i've got some catching up to do

So it's been well over a month since I've last written and absolutely nothing has happened. New York is really boring and is no better than Manassas, Virginia. 

I hope I don't even need to say "just kidding". A lot has been going on, so I'll try to be brief. The first 6-7 weeks of school were kind of like a boot camp. 8 classes with 8-10 class meetings a week. We made a film/project a week, sometimes on film and sometimes on video, for our directing classes. We wrote the screenplay for our MOS project which is a 16mm black and white silent film which had to be shot entirely outside with no dialogue (MOS means "mit out sound" and is German and I have no idea what it really means but it means no sound/dialogue). In all of our classes we did smaller projects/assignments while the overall arch prepared us for our MOS. Last Monday was the last day of classes and now for the next month we make our films. We are all broken up into crews and each direct our screenplay while rotating crew positions on our group member's shoots. We resume classes in early November and start preparing for our documentaries which we will shoot over winter break all while editing our MOS projects for mid-December evaluations with the entire first year faculty. 

I shot my film first last Tuesday and Wednesday. I had some trouble in post-production finding a location and I didn't cast my lead actress (an 8 year girl) until a couple days before, but I have to say I was blessed with a great shoot. The film is at the lab now so as long as it comes back with images on it (I will find out Monday) I can honestly say I had a great shoot. The little girl I cast is the next Jodie Foster and no that is not an overstatement. She did the same takes and the same action over and over all day without ever complaining and she always hit her marks. She was professional and she could recite my whole story from memory, which she did when asked what the film was about in her audition. She was interested in the camera and learned how to focus on things, learned about the matte box and filters and had a great time clapping the slate. She worked long days and never, ever, ever misbehaved. She made my movie for me and I would have never finished if it wasn't for her work ethic. She would question my judgement about angles and ask "Is this going to look good?" and I would always answer "I hope so." She did a wonderful job so I hope everything I was responsible for "looks good."

The film cost me a lot of money so I am hoping to do some temp work before classes start again between classes to pick up some extra cash. I am also hoping the film comes out like I hope it will (I got all positive feedback from my peers and friends who read the screenplay which is very unusual for something I have written) so as long as I am a competent director I should end up with a decent film, which could equal a decent film festival run which I hope equals prizes that will help me pay off my debt and begin working on my next film. In the spring when we return from break we begin editing our docs and begin writing our next project: an adaptation. Before break we will be given about 12 short stories and we choose one to adapt in the spring. I am really, really excited about this project because I have never adapted something before and I am starting to find that I am very interested in fiction based on true events, so it will be good experience for me. I hope we are given some well-known, famous short stories and not just stories from MFA writing students but I guess it doesn't matter as long as there is some good subject matter. I just have a couple short stories in mind that I would like to take a crack at.

I started looking for internships for this summer. I want to get one with Spike Lee's or Michael Moore's production company so I am started early. NYC is expensive. It is getting cold here. I saw two movies in the theater yesterday (movies are $12 here and none I've been to have a student discount). There are two plays I would like to see this week/soon: one that is compiled from thousands of true stories of people's first time having sex and the other is a musical titled "Life After Bush." There are also some plays with some famous people (Katie Holmes, Peter Sarsgaard, one directed by David Schwimmer)on Broadway right now that I would like to see. We almost ran over Michelle Williams and Spike Jonze with the cart full of camera equipment last week right outside my building. She smiled at me (she is so cute). They watched as we struggled and smiled in sympathy because they don't have to carry their own equipment. 

That's about it for now. I will try to update more regularly again now that I have time to myself again.