It’s not too hard for my own thoughts to get the best of me. Lately I’ve been thinking more about the upcoming changes in my life and in some ways it’s getting a little silly.
I’m back into nocturnal mode, I had that 9 to 5 thing going for a while but I’ve been doing some other work recently and that means I can stay up as late as I want. I can work on projects at night, I can stay up and watch movies or read. When I lay down to sleep there is no rush to get rest and wake up… and that just leaves me alone with my own thoughts. You can only analyze a situation so many times, you can only weight your options for so long, until you just start twisting things to bits in your mind.
I get to finally be free of college in February and then the world is my oyster. Where I go and what I do is completely up to me… and therein lies the problem.
A good friend gave me some worthy advice, that the decision on where I go and what I do when I graduate should be completely about what is best for me. It is good advice because there is truth to it, but I’m not sure it’s the whole story. It’s great to think that a decision like that should be made for one’s self. It obviously effects me the most, but at a certain point the mature way of making a decision like this is to consider those around you.
I’d love to be closer to Boise, my family and friends are closer to there and I’d be great to be able to drop in on Boise for a weekend whenever I wanted. Portland has some good opportunities, it’s a more favorable climate and the drive between there and B Town is no big deal, I also happen to adore Portland. A city like Austin would be fun, there is a lot of good work and it’s a very unique and hip city. Vancouver looks better every time McCain moves up in the polls… plus I’ve always thought that expatriate has a nice ring to it (Yes Dad I’m mostly kidding). LA provides an almost certainty of work, and I do know some people there now. Working on features in LA also does your resume a lot of good, even if you swept the studio floor for a big budget movie people elsewhere go nuts when they see it on your resume. PHX is the easiest and most complicated option. I’ve done the whole, move a city where you know no one thing and honestly I’m not cut out for it. I’m lucky to have the friends and roommates I have here, going to a completely new city again doesn’t sound so great. There is some work here, but it’s not great and especially the way the economy is going, it’s not steady. There are some great people here though, and one special one in particular. It’s not smart to make a decision based completely on those around you, but it’s silly to think that you can make it based solely on yourself. No man is an island.
At the moment it looks like I’ll be staying here for a while after I graduate. My VFX Reel could use more work then I currently have time for, and I guess if I can’t make it here I can’t make it anywhere. I’m not living in LA for the rest of my life so I’d better get use to corporate videos and local spots before I get too ahead of myself.

Today’s soundtrack is obviously not Colin Hay, but it is his song (If you’re reading this on Facebook try the “view original post” button). Evidently a few tours ago Dashboard Confessional put out an EP of covers and it’s simply amazing. Feel free to download it here, it’s basically out of print so I’m calling it fair use… though it’s not like I’ve ever really respected copyright laws anyway.

Take it easy and wish me luck on sleeping :)
David Hildreth

I’ve gotten to see some good shows these past couple of weeks. It started with Vampire Weekend and then a whole day of music at EdgeFest last saturday. Opening for VW was a local band called the “Fucking Kennies” they were barely a band, but were obviously having a good time. The lead singer spent most of their set in his underwear and apologized to the crowd a few times because they didn’t have enough music to fill their time. No one seemed to care, no one was there to see them anyway. VW took the stage soon after and played most of their album. I was a little concerned about exactly what they would play because they really don’t have much recorded music. I got to hear all the songs I wanted to and the new stuff they played sounded pretty good, so it worked out. Here is Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa as recorded by my phone, the words are a little different then on the album so be warned it’s a little NSFW.

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EdgeFest was also a grood time. I didn’t get to shoot as much video as I would have liked but my editing and motion graphics were on the main stage JumboTrons and on the EDGE’s website so that’s all right. I had made a little intro graphic for each video and then as interviews and band performances rolled in throughout the day we edited them down, slapped on the intro and tag and they were played. It was stressful, it was long, it was fun and it made want to never work for free again. Here is the intro, the crowd was done with Particular, it’s a bit sketch in places, if I was cooler I would have done it in Combustion, but I’m not yet. It’s also available in HD

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I saw an absolutely amazing movie the other day, it’s something that I had wanted to see for quite some time but I missed it when it was here in town. It came out on Blu-ray last week and the format might have well been invented for this movie, it’s beyond beautiful. The movie is Tarsem’s The Fall and if you’ve never heard of it that’s ok. I highly recommend seeing it, I think Roger Ebert put it best in his review:
“….a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms. Surely it is one of the wildest indulgences a director has ever granted himself. Tarsem, for two decades a leading director of music videos and TV commercials, spent millions of his own money to finance “The Fall,” filmed it for four years in 28 countries and has made a movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it.”
Here is the title sequence to give you a taste of it’s amazing cinematography.

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I’ve been a little blue lately, I’m not really sure why, things have been going pretty well. I have been busy, so busy that I’m falling behind in one of my classes. I’m so close to being done with school that I really wish I could just get my degree tomorrow and not go to class again. That’s not how it works though, so I’ve had to make some tough decisions in the past week and am giving up some projects and responsibilities in order to spend more time on school. I have a lot of opportunities and it’s hard to accept that I can’t take advantage of all of them. A friend of mine suggested that I make a list of everything that needs to be done this week and check them off one by one as I finish. Sounds pretty simple, I think I’ll give it a shot. Hopefully clearing things off my desk will help pull me out of my little melancholy.

I ordered a sweet t shirt this last week, I can’t wait to wear it around town. It’s the McCain 2008 logo except under his name where it usually says “for president” it says “for retirement” ;)
David Hildreth

First off, I tagged a few people on Facebook on this note, I don’t want to offend anyone, but if you’re going to be a fan or supporter of McCain 08 I’d love to share my opinion with you… but only if you want to listen. Do what you want, I’m really not trying to force anything down your throat.

I honestly don’t understand people sometimes. How, after 8 years of our country going down the drain can people look at the two presidential candidates and choose to not change anything. One candidate talks about issues while the alternative just talks about the opposition. One provides concrete ideas for change and the other doesn’t offer anything different then what we have now. The policies that John McCain puts forth are the exact policies that we have right now, so how could anything be different when he’s in office? I can honesty say that I can’t begin to fathom how an informed citizen could cast a vote for McCain/Palin. If someone can give me a good solid reason I’d love to hear it.
A friend of mine said something a few years ago and at first I didn’t agree, but now a few years later I can really see the wisdom in it. He said that the Republican party (then my party of choice, I now claim no party affiliation) holds people, especially conservative christians, hostage with issues like abortion and gay marriage. He said that there are many, many people out there that vote based on those issues and those alone. He’s completely right, there are many people who look at Barack Obama’s stance on abortion and immediately count him out. People even take into consideration issues like prayer in school, that have been dead for decades, and cast their vote accordingly. It’s time to really look at the problems in our country and look at what it will take to fix them. Abortion isn’t ever going to be illegal, if you don’t support it then help out programs that give young mothers another way out. Gay marriage is about equality not personal beliefs. No one wants to change your bible they just want to be able to have hospital rights for their loved ones. America is a democracy and it’s policies will never match your beliefs or dogma, it wasn’t built as a Christian nation it was built on the idea of freedom of religion and that means compromise. Not compromise of your beliefs but compromise in the rules we all have to live by.

If you have looked at John McCain’s record on the economy, on health care and foreign relations and still think he would make a better leader then ok. At least look at the issues though, and also look at how he is conducting his campaign, the following video sums it up.

Alright, no more politics for a while.
Everything is good down here, I’m busy with work and school. I have a couple of cool projects I’m working on so I should have some good video to show in the near future.
David Hildreth