Sunday, September 6, 2009
Enthusiastically and Regretfully
Friday, July 31, 2009
My Knee
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Exactly 2 Months
Filming for the last project was stressful, as usual. I found that most of us wanted the process to end as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Week 10: (June 8-13)
We had a guest speaker named Callan White. She is a very talented actress, and has a huge heart for teaching. This whole week of classes was... a relief. A breath of fresh air. Rejuvenating. For the first time in several years, I was on the receiving end of acting instruction. We learned breathing techniques as well as acting methods, and just had a dandy ol’ time.
Week 11: (June 15-19)
A film producer, Mike Leahy, was our speaker. For half of every class we would watch an episode of the TV show Project Greenlight 3. Mike was actually on the TV show as one of the producers responsible for making the film that the lucky-chosen Director and Writers created. I would highly encourage Youtube-ing Project Greenlight 3 and watching as much as you possibly can. It is VERY entertaining, as well as insightful. Apparently it’s a great peak into what the “film industry” is like.
June 20:
All the sweat and loss of sleep during the weeks of filming paid off in a glorious way. We had our film premier, and it was beautiful. Taylor Collins (a student of the School of Acting for the Screen, and a good friend) and I were co-MC’s for the night. It felt good to hold a mic again. Feels like it had been too long.
June 22:
“Wendell Moon Day”
Yes. Officially.
June 25:
2009 School of Digital Filmmaking Officially ended.
June 28 – July 1:
I took a friend of mine (from the film school) with me to Kaua’i. The actual beauty that I experienced in my three days on that island will only ever be truly understood by me. Neither photos nor words will suffice. Which is good… because I don’t have many photos, and my verbosity is eluding me.
While we were on the island, we staying with the gracious family of a good friend of mine. The friend who I know wasn’t actually on the Islands at the time, and I had never met his family before I landed on the island, but it all worked out more than perfectly.
One of the highlights of my time on the island turned out to be one of the highlights of my life. Sean (my buddy I brought with me) and I camped out on the beach, far from civilization, with mountains right behind us, and a long stretch of sand in front of us, ending in the ocean, which ends in the horizon. I climbed the mountain in flip-flops (dumb idea), Sean fished (and failed), philosophized (and succeeded), swam, made a fire, lounged around, nibbled on snacks, and eventually fell asleep.
July 1:
Fly home.
July 2:
Arrive at home (It was a long flight). Home for 18 hours, including sleep.
July 3:
Had 1 hour to re-pack for what I thought was only a week or so, but ended up being three weeks.
Dad and I drove to a place in far-East Tennessee called Doe River Gorge (DRG) where I helped with a hybrid program of DRG and the Institute for Cultural Communicators (ICC)
After that, I stayed at DRG to help with their normal camp program.
July 22:
Filleted my knee. I’ll post pictures soon. Long-story short is this…
Paintball. Rock. Knee. 39 visible stitches. More stitched beneath the flesh. No bone or tendon injury (thanks God!)
July 24:
Went home to recover from knee injury.
The 2009 Communicators For Christ intern team is here preparing for the ’09 camps and tour.
http://www.instituteforculturalcommunicators.org/09staff
http://www.instituteforculturalcommunicators.org/tour-prep
And we can’t forget the prep-team
July 28:
I was awoken by the most joyful noise in the world: the laughter of young people. They were running in the rain—singing, dancing, playing games. I just watched, admiring God’s creations.
Still can’t bend my knee. But I can walk on it!
Friday, May 29, 2009
Update: April 13-March 30
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Update from Kona #2
Our first week of classes (April 6-10) was mostly on character, values, etc. We had a speaker named Mark James who is a musician and worship leader from England. His most famous song in Christiandom is called “Surrender”. He also has a band called Verra Cruz. You should check them out. Under the name Verra Cruz, they are making it big in the "secular music" industry. Nevertheless, he was a great example of a strong believer whose passion is to be a great artist in an industry that is dark and despairing. He has had many successes, many failures, many ups and downs, but in the end he still knows that he is where he needs to be, and loves it.
Our second week of classes (April 13-17) was on the basic technical elements of filmmaking—Camera, sound, dolly/jip/glidecam, composition, etc.
This week’s classes (April 20-24) are on Screenwriting. Our speaker is Kevin Miller, the screenwriter for Expelled, and other films. Just today (the 20th) we were given several assignments that will help us get in the habit of quickly devising creative stories from news headlines. I did mine on the following headline: “A film recently opened in Cairo has revived a controversy about the depiction of Coptics in Egyptian drama.” Being that I spent two and a half months in Cairo for my DTS outreach this headline caught my attention. If something cool comes out of it, I’ll be sure to post it for all to see =)
More to come...
Ask me any questions about anything that you'd like to hear about!
Monday, April 20, 2009
Update from Kona, #1
The Island:
Though I haven’t had much opportunity to explore, there’s plenty to see and experience from our near beach-front campus, built on the side of a semi-active volcano. We’ve visited a couple of beaches. One is named “Magic Sands” (for apparent reasons). The tide literally steals away the sands from the beach for a few months a year. During my time at this beach I planned on finishing a project that I was assigned. That is, our class was supposed to pick a random stranger who catches our interest and write a short background story on them. On the Magic Sands beach, an old, bearded man caught my attention. Without even thinking of the project I planned on completing, I stereotyped him as a Priest—hens the story I wrote about him. It’s a simple story. It wasn’t meant to be an eloquent work of verbose prose. Nevertheless, here it is:
THE PRIEST
He’s swimming in the ocean, bodysurfing the small, shore-breaking waves just like the rest of the tourists and locals.
* * * * *
At nine years of age, John Calvin lost his father due to gang-wars in Mexico City where his family was stationed as missionaries. Originally, They came from Chicago. They were used to a rough city-life, but nothing like this.
* * * * *
Often, the Priest would stand erect, in the shallows of the water, peacefully accepting the blows from the small waves.
* * * * *
Due to his father’s sudden, violent death, John Calvin’s mother placed him in a monastery. She was always religious, and upon this unexpected, brutal loss of the father-figure, she decided her son would live a life of peace, far from violence.
* * * * *
He made his way out of the water, and up the beach, to the place where his clothes lie. He removes his black head-covering, then makes his way to the public showers where he rinses off the salt-water. He returns to his clothes as he rings out his long, grey beard.
* * * * *
They decided to move to a more peaceful area. Soon after their father’s memorial service, they caught a flight out to Paris, where Mrs. Anderson enlisted her son in the best, most strict, catholic boys-school. The boy eventually became an orthodox priest, and lived a life of solitude in a small monastery in the French mountains on the Mediterranean Sea.
* * * * *
The Priest wrapped his towel around his waist, Buttoned up his Hawaiian shirt, placed his baseball cap on his head, fixed his sunglasses on his ears, picked up his belongings and walked his way to the street.
* * * * *
After 50 years of isolation, John Calvin wanted to escape. He never fit in where he was. Even his name would cause heated discussions amongst his Brothers at the monastery. For this reason, he never went by his middle name. Just “John.” John finally had an opportunity to make his escape. His monastery was bought out from under them due to Beaurocracy amongst the higher elders in the Church. It was always John’s dream to visit Hawaii, so that’s what he did.
* * * * *
The Priest’s time was finished. He was returning to his hotel to pack his things and leave. Where to? God knows.
FIN
[The word traditionally used at the conclusion of an Italian film—Literally, “End”]
The Island: Continued
There’s another beach nearer to campus. It’s like Magic Sands, yet smaller an d less populated. Most beaches on this side of the Bid Island are volcanic rock, so running barefoot in the water can hurt.
Just a couple of days ago, I visited our local beach for some time with my Creator. I was quickly distracted (big surprise) by something in the water. Turned out to be a large sea turtle. In fact, there were several sea turtles moseying about in the shallow ocean tide. They were just lying there, inches from me.
Magnificent!
School:
My schedule looks something like this: Breakfast from 6:30am to 7:15am during the weekdays; 8:15am = Campus Worship (Mon.), Class Intercession/prayer (Tue.), Class Devotional (Wed.), Class Film Discussion (Thu.), Class Worship (Fri.); Weekdays classes = 9:15am to 10:30am, 10:45am to 12pm and 1pm ‘til whenever our projects are finished; dinner = typically 5pm; Mondays and Wednesdays are optional Ultimate Frisbee days, at 4:30pm =]; Thursday nights = campus general assembly where we have worship and a guest speaker, and sometimes other stuff. Weekends, most of my classmates and I work in the kitchen for our "work duty" (it's something everyone does, and varies between individuals and schools). I set up and serve breakfast from 6am-9:30am and dinner from 3:30pm-9:30pm.
More to come tomorrow when I have more internet access! (Internet cuts out at 11pm on campus... which is now.)