Drinking in the City...

After 6 years at MSU, I felt like I had mastered the art of pre-gaming. The routine for a night out would progress as follows: get home from class or work around 5:30 or 6:00, turn on Halo 2 as I walk in the door, go to the fridge and grab a beer and start drinking and playing halo for a couple of hours. Around 7:30, I would start to worry about the line at Rick's (those of you who have waited in lines with me can attest to my absolute pure hatred for lines) so i would get in the shower. Drinking in the shower is one of the best things in the entire world. Then I would come out and usually play halo until 8:30 or 9. Then I would start to freak out about the line and make everyone leave around 9 or 9:30 and be comfortably drunk by 10:30 or so. Then I would continue to drink until around 12:30 or 1 and go home either because I was too tired, I wanted food, I wanted to play more halo, or my roommate had ditched me for some Rick's whore. He never met a girl he could say no to. Anyways, thats how many people operate in Mi, only maybe not so much Halo. In nyc, it is an entirely new ballgame. Bars here have last call at 3:30. Not 1. That means people take my schedule and push it back for 2 hours. Pre-drinking here doesn't start until 9 sometimes and people don't go out until 11. It's very cool and terrible at the same time. Cool because the bar is open until 4ish. Terrible because I like to go to bed early and am usually ready (on account of my routine for the latter part of my life) to leave by about 12:30 or 1. My point is, well I guess I don't really have a point I just felt like talking about that. In summation, pre-drinking is esential in ny b/c bars are expensive.

I felt like I owed everyone a real blog after my tirade yesterday (I know the blog says Oct 2 but I actually posted it yesterday). I was very upset about the way my film turned out and I want to explain why. On our projects we are assigned a crew. Our crews are pretty much our team, if they fuck up we lose. I am not tying to blame my failure on them, actually I feel like it is entirely my fault which is why I was so mad. As a director we are not allowed to be behind the camera. We have to direct everything that is going on and that's not possible from behind the camera. So when I got my footage back on wed. I was shocked at how bad it was. At first I was mad at my dp (director of photgraphy) but then I calmed down and realized it really wasn't completely his fault. He didn't mean for the footage to suck, it just did. I had to put together that piece of crap and it made me mad that I couldn't do a re-shoot. I did not want to put my name on it because I wasn't happy with it. I know my first film sucked, but I was proud of it. It was the first thing I shot on actual 16mm film and the exposure was awesome. Since this was my 2nd project and I was shooting outside (the outdoors are very east to shoot because of all the natural light) I had very high hopes. When you spend a long time coming up with and idea and writing an outline and a shot diagram and a story board and you think everything went well, it is the biggest let down in the world. I have never been so dissapointed in my life. I was genuinely upset that it turned out so poorly. Anyways, I dirgess. My point is that I have lived my life always making sure that if I had a group for anything I would take on all the responsibility. I don't care if I did a group project by myself, I hate depending on someone else to do their fair share because in reality some people just don't care. It makes it hard to work with people when you don't trust them to do a good job. I know a lot of people feel the same way about groups and would rather have a tremendous amount of work than leave it up to someone else who might do a bad job and make you pay for it when you did nothing wrong in the first place. I suppose that I am going to have to trust people otherwise I am shot out of luck. There is only so much that one person can do on a set and if people fuck up then I am going down with the ship. I was trying to figure out why I posted my last film and I realized that I am actually living my creed, go big or go home. Sure it sucked and was awful and made no sense, but it's mine. I made it. I am going down with my ship and you all should too. I was talking to a friend from highscool who said that it was cool that I was doing what I really wanted to do and it got me thinking that even though he was in law school and doing very well he wasn't doing what he wanted to do, or at least he wasn't following his dreams. If you aren't following your dreams you are toiling away. Life's too short to toil. I am trying to figure out why people don't follow their heart when they have to opportunity to do so. I get that sometimes people can't for reasons they can't control, but if you have the means then why not? Why not do what you want? Because you might not make money after doing so? There is a very good chance I will have no job after this year but I am going to try nonetheless. I am not going to say that this was a waste of time if it doesn't work out. We only have this one life so why not do everything with it that you want. I have dreams of making kickass movies and winning and oscar. They are dreams not fanatsy. The difference is that dreams come true and fantasies don't. Sure I may never win an oscar but I will be happy being a dp who gets no credit at all (which is egregious) just as long as I am doing what I want with my life. So I implore you all to stop toiling and do what makes you happy. There really is no time like the present and you need to stop living for a future that you can't predict. What's the point in working hard to have a job that you don't like jut because you will have a secure income. Money is overrated. To quote the movie 'Rudy.' "In this life you ain't go to prove nothin to nobody but yourself." Despite the double negative, I completely agree.

As always get your feet off the ground and keep reaching for the stars. Go big or go home. Pain helas, chicks dig scars and glory lasts forever. Carpe diem bitches.

I'm out

-M, p & z

oh ps - i am not sure some of you know what film stock is. It is like film from a camera. Only the cameras we use take 24 pictues a second which is captured onto a reel which then has to be developed like a rol of film on a camera. It is not like a Hi8 tape that you may have in your sony handycam at home. It is like a reel of negatives. It's probably the coolest way to shoot a movie and looks incomparably better than digital. The picture at the top is of the camera we use, it's called an Arriflex-16. It's pretty awesome, they used to be used in WWII and also during old news broadcasts.