Just gonna unload right here.

My brain is in a kind of sensory overload right now. I have to be at work tomorrow morning so I should totally be asleep but my brain was all YOU MUST WRITE and seeing as I haven't blogged it about a million years, here I am to unload all my current thoughts. Prepare for the word-vomit.

Firstly, I'm still overloaded from the interview I just had with one of the teaching guys at Sydney Film School. Pretty much got accepted. Celebrations will be had as soon as my 'letter of offer' arrives in the mail. Should be by next week. I'm pretty thrilled. Also really not keen to do the rest of the portfolio IFSS wants me to do, because my harddrive has crashed and so it means extra work to try and pull together photos. Haven't entirely ditched this possibility yet so will probably try a little for this next week.

Film school looks like it's going to be REALLY intense. I mean, the the teacher interviewing me today even kinda warned me it was intense. So I'm a little freaked out about that. Granted, everyone said that TAFE was going to be crazy intense and it really wasn't until the very last month. This, however, is probably a different story. Preparing myself for crazy-intenseness.

I have to say I'm a little worried that I won't be able to keep my cafe job if film school gets crazy. Every time I think about that my brain goes 'but you have to save money for your trip!' and then I try not to think about that. It will happen. It must. Also praying that something opens up at the dvd shop, because how cool would it be to study and film school and work in the dvd shop at the same time? I basically live there anyway....

Moving on to unrelated topics, I'm in the mood to right one of those average present-day kind of stories but have ZERO inspiration. Absolutely no scenes or key ideas are coming to mind. I can't even form a decent character or even decided on a name. It's killing me. I touched up a few scenes of the super power novel last week, but haven't done any writing since. Annoying. Got a crazy work week but hopefully some inspiration will come to me on my day off.

Been watching loads of movies lately, as per usual. Need to get back into some proper film reviews/ACTUAL BLOGGING, but for now will just list the stuff I've been watching lately to catch myself up:

Zodiac. David Fincher's true-story-about-a-serial-killer was quite brilliant. My love of Fincher has officially increased as expected. Also my love of Jake Gyllenhaal. Totally adorable.

The Godfather. YES I FINALLY SAW IT. Was a very good film. Keen for part two.

Rendition Road. Crappy film with a totally weak ending as I expected (was in the mood for something that required little thought), though half-decent acting from Ruffalo, Connelly and Phoenix. Also slightly depressing what with the 'bereavement themes' and all.

There Will Be Blood. Reallllyyyyyy strange, strange film. Beautiful cinematography though, so well worth it.

PIRATES! Caught one of the very last sessions in the cinema with Justin. Quite hilarious and very cute. Also a heavy user of this trope, unfortunately.... The amount of times we turned to each other and whispered "how is this G-rated?!"

Anyways, gotta go to bed. Would love to keep writing but my eyelid are drooping. Sleep beckons. Will lastly mention that I bought Film History: An Introduction by Bordwell and Thompson, it's big and fat and wonderful I can't wait to start reading it. Tata for now lovelies, glad to be back.

Un-Live Blogging

Here's my thought-process throughout the lunar eclipse that happened this evening. If you've been reading posts here for a while you'd know of my interest in Lunar Eclipses due to the important appearance of one in my WIP Eloquence. So this is sort of 'fun research' if one can get away with even calling it research. 

Beginning at 11:30pm Saturday, December 11^th, 2011, the moon and the sun are opposing each other. The sun is not visible but the clouds around it are a deep red like sunset. The moon is glowing bright white, surrounded by a circle of clouds drenched orangey-red from the sunlight. 

11:40 Darkness sets in! The lower edge of the moon is fading black.

12:17 am. The eclipse has taken about 50 minutes to become engulfed almost halfway. There is red only in the clouds surrounding the moon, and the half of the moon that has been eclipsed is black, like it has been swallowed in shadow. The brightness fades in and out, partly due to the cloud cover but also due to the amount of the moon that is ‘disappearing’. 

(Having to keep changing exposure times, which may be something the photographer could comment on, depending on how deep I want to go with the technology. Will have to research this.) 

12:23. And we’re pretty much at halfway. The moon is beginning to change dark red on the shadowed side. 

12:37. Rather disappointed at the cloud cover that is ruining the latest shots. It’s far too dark now to get a good photo. Might wait it out a bit to see if the clouds clear before we reach totality, but if it’s not any better by 1am I’ll have to retire. Also the laptop battery is low. 

12:40. A blanket of cloud is threatening to suck the moon in. The brightest thing now shining on my camera lens are the lights from the endless stream of taxis that keep coming down my street to pick up all the drunk people partying across the road. 3 minutes of battery life remaining. This could be it, folks. 

12:42. No moon to be seen. Lame. 

12:43. I can see a sliver of moon struggling to break through the clouds, but it’ll soon disappear what with this being an eclipse and all….

12:52. Just plugged the laptop back in after it died on me. Camera packed up now and doors locked so seeing the totality was not to be tonight. Guess I’ll have to wait until 2014! A tiny part of my soul expects that Eloquence will be finished by then, but with the amount of ideas in my head, who knows? Snuggled in bed now with clean sheets and a nice sleepy feeling, so I guess it’s a happy ending anyway. Will post pictures tomorrow if I get a moment! 

I'm sorry for the wedding spam but...

THIS PHOTO IS AWESOME. Can I have a lens like this, please?

"If you were lucky enough to find someone who loved you, then you must protect it.” ~ Princess Diana

 Good afternoon.

 I bought my first bottle of champagne last night and we cracked it open in honour of William and Kate, along with some chocolate fondue with fruit and marshmallows. It was a lovely evening, and it's fun to think that one day when William is King I'll be telling my children that I remember the day they got married, and how a third of the world was watching them on TV.

I'm not even kidding when I say I was dreaming of weddings all night. Kate's dress was just gorgeous. I love it. What's disappointing about the fact that I love it is that now everyone's going to want one like that. I mean, there's nothing to set a trend like a royal wedding. I was looking at pictures last night of Diana's wedding and of my mother's wedding, and even though she was married ten years after Diana, Mum's dress does have a striking resemblance, so I'm willing to bet that Kate is what will be 'in' for the next ten years, unless Harry gets married soon and his wife wears something even more splendid.

The photo above of Kate and her sister Pippa was my absolute favorite of all that I have seen online so far. Such a beautiful moment between the sisters, and the photographer's framing of the young man in uniform attending the car door just makes it even more striking. I'm sure that will be one that Mrs. Middleton will hang on her wall. What a great memory. I wish I had been there to photograph that wedding, because there was one moment that I saw on TV that no photographer actually captured as a still frame. But it would have been amazing. It was after William and Kate came out of the abbey and they got into the carriage and drove down the street past the thousands of thrilled onlookers, and after a few moments of Kate and William waving and smiling, the camera panned and rested between the two drivers of the carriage and focused in on Kate, and it was beautifully framed because everything else was blurred and only her face was clear, with that gorgeous tiara of the Queen's sparkling on her head. The moment that I would have loved to capture was just then, when she lowered her hand and her eyes and just then, she realised. That was when it hit her. It was done. She had married him, a prince. She was not Kate Middleton anymore, but Her Royal Highness Princess William of Wales, and it wasn't just a long title anymore, but who she was. I saw it flicker on her face for just a moment, and then she raised her eyes once more and smiled at the crowd. That moment would have been the photo to top them all. I wish I had been there just for that.