Archive for the ‘BLADE’ tag

A good week off

It rained a bit last week… as a matter of fact we had quite the little storm on thursday. Even with a house full of people you could hear the wind whip around our place in Tempe. The rain was coming down in sheets and there was even hail for a short time. I don’t usually do much weather photography… none really, but living here has made me want to start (the above photo is not mine, it’s from flickr). Even though my car windows were down the whole time the storm was pretty cool, that is until I got to work the next morning. Downtown was a mess, getting from the 10 over past Thomas took 20 minutes longer than usual, none of the traffic signals worked and the roads were a maze of toppled trees and power polls. Then when I got to work not only was our SAN down (a non storm related issue) so I couldn’t get any work done but we also didn’t have any internet. I found myself reading the paper until someone finally found me a project I could work on. It’s very frustrating to know there is work to be done and not be able to do it, and then to not have interwebs to pass the time… not cool.

During my week off from school I was able to get out of work for a day and drive up to the Grand Canyon with a good friend. We drove through Sedona on the way up and I can’t even being to tell you how awesome that was. In all honestly we should have just stopped and chilled in Sedona for the day, but my travel companion had never seen The Grandest of Canyons so we ventured on. Sedona is like another state, it’s not hot, it’s not dry or desolate. It’s beautiful and green, there’s a river and the temperature is tolerable. I really want to get back up there soon, it’s a very expensive little town so it’l just be a simple day trip, but there is a part of me that wants so badly to jump into a river. It’s simply been too long since I at least scoffed at the opportunity to do so. Later the trip hit a sour note when I found out that my friend didn’t know where Idaho was on the map. After a few texts to ChaCha she got the picture but I don’t think I’ll let her live it down any time soon.

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard who McCain picked to be his VP. It’s never been more appairent that he would rather win an election then effectivly govern.
That’s about all I can stomach to say about it… I’ll just let John Stewart take over.

If you didn’t catch Obama’s speech I suggest catching up. I’m interested to see how the Republicans react at their convention.

In other completely unrelated and slightly random news I told someone special this week flat out “I want to be with you.” She said something about being light headed… I think that’s a good thing.
Time will tell.

David Hildreth

My Generation?

It’s almost the middle of August and well into monsoon season down here. The days are hot, the aren’t nights much cooler and the locals do nothing but complain about the “humidity”. Then again, the locals always complain about the weather, so that’s not really surprising.
As summer starts to slip away ASU is back in session and Tempe is full of people. I’m busy again, spending my days working and my nights at school. Classes are going well, I’m still wasting away in a terrible audio class, but I’m really liking the new visual effects classes that I’ll have from here on out.
This is an example of one of the small assignments we’ve been working on. There is a pretty big need in production for something called a sky replacement. It’s just basically taking the sky in a shot and replacing it with a more interesting one. Production schedules can get pretty complicated and most can’t afford to wait a day just because the sky isn’t so blue or a sunset isn’t so spectacular.

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I got word early this week that an important faculty member at Collins is going to be leaving the school. He hasn’t made any announcement yet but the information is from a reliable source and it just kinda makes sense. He’s definitely the most knowledgeable instructor in the program and my education really does depend on how good his replacement is. I’m not really worried though, I’m so ready to be done with school that in some ways I just don’t care. I’ll teach myself from here on out if need be, the instructor most likely isn’t leaving town so I’d easily be able to ask him questions. Collins is kinda sketch at times, it could see it being months before there is a real replacement.

I’ve been watching a new show on HBO lately called Generation Kill. I first heard about it as being “like Band of Brothers for the Iraq war”, it’s not nearly as amazing as Band of Brothers was, but it’s definitely worth watching. I highly recommend watching it if you’ve got HBO, buying it when it hits iTunes or downloading it through uh… other sources. The characters are solid, the episode engaging and it really shows how complicated everything in war is. I think it’s been a couple of hours since I last broke a copyright law in order to promote something, so here is a clip from last week’s episode. (The language is NSFW)

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Lastly I give you further proof that John Stewart is our greatest American. (as always if you’re on Facebook atm you won’t see the video)

The Georgian conflict is a strange one and I really don’t know enough about it to pick a side. However I do know that I don’t trust our government’s judgement anymore and to me that’s a bit scary. This election coming up is an important one, there is a lot at stake. If you haven’t familiarized yourself with the candidates shame on you, it’s your job as a citizen… and a good idea even if you aren’t one.

David Hildreth

with time to spare

Last week I did another 48 hour film fest and we finished our project with an hour to spare. It felt good to turn it in a bit early and then sit and watch as other teams scrambled to make the deadline ;)
Overall I’m very happy with what we shot, the story isn’t the world’s greatest, but for 48 hours its pretty good. The visuals however are amazing, we have a very real chance of winning best cinematography.
I got word earlier this week that we did make the top 20 screening which is tomorrow, I’m really excited to see how ours stacks up against the competition.

Here are a few pictures taken by a friend during production. Note: This probably won’t look right on Facebook, follow the “view original post” link above.

All of a sudden I’m busy again. I’m not sure how it happened, but if I’m not in class I’m working on something and if i’m not doing that I’m rushing to finish something else :|
My current internship looks to be winding down for a the time being but I got another one this morning so it looks like I’m staying busy for a while. The company I’m going to be interning for is one of the better production houses here in Phoenix and it looks like I’ll be able to learn some new stuff from some very talented people.

I’m headed to Vegas this weekend with a couple of my roommates. We are going to watch a heads up poker tournament and probably chill around some casinos. I don’t really gamble and I’ve never really played any casino games but I’m planning on taking a little bit of money to lose at a card game of some sort. I’m really not a bad poker player as far as amateurs go, but I’ve never played at a casino so I’m sure I’ll be asking a lot of questions. I’m also looking forward to just watching some poker, I’m totally down with a weekend where I do nothing but sit and hang out. I don’t really see my roommates often either, so a whole weekend with them will be good.

Obama is kicking ass these days and I couldn’t be happier. This picture pretty much speaks for itself.

I’ll post some pictures from Vegas if anything abnormally interesting happens,
David Hildreth