then he will just shout out “yes” or “no.” Usually, it’s no. So the assistant jumps back on the line and in a nice way of informing the caller that he isn’t worth anyone’s time, she tells him there is a meeting going on.
Small achievements - I’ve managed to write the next episode of The College Life in my spare time as well as start on another one. Also, I’ve decided to learn After Effects while I’m here and luckily, I’m finding it very similar to Motion....woot!
Oh, yeah. I forgot about the downs....there really aren’t any. Except for the fact that I have yet to find a satisfying slurpee in this city. The 7-11 right next to my apt. only has one non-soda flaver,.....Crystal Light....Sorry, lame roller coaster.
SCHOOL!
Has been pretty cool. I’m actually set to shot my first project this weekend, it’s a script that I co-wrote and I’ll be acting mostly as the script supervisor on set but I’m also the editor so once the film has wrapped, I’ll really have my work cut out for me.
Classes have gotten really fun. We are doing a lot of things collaboratively now, which I’m enjoying. We are building characters through a painstaking process of re-write after re-write. I’ll keep you posted on that because the plan is to produce the script that I write based on this character. I know it’ll be tough to get done on time but hey, it’s what I signed up for.
There are still loads of things I could write about but this is getting ridiculous and I’m getting tired and I wanna do some AE experimentation before I go to bed.
I’ll try to do a better job of keeping this blog updated as my projects take form and my work at Asylum becomes more interesting.
Love,
Russ
