the early bird gets the worm... or the grab

The filming of the PR breakfast with Josh and Ed of 3rd yr Media went well yesterday... Woke up at the bitchin' hour of 5:30am in order to haul arse to Spring St by 6:15. I wasn't in the best of moods. The other stress-addled folk only seemed to exacerbate this, but by 7am we were all systems go and had been given the green light to tuck into our Continental (ha ha) breakfasts, so things weren't all gloom. In fact the day itself turned out to be lovely - sunny even - and it was a delight to work with two guys who had the levels of experience that those two did.

I actually didn't feel out of place not knowing as much as them.. I just paid attention and asked as many questions as I could. It was nice feeling welcomed into unfamiliar territory, as I was initially quite worried about how the events would transpire (and consequently, how much shit we'd end up in if we buggered anything up). It was my first time getting to work with radio mics, so I found that particularly useful from a technical perspective.

For most of the morning I was responsible for taking the still shots, which I've already burnt onto disc to give to Carey when I go in for tomorrow's prac. Josh did the bulk of the filming, and I take my hat off to him for putting in such a fine effort. Though I wonder how that Tim Flanney story ended up in the news? There were more journos present than you could sink a ship with, but from what I could tell there were no other film crews. It'd be bloody exciting if the work of us lowly students was unwittingly broadcast on national TV, dontcha think?

In short, I'm really glad I volunteered to do this. I'm slowly building up enough confidence to be able to tackle the technical side of things and thus contribute something meaningful to the overall production process. You know what they say - one step at a time.

tail wind's a long way off

Tomorrow we begin filming for Lenny.
I'm rather apprehensive about this, because last night's meeting revolved around tieing up loose ends with our drama script (we ended up choosing Potato Cakes, YESS!) rather than getting a storyboard together for tomorrrow. So with any luck we won't fail and will hopefully be able to shoot as per the notes we made in class last week... Only problem is, Jen isn't going to be around for the next few pracs and I've MISPLACED my TV1 notebook. I don't think this semester could be any more of a shambles if it tried... and I have a feeling this head wind won't subside anytime soon... argh.

Despite my best efforts to become more of a presence in this so-called 'group' project, I've pretty much landed the most minor role possible: Production Design. I'm not going to pretend to be happy with this, but seeing as the decision had been made prior to my consultation, there's not exactly a lot of choice. Yeah, I'm annoyed that my talent and enthusiasm aren't going to be utilised to their full extent. But at the same time, I'm too over this project to really let it get to me. What started out as the highlight of my year has quickly become the biggest anti-climax... I don't know if it's the way these classes are structured or what, but lately all I seem to be feeling is either completely petrified about filming or totally out of place in all my non-media degree glory.

It's probably not a good idea to be going on about this here, so I'll just put a lid on it for now. On the plus side, nothing can affect my love for this medium, so I know I'll always put 110% into anything with my name attached to it. I guess I just wanted my last year of undergrad to stand for more, you know? I wanted to push my own limits and capabilities and take complete ownership of something, like I did with Broadcast, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get that chance. I guess all there really is left to focus on is honing my own skills and understanding to try and get as much out of this as I can. I want to walk into next semester with the confidence to assert my beliefs... Just got to pull through this first.