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About Saturday. May 22nd. 2016.

I went to Sushi Totoro today with a friend and caught up on life. My friend Haley is a very down to Earth kind of person. She speaks with confidence and is an intelligent conversationalist. She kind of looks like a witch (in a good way). She has a large nose and chin and wears a lot of black but it definitely suits her. She also has a tone of voice similar to Emma Stone’s. Very rough around the edges but sweet. She really likes Marvel movies and media used for entertainment purposes, in general. She told me that she saw A Dream Play and liked it but didn’t get it. It was a bit “too artsy” for her. She is a costume designer as well, and said that the design elements of the play were awesome even if she didn’t get the story.

About Friday. May 21st. 2016.

Today was opening night for A Dream Play. The energy in the dressing room was insane! The actors were all very excited. They were singing and dancing with each other and seemed generally happy. They kept bouncing around the room like ping pong balls. They seemed like they were going to explode if they didn’t let that energy out soon. Needless to say, it was a great opening night. You could tell the audience fed off the actors because the House was only half full but everyone was laughing hysterically and “aww”ing at certain key moments in the performance.

About Thursday May 19th. 2016.

Today I showed a rough cut of my film in class. The feedback I got was really nice but I wish people would have been meaner (?) about my work. I think people were being too nice about my work. To be honest I hate the story I wrote and would definitely re-do the whole thing if I had the time. However, it did get some good laughs and people seemed to respond well to it. I even saw Mason laugh! And he’s usually super serious about stuff so that was cool. I wanted this project to kind of break the rules for what we’ve learned in the class. I’ve noticed that comedy works well when the stakes feel extremely low or extremely high so I tried to play with both in this film. Not sure if people picked up on that or not, but either way, about half the class was laughing out loud to the visual comedy which was awesome. People only really had issues with editing and a few shakey/inappropriate camera angles which I can totally fix in editing.

About Wednesday May 18th. 2016.

Today was the second dress rehearsal for A Dream Play. It went much better and wardrobe (my crew) got a special personal thanks from Kirsten for doing an almost impossible quick change. I know I nerd out about her a lot, but I just really admire her as a director. Anyway, and observation I had today was regarding individual actors. One actor that we do the “impossible” quick change for is very silly. They do weird things backstage like dance to music happening onstage and make silly faces at me and other actors. They have an outfit that looks similar to Charlie Chaplin and it is totally fitting. They can move their body in weird ways that are hilarious to witness. During a ballroom dance scene, waltz music blares and this actor pretends to dance with their props backstage as though they are trying to woo a lover. Its very entertaining.

About Tuesday May 17th. 2016.

Today was the first day of dress rehearsal for A Dream Play. It went fairly smoothly but there were a few things that needed to be tightened up, as per usual. But my observation today was more about the actors than my crew. It seems like this cast is very close with eachother. I have worked with them all before separately on other shows but this cast more than others seemed to work very well together. They are always communicating what they need with me and with others, and they warm up together instinctively. From what I know of Kirsten (the director), she seems to favor training actors to work together as a unit. It definitely shows. Much of the time, actors finish eachother’s sentences, know what eachother needs before they even say anything and feed off eachother’s energy really well. When they warm up, they all participate 100%. There is not one actor that seems to be unhappy or lazy. I want to know what Kirsten’s method is for getting/casting actors with this much charisma and willingness to participate.

About Friday. May 13th. 2016. I forgot to write about the Crew View I went to of A Dream Play. First things first, this play is AMAZING. It's being directed by Kirsten Brandt, a professor I took a directing class from last year. I love her work and her ability to not only communicate well to actors but to also communicate themes of the play through its design. I am working as wardrobe mistress for this show so I will get to see what happens backstage as actors prepare themselves to enter the stage. Kirsten was giving a little direction in this runthrough but I could tell she didn't want to say much because this is one of the last rehearsals before dress rehearsal and she didn't want to overload her actors. I noticed that she sat with 2 scripts in front of her, one to make notes on and one to follow lines/action. She also read stage directions if something was supposed to happen with the set that wasn't finished yet. Even though not all of the technical things were finished, I could feel the intensity and actually had an easy time suspending my disbelief because the acting was so good. The play is poetic in itself but the actors really did bring the play to life. It's definitely a different feeling than watching actors on film.

About Sunday. May 15th. 2016. I woke up early this morning to help Max with his shoot and I'm glad I offered to help because Giordi had an emergency and couldn't make it to the shoot. He had to choreograph me to handle both sound and camera. It was really fun but a bit challenging because he wanted one long take where I walked in front of the actors down a hallway. Even though I had control of the gear, he still was able to give me direction for exactly what he wanted. I really like his directing style. He is personable and keeps a level head under pressure. Instead of freaking out when Giordi couldn't get to the shoot, he made a joke about it and then came up with a solution. I really enjoyed working with him.

About Saturday. May 14th. 2016. I finished shooting today. This shoot was A LOT of fun. We went out into the cow fields at sunset and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Just before this shoot we all had eaten snacks. I think this helped people's energy levels including mine. In between takes the actors and crew would be joking around and coming up with more blocking on the fly that actually helped make the film more interesting. Overall I think the location and food were key to bringing people's energy up for this shoot. I also planned to give us a lot more time just in case the sound catastrophe happened again.

About Friday. May 13th. 2016. Today I filmed the first half of my film for this class. It was kind of hectic because we started late. The sound equipment was forgotten at someone's house so I had to call someone to run it over. That set us back about an hour so I really had to rush. It sucked but we got everything done that I needed. Unfortunately I didn't have time to stop and figure out my thoughts, I had to just go by my shot list and story board and didn't have time to think about whether it worked for the situation or not. I think this affected my actors performances a lot because they seemed really tired and had low energy after shooting the first scene.

About Thursday. May 12th. 2016. Today in my horror film section we talked about disturbing film clips the professor showed in class. Many people were upset that there was no trigger warning for these clips. There were graphic portrayals of rape and violence shown in horror films. One student even fainted in class when watching these and fell and hit his face, causing him to bleed. One person said "I would never actually choose to watch this stuff. Once you have those images in your head you can't get it out."

About Monday. May 9th. 2016.

My boss didn’t show up for work today because he was getting diagnosed for sleep apnea. When I asked my coworker what that was she blatantly stated “it means he could die at any time.” Basically, my boss could stop breathing in his sleep long enough to suffocate himself. I had no idea this existed before today. I’m very worried about him and hope that he gets the help he needs. I won’t know about what happened until Wednesday. That’s a really scary thought. To know that one day you might forget to breathe and die while sleeping. I would be afraid to fall asleep. I wonder if he is too.

About Sunday. May 8th. 2016. Greg's shoot was today. It was SO FUN. The costumes and props he included in his film were hilarious and made the filmmaking process way more fun. Usually I feel like I stand around a lot while the director figures out what they want but Greg knew exactly what he wanted and wanted to utilize my skills to the best he could. He had me doing sound and makeup the whole time. Our team had worked on many films before and we work really well together. Overall it was a super awesome shoot. I'm glad he asked me to be a part of it.

About Saturday. May 7th. 2016. The waiter at Saturn Cafe that I had today was being extra nice to me and my friend. He kept asking us if we wanted refills and complimenting us. He said my friends jacket looked nice on her. He seemed cute and I almost thought he was hitting on us. When we left the cafe my friend revealed to me that they had actually matched on Tinder. Ah. That's why.

About Friday. May 6th. 2016. I went amateur paranormal investigating with a friend. We brought flashlights, a camera and an app that searched radio stations and was supposed to be our way of "communicating with the dead." It was all in good fun. We just wanted to get out of the house and do something that didn't cost money. We went to Evergreen Cemetery around 11pm and set everything up. We walked around the cemetery in the dark. At first I was really scared to even go past the sign. It was so dark you couldn't even see the path through the cemetery. We were using the app on my friends phone and asking questions half heartedly. Eventually we ended up talking about mundane things and bitching about school because I guess no spirits wanted to talk to us. Then after a while, the space didn't feel scary anymore. It felt familiar and comforting. It's weird how an interaction with someone can change the way you perceive a space.

(About) Sunday. May 1st. 2016.

Today I went to brunch at Dennys with a bunch of my friends from high school. I haven’t spoken to them all in a really long time but when I hit them up to hang out, almost all of them tried their best to make it. 3 of them switched work shifts around just so they could hang out. I’ve known them all since my freshman year of high school and we all grew up together, so it means a lot to me that they tried so hard to make it. It was funny too because we were all sitting around the table looking at the menu and I was like “is there anything good here?” And my friend was like “no. What were you expecting? We’re at Dennys.” And everyone laughed. I think this moment sums up our friendship pretty well. We don’t care what we do or how good the food is, we just want to see each other. We have a great time together and enjoy each others’ company and what really matters to us is that we stick together no matter what we go through. This is the same group of friends that were really close with my friend Saul who passed away last year. Since his death, I feel like we’ve all been trying harder than ever before to see each other as often as we can.

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