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Bright Lights

alexbee — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:52:06 +0000

Here’s the link:

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v417447gM24MZSg

Please go and check it out!

First-Year is Finished!

alexbee — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:01:34 +0000

So, I’m in Ottawa now, and I feel so aimless and stir-crazy. The past month and a half has just been unbelievably amazing. There was CONSTANT work to be done, and then when class was over we started exam week, and it was just crazy busy, all of the time.

The soundtrack for Bright Lights was finished and ready for our last class on April 3rd. I spent HOURS and HOURS in Final Cut, layering 14 tracks of sound together. I went through the massive sound bank at school, ended up with about 10 cds to work with, and then pulled out a few songs from my music, and then I sat there at the Center for Film and Theatre, with my laptop and my headphones, for days. It was so much fun though, because everybody was working on theirs too, so there was this amazing party atmosphere the entire time. We all got really really close in the space of a week or two, and now we all have to go back home for the summer months, it’s really upsetting.

We had the first year screening on April 11th, at the Accolade Cinema. We managed to pack the theatre, and it all ran really smoothly!! My film was up second and when it came up, my heart was just hammering in my chest. But it got a really good reception. The most amazing part of the night was afterwards, when the Cinematography teacher came up to my partner and I, and told us flat out that we had the BEST cinematography of all the first years. He said our exposure, composition, framing and camera movement were amazing, and hardly ever seen in first year productions. I was soo tired and couldn’t do anything but smile like such a dork!! He said keep doing it and I’ll see you in third year! !!!!!!!!!!!! Wow…

The screening was at 7 pm on Wednesday, right after we all had the Film Art exam. Film Art was good, Toni and I were up studying for it until 5 am, and we felt really strong walking in there. There was a weird break in between exam parts, so Julian, Meelad and I went for a beer at Blueberry Hill, and walking back in, I definitely had a bit of a buzz going on. Lol. oops.

What was really awful, was that I had my Political Science exam at 9 am on Thursday morning. So I was studying for both exams at the same time, and after the screening I was soo tired and stressed and worried that there was no way I was going to pass this exam. I was panicking and then went to the Ab where the screening afterparty was. I went to sleep at 3 am, woke up at 6, and studied until 8:30 when I had to leave for the exam. The best part: I opened up the exam booklet, and I knew EVERYTHING. I had never felt like I had a good grip on what I was learning in that class, and finally, I felt confident! I wrote like a mad person until noon, and then when I was handing in my exam, my tutorial recognizes me (which is weird cuz I have only been to two!?) and she pulls out my massive research paper, and hands it to me, saying it was a really great paper. I was absolutely shocked!! This was a paper on the IMF, it had to be huge, and had to have AT LEAST 8 academic sources. I read so many 25-page peer-reviewed articles on things like, “Democratic Deficits in Transnational Politics” it was exhausting. But it really made my brain work. So to have it finally turn out to be an A paper???? I lost my mind… and the best part? It’s worth 30% of my entire grade!!!! Yes!!

So I went home, and remained braindead for the rest of the day. Then Friday I tried to start studying for my FACS exam which was Saturday at 2 pm, and only started studying at 3 in the morning.. oops. I went to sleep at 6 am, woke up at 8 studied til 12:30, fell asleep at quarter to one, and woke up again at exactly 1:50. 10 Minutes to the exam!! I had to put my contacts in, get out of my pajamas, get a pen, my ID, keys and just bolted! I’ll never forget that feeling. It was horrible. lol. My hands were shaking for the first half of the exam, but I wrote a totally great essay on the boundless future for interdisciplinary art…. haaahhahaa.. Cracks me up, my teacher will love it!

Since FACS was actually over, we had to celebrate so Jess, Meelad and I partied at a friend’s place, and took many cool photos and drank Ugandan Waragi.

The film production exam was early on Monday, and it was my last exam. I spent the afternoon hanging out with Susan and Lizz and a few other cool film people in the CFT. I feel so sad about having to leave them all for the summer. Especially Susan because she’s not going to be our T.A. anymore, and she may not even be around in the fall.. that’s so sad.

But we all planned to go to the second year screening, and were determined to have our own drinking game. It’s kind of a tradition. The fourth years do it at the first years, and we decided to be rotten little first years and do it at the second year screening. It was great! We had beer and drank whenever there was a scene with parents, in a bathroom, in a bedroom, a popular song, partial nudity.. the list goes on. We had such a good time. It was partially my going away night too, so we went all out. I look back at the screening’s program now, and can’t put my finger on a large number of the films in the second half. Can’t even remember what some of them were about, BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE. lol. It was a fantastic night, and ended at the Ab again, where I made SO MANY FRIENDS, hahhaa. Anyways……..

Now I’m in Ottawa, and it makes me sad. I miss Toronto, it really grew on me. I’m excited to get my place next September, now I just need to find it. I move into my Montreal apartment in one week….. and I’m just sooooo pumped to get there and moved in. I’ll finally have all my stuff out of storage, and it’s going to be my very own apartment. With HUGE windows and a balcony, it’s a block away from St-Laurent, on St-Urbain and Milton. This summer is going to be fantastic.

I’m uploading my film now to veoh.com, and I’ll post it when it’s done. I’ll also have it up on yousendit.com, so it can be downloaded instead of streamed. Now I have to go make a super cool DVD.

Ciao.

Did You Know?

alexbee — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:46:57 +0000

That The O.C. was filmed on 16mm?

I sure didn’t. I’m so damn surprised too.

Kodak 7274, transferred by datacine, colour corrected digitally, then finally output to DigiBeta.

Dumb Animals

alexbee — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 23:17:36 +0000

Handsome Furs Video

Directed by Panos Cosmatos

Transformers!!!

alexbee — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 02:51:55 +0000

YES!!

Me and Michael Bay, we have a healthy relationship. He makes really commercial summer blockbuster hits on a regular basis that I guiltily adore, and everyone’s happy.

I thought The Island was hot, what with Ewan and Scarlett, but now… he’s gone and brought out the Decepticons… and I’m kinda losin’ my mind.

Silly Videos

alexbee — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 07:31:35 +0000

Tears In My Eyes

alexbee — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 05:51:34 +0000

This isn’t a joke. Over the past two days, I have seen TWO AND A HALF COCONUTS on the York campus. Please understand that York is a campus of concrete and cars and leafless trees and there is no reason for a coconut to be laying randomly in the massive parking lot adjacent to Steeles Avenue. Or for one and a half to be scattered on Campus Walk near the Computer Sciences building.

COCONUTS!!?!?!?

I thought about taking pictures of them, because I don’t think anyone will believe me.

Too Excited!!!!!!!!

alexbee — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 05:45:13 +0000

I’m sooo unbelievably pumped to show my finished film. I can’t believe it’s turned out as well as it has. I’m ridiculously proud of my footage. It came out EXACTLY as I had pictured it when I wrote my proposal. Everytime we screen it for people, they lose their minds.. I’m no exaggerating. My T.A. Susan was going over it with me last night in the editing room, and she was telling me how the first time we screened in for our class, a group of guys were freaking out at our shots and she thought to herself: “Eat your hearts out!” heeheehee. I love it!

When we got to a certain segment of the film yesterday, she exclaimed “It just looks so FRENCH!” and I kinda sorta died of happiness.We’ve had quite a few people say that about it too. Heehehehe.

This weekend is soundtrack weekend. I’m thinking of using sounds from our sound effect bank, stuff I created in Reason and Logic, really heavily produced voice-overs for some parts, and then extracts from a couple copyrighted songs. We’re mixing everything on ProTools. It should be very exciting.

The big screening is April 11th in the 500-seat Accolade Cinema. The screen is THREE STORYS HIGH! I feel like it’s my “premiere” as a filmmaker, it’s not just me showing my stuff off my laptop anymore. Our teacher is going to be projecting everything, and playing our soundtracks off of CDs, making sure to hit the “2″ on the SMTPE leader (that’s the countdown).

They’ll all be transferred to DV-CAM after the screening so I’ll upload it for everybody to download (not YouTube), so everyone can see it as best quality as possible.

I’m so unbelievably happy right now!!!!!!!!!!

FACS Installation Art Fair

alexbee — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:01:31 +0000

So for my Fine Arts Cultural Studies class, our final project was a group assignment where we try and create a piece of “interdisciplinary art” a.k.a Intermedia, Fluxus, blah blah.

My group came up with this weird installation thing plucked from the Iraq Friendly Fire Cockpit video, we built a wall of images and transparencies, it made a lot of sense.. and I just can’t go into the full details right now because I’m in picture mode! Hahaha, basically each group from the class of 300 was assigned a location in one of three connected buildings: Center for Film & Theatre, Center for Fine Arts, and Accolade West. We were in ACW but were in this really bad location that nobody came to. So after we presented our “piece” to our T.A. we took a spool of string, and taped it to the floor, all across the main lobby, into the stairwell, up three or more flights of stairs, out the doors on the third floor, and all the way to the door of our tutorial room. It was soo much fun. People were AMAZED, they could see the ground floor from the third floor and couldn’t believe it was one continuous piece of string ALL THE WAY DOWN. We were bored, what can I say?

Here are some of the photos:

OH YA! FIRST, we made giant arrows towards our installation on the floor with electrical tape, and THEN we started with string.

St-Patrick’s PARADE!

alexbee — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 03:50:50 +0000

So here are the photos from St-Patty’s weekend in Montreal. It was ridiculously fun. I had far too many Irish Car Bombs.. far too little food… and not nearly enough sleep. It was wonderful. And now we have a gazillion inside jokes. Julia, I’m so sorry I crashed drunkenly asleep at 6 pm. (We woke up again at 10 and danced and got ready to go out again.. hehehe)

On our way to Blizzarts Saturday night:

At Blizzarts:

Grandma’s Boots:

Parade Day!!!

Drunk and disorderly:

4:45 pm Kat’s Lobby:

6 pm: