Slow

So I thought I'd be able to write a longer, more detailed blog entry while I was away, but of course the wireless connection at the inn was completely uncooperative, and now I'm back in Stockholm again. Actually, I'm at the library in Solna, just so I can get access to an internet connection.

The three days in Sunne were intense. It started on a dramatic note the night before, actually. Kajsa and I were driving down, or up, or sideways, whereever it is in relationship to Stockholm, my geography knowledge is just as bad as my sense of direction... because halfway there, the car went and died on us. Then it started up again, and after about ten minutes, it died again... and so it went, all the way to Sunne, which meant that instead of arriving at about ten o'clock at night, we got there at about midnight, or one o'clock in the morning, I'm not sure... needless to say we're exhausted and shaken up (it's quite scary when you're driving in a single lane on the highway in the middle of the night and your car breaks down and the only other traffic besides yourself are these huge trucks and lorries...) but we got to where we were going in one piece and that's all that matters.

The feedback discussions in my group were awesome, so inspiring. My script was up last, on the second day, and just like all the previous feedback and open discussions, I was overwhelmed by the extensive and rewarding feedback, also I was surprisingly struck by a revelation of my own, halfway through, that one of the characters in my screenplay is actually based on a real person from my past, and that was mind-boggling I can tell you... and that, as well as the revelation that I had just before writing this sixth draft about my main characters intimacy disorder, is the reason I'm experiencing the most amount of resistence to continuing this writing process that I have since I started. In fact, I haven't even so much as opened the document on my computer since then. Instead I started writing a play for this contest, deadline 15th of September.

I sent a text to the producer about meeting to talk about my short film, still haven't heard back from her. I guess it is Sunday, and she just finished shooting another short film and I only just sent the text this morning, but still. Things are happening too slowly, I feel like I need to explode all over the place, like everything around me is happening in slow motion and I have to try and reel myself in and force myself to go more slowly, and it's really frustrating. It's like being a kid again. Constantly being told to settle down, slow down, repeat myself more slowly, be still. I hate that.

In the head of Charlie Kaufman

Back from Gothenburg. The pitch was a nightmare, but I had a really great time hanging out with a few people from my class, and it went great sharing a room with Kajsa at the hostel as well, and today I went to what the festival called a "Masterclass" with Charlie Kaufman, and that was awesome. He's a really awesome guy.

Getting ready for Gothenburg

So I'm (soon) off to Gothenburg. I just talked to Kajsa, she's driving down and offered me a ride, and I'll also be rooming with her at the hostel, so we'll want to kill each other by the end of this weekend probably... no, I think it'll be fine. I love talking to Kajsa. On the first class get-together, I ended up having two separate conversations with her that were both hours-long and deep. And that doesn't happen too often, especially that soon after having met. But she's full of interesting thoughts and ideas, and she believes in a bunch of things I used to believe in, like spirits and ghosts, so it's also a bit nostalgic to be listening to her theories. I'm definitely agnostic now, since I do love to hear about different believes and discuss them with an open mind, but I'm leaning towards atheist more than spiritual now, and before it was the other way round.

Which created resistance in me as I started reading the introduction to The Artist's Way because it's all about how inspiration is a spiritual thing and to be creative is to be closer to God, and of course, my mind came to an abrupt halt, red lights blinking and everything, but then the introduction went on to say that if the reader was thinking these things or didn't believe in God or in anything, then that's fine, just don't let it stop you from doing the exercises because that's just your resistance talking, and when the reader came across the word "God" they shouldn't get hung up on semantics but replace the word with whatever rings more true, like flow, or creativeness, or inspiration, or positive energy, or whatever... and damn it, I'm both resistant and semantic, and I know it, so of course, I had to keep reading...

I don't own a copy of the book, I've only read the two different introductions and the beginning of the first chapter, since my teacher copied those pages and mailed out, but since I've already started on my morning pages, I think I should definitely get my hand on a copy. I checked out Amazon UK and found some fairly cheap used ones.

And to come full circle, I'll tell you that Kajsa just told me that see took that course about eleven years ago and it literally changed her life. So I guess we'll be talking a lot about that during the five hour drive to Gothenburg.

New chapter: writing in Sunne

I got on a train and ventured into the great unknown of Sunne in the middle of nowhere Värmland in Sweden to meet up with my new class on Thursday. As usual when starting something new and meeting a new group of people, I hated it immediately, started to doubt the whole idea and just wanted out. There was one person that I had a positive inkling about at first "sight" but other than that I was overwhelmed by the oh-so-familiar sense of not belonging, and spent most of my energy on staying afloat. And so I met up with my class on the second morning, way too early, feeling low, anti and decaffeinated, but when we reached the destination of the day, everything changed. We spent the day even further away from civilisation (close to what I'm used to, woods and fields and water and a couple of barns) in the most inspiring and beautiful place imaginable; the place is called Alma Löv museum, it was started by our course leader Sara Broos' parents in the 70's, and her dad told us the whole story as a very entertaining and inspiring fairy tale almost, and that, combined with her mother's amazing paintings and the coffee, were worth the trip, not just to the museum, but to Sunne (which was hell, by the way, with all the shit I packed, as usual) and then we got to wander around and look at the pavilions that were spread out across the plot, that each of them were a work of art by a different artist, some had installations, some were filled with drawings, or sculptures, and they were all unique and genuine and inspiring. Then we had an intense workshop with actors Amanda Ooms and Peter Eriksson, who performed our texts, and that was amazing too.

It got a little easier throughout the day and evening to spend time with certain people in the group and talk to them, which made the experience of being in a group a lot easier to handle for me, even though I'm feeling strong rejection and negative energy coming off a few people, it balanced out a little more and now I don't feel quite as isolated and alien as I did yesterday. The inkling I had about that one person proved right as well, today I felt we connected on a deeper level, not just energy-wise, but intellectually, we had a long chat that revealed we have a lot of things in common and are very alike--who knows what, or if, it'll lead to anything beyond that, but it's still nice when something like that happens, it's like being lost in a foreign country and all of the sudden you hear a voice somewhere in the crowd that's speaking your language--and I've warmed up to a couple of other people in the group as well, in a more light-hearted way.

Tomorrow we get to pitch an idea to a producer, just for fun, and fun is not the word I would have used, but I'm going to wing it and see what happens--I'm so out of my league in this place, and this group, everyone else are like working professionals in the business already, it seems, and I'm the only one with no real experience or anything, but--I'm hoping for some good feedback and inspiration from listening to the others, before we do the real thing at the Gothenburg film festival .

(also, I have a crush on a "teacher" again)

Between purposes.

So after the second and final screening I went into hiding, or hibernating, for about a week. I skived off the graduation spectacle, and the class brunch, and shut myself in my room and watched movies and wrote a feature length screenplay. I've become something resembling a human being again since then, actually hung out with Tobbe and Min from class two days in a row, and now I'm relishing the fact that I seem to have internet at home again, for however long it'll last.

And I'm also itching to set up a web hosting account and rebuild my website more professionally or at least seriously but that is a very bad idea since I haven't got a job for the summer yet and won't be able to pay next month's rent, not to mention the mandatory get-together with the new class at the new school for the first few days which means I have to get myself from Stockholm to way off somewhere else in the country, pay for housing and feed myself whilst there. I had this half-baked naïve notion that I wouldn't have to get another grant for this year since it's mainly study-from-home and I'd be able to have a job and make some money at the same time, haah, yeah right! Well, to be honest, what with all the buzz at the end of (previous) school and then going MIA for a week, I haven't really had the time to put my back into looking for a job, but I'll get started on that for real first thing monday. But I think I'll apply for a grant for the first term anyway, just in case, and if I do happen to find enough work during that time, I won't apply for a grant for the second term. Not that it matters either way. I'm up to my eyeballs in debt already and there's no way I'll be able to pay it off, so what's another year going to do...

Possible good news on the film front, though. I might have a job on a novella film being shot this summer. Caroline, whom I did the internship on the zombie film with, has asked me to help her out with the casting, and maybe I'll get to tag along for the shoot as well, probably as an extras co-ordinator since that's what I mainly did on the zombie film. And unless they're shooting when I need to be in my new school. I really hope not because I'd really like to come, they'll be shooting at least one scene in London (at Gordon Ramsey's restaurant!) and that's just cool.

Things are coming to a new beginning.

Last night we had the screening at school, tonight we have a bigger one (if more people show up, at least) out in Subtopia outside of town. Last night was weird. My parents, my big brother and my friend Annsofie and her husband came to see mine and Anja's (and the other's) short films, there was a heavy sense of anticipation-mixed foreboding in the air, at least within the class, at least I felt so, like something was about to drastically change and we could all feel it and it made our skins prickle but so far everything was exactly the same so we had to stall or hide our reactions to it, so we were stomping on egg shells and making eye contact like it was nothing and pretending like it didn't feel like it was the last time we saw it others, which it wasn't, but it sort of felt like it anyway. We had a toast and chaotic talk afterward with our professor and mentor Maria, she'd bought champagne, I was listening to the others talk, some tried to keep it light, others wanted to make speeches, Tobbe was drunk, Maria was hard to read as usual but smiling more than ever, I didn't say anything.

Earlier in the day Anja and I went to the screening of the third year's final productions, amongst them the zombie film, although we had to leave before the last film because our photographer sent us a text message and said there was something wrong with the files and she couldn't convert the film from the program to a Quick time, and later we heard that the last film was the best one by far. But at least we got to see the ones we'd been involved in. The zombie film turned out great!

I'm in school again now. Min and I are printing and folding more fliers for the screening tonight. The weird feeling from yesterday is still here. But it's not like I'm anxious about the future, not like before, because I got an email from the school I've applied to for that scriptwriting course for next year and I got in, so I know what my next step is, so it's not like I'll be thrown into an abyss as soon as the doors to the school close behind me.

Want to know what my world is like at the moment?

The other day I made a compulsive visit to a grocery store on the way home when I was only supposed to be changing trains, and since I needed some groceries because I've been running out of options at home, I figured it was probably a good thing. Until I walked out again with a bag of crisps, two pairs of sun glasses and three DVDs... Oh, and a jar of pesto! That was dinner. Yeah. I'm a terrible shopper.

So we had our first day with Eva Dahlman yesterday, without the actors, just her, myself, Ragnar, Anja, Arsen, Katta and Bam Bam, talking about the two scripts and then each of us got to talk about the particular scene we'd chosen to do and explain what it meant to us, how we wanted to see it performed and staged, and so on. And then Eva Dahlman gave us a lot of tips on how to go about, first continuing the preparatory work on our scenes, then preparing for the meeting with our actors, and how to approach the scenes with them and how to direct them.

It's so scary. I got Simon Norrthon, whom I'd wished for from the beginning, he's amazing and I've admired him since I was a kid, even though I haven't seen him in much since he's mostly been doing theatre and I haven't really been to any theatres in Stockholm. But he was in one of my favourite films that I show with my mum as a kid, Pensionat Oskar, and he was also in Hugo's midterm film, Altona. And Caroline's told me that he's great, both to work with and as a person, but I'm still terrified, what if what I say doesn't make any sense to him, what if I don't have enough grasp on the text and the play, what if I do anything at all (which is very likely when it comes to me) that makes me look stupid? Etc, etc, etc... so those are the regular jitters. Here are the more pressing, and more justified, ones:

I've chosen a scene which is a dialogue between the main character and her doctor/shrink. I'd decided on the scenery and the blocking and the, everything, basically, based on the fact that there were two characters in the scene, talking to each other, and would be performed by two actors, on the stage, talking to each other... well, guess what, I get one actor. So my whole prep goes out the window as does half of my text analysis, because unless I want the poor actor to behave like he's suffering from dissociative personality disorder and be both characters and talk to himself, the scene has to be performed like the main character re-telling the story of how the conversation with her shrink went when they convinced him/her to start taking medicine, so then everything in the dialogue, including the shrink's lines, are told by the main character, and are then subject to his/her interpretation, judgement, censorship, you name it, it's not objective. For one, it's from her memory, and memories in themselves are not reliable, and her thoughts overall aren't reliable as it is (This is Sarah Kane's Psychosis 4.48, by the way!) and her interpretation of them is very likely coloured by her feelings for her shrink, so biased, to say the least. This makes the most sense to me. And it took me half the day and then the entire ride home and browsing for a bit in another grocery store like a crazy lady muttering to herself with the script clutched to my chest, to figure this out. He is re-telling the story of how he ended up taking medicine, against his better knowledge, and what do you know, I was right, kind of thing... so the second problem then would be, since this is not happening in the now as I'd planned it would be from the beginning, it's already happened, where is he now and why is he re-telling this story and to whom is he talking? He's not talking to himself, he's not sitting in his room muttering under his breath, he's not repeating anything, he's teling it like a story, like he has an audience... so is he actually talking to the audience, and is the audience representing the world, whoever is listening, whoever cares, to whom it may concern... if this is a chapter in his suicide note, I guess that would make sense... but most of the text is addressed directly to the shrink, like the suicide note is written for her/him, so is he really telling all of this to the shrink? Why? They were there, they know what happened. But what if they forgot? What if they think they can just forgot and move on with their lives and shake off any feelings of guilt and pretend they were just doing their job and this was just another unfortunate statistic? No way, and this is why I'm writing this letter, this is why, to let you and the whole world know that this is your fault, all your fault, and my father's fault and my mother's fault, but I blame you, because I loved you because you got me to love you and you got to me and you touched me deeper than anyone ever has and no-one is allowed to touch me but you did and then you betrayed me and lied to me and you abandoned me; my last hope, the one who was going to save me, you didn't and that's why I'm dead. So fuck you if you think you're moving on and sleeping soundly next to your partner at night. I want you to feel bad. I want you to feel bad for the rest of your life. I want you to know what you did to me. You and all the world. I'm taking full responsibility of my own actions, I took my own life, I don't deny that, but you helped, and I want the world and you to know that. You helped kill me... Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. But it's one thing to think it. How do you show it? How do you stage it? Is he standing in the middle of his room at the hospital, walls closing in and all that, screaming at the ceiling, or has he conjured up an image of the shrink before his mind's eye and is spitting the words into their imaginary face, or is the shrink just outside the door, somewhere nearby in the corridor, or are there other doctors outside, that he's trying to reach out to, to actually make himself heard, or is he addressing the audience in a sort of out-of-body experience, the actor embodying the voice of the character in their handwriting of the sucide note?

Questions, questions, questions...

It's a great play though. I can't believe I've missed her and never heard of her before. Sarah Kane. I'm going to read everything about her and all of her plays now. She was brilliant. The whole thing is really sad and morbid but beautiful at the same time. Because this play, Psychosis 4.48, is the last thing she wrote, and it is her suicide note, and shortly after she wrote it she hung herself in her room at the hospital. And of course, knowing that, it makes the whole experience working with the play all the more eerie, like it means more, not because she actually did do it in the end, but because every single word is true beyond doubt, and you know that she's poured out her heart and soul, the very last remnants of both, out onto the page and left them behind, and now you're holding them and can only hope to get anywhere near doing them justice... and of course that adds to the jitters as well. Another scary thing is how much I can relate to so much of it. I've never had a psychosis and I've never had electric shock treatments, which by the way, I didn't know they still used, and was really shocked (no pun intended) to find out that they do, in Sweden even, and is that even safe, and how do they know, but that's besides the point... I can relate to everything she's feeling and thinking. But then again, I think most people can, at least if they analyse the text, because the circumstances may be extreme, but her thoughts and feelings are every person's thoughts and feelings, they're human thoughts and feelings, human weakness and strength, human complexes and complexities, human hybris, human despair, human humour as a self-defence mechanism; and that's what I love most about Sarah Kane and this play, her sense of humor, through it all, even her darkest moments, she still has a sense of humor about it all, and herself, gallows humour. I love it. Like in my scene, she says (and I'm translating from the Swedish translation of the play because I've yet to find the original, so I'm sure it's better put initially...) "I dreamed I went to see a doctor and she told me I only had eight minutes to live, and that's after I'd been sitting in her fucking waiting room for half an hour."

Check out Simon Norrthon and Sarah Kane. And look after yourselves.

---

4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
How do you review a suicide note? It's beautiful, it's dark, it's funny, it's tragic, it's morbid, it's complex, it's to-the-point, it's hopeful, it's hopeless, it's logical, it's chaotic, it's there, in your face, it's the truth. She has, had, a beautiful way with words, an amazing sense of humour even in her darkest moments, she writes with such clarity, even when nothing is clear to her, she writes in rhythms and images and it's like poetry, or music, and every single word is important, means something, symbolically or directly, it's what's left of her heart and soul, poured out and smeared across a page and it's ruthless and mean and vengeful and, maybe, forgiving at the same time. It's not the words of a victim. It's not a plea for sympathy, or empathy, or forgiveness, or even to be understood. It's a farewell speech, it's a declaration of love, and hate, and it's a statement, she's taking full responsibility of her own actions, but she's not letting the others, who share the blame for why this happened, she's not letting them off the hook either, she's brutal, she's desperate, she's honest, she's waving at us from the space in-between, or she could be flipping us off, or she could be doing a peace sign, it doesn't matter, she was here, now she's gone, these are her parting words, and they're what they are.

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By the end of this shoot, the film crew won't need makeup to jump in as zombie extras...

Another crazy day on the zombie film shoot, and it's (definitely) not over yet. I actually left the team, cast and crew (we we've been shooting in three different ext. locations today, and when I left they were filming in the very central part of Stockholm, as central as you can probably be, on a roped off stretch of street just above Sergels Torg) to go into school and phone all the extras with call-times and meeting place for monday the 1st, something that my assistant was supposed to do but couldn't and he's also unable to help me out tomorrow, so instead of doing just my job tomorrow, I have to delegate and do both of ours, but I don't think it'll be a problem (and by that, I mean it's not literally impossible)

It's just that I have to, yet again, get up at four o'clock to catch the night bus to the tube and head into town to be at the school before half past five, which is when our first group of zombie extras will be arriving, and basically my task is to co-ordinate them between makeup and costume and then to the car that will take them to set, and then the next group will arrive at seven and after I've greeted them and shown them where the makeup artists are, I'll have to run to catch the tube which will take me to the meeting place for all the other extras that are coming tomorrow but who aren't zombies, and I have to gather them around me and herd them into whichever car the team can spare at that time and make sure they get driven to set...

I can just picture those of you who know me, or knew me, I should say, before this production, how I was then with structure, schedules and organizing things... I'm learning so much on this internship! I call people up on the phone left right and center, I keep track of names and dates and times and tasks, even without my notes, I keep notes, I even have a huge binder with all my papers in one place... no little crumbled up post-it notes, no scribbles on the back of my hand... I know!  

Okay, back to work! The only reason I had time to update this blog is that I was still waiting for the address of the location for monday and the call-times (we do everything, literally, at the last minute in this production... it's just how we roll!)

Vitamin water, the new cigarettes?

Hello everyone, once again, it's been a while, I apologise. That's the thing with blogging though, when you have things to write about you don't have the time to, and when you have time to update your blog you really have nothing interesting to say so you ramble on about your cat, the weather, cornflakes and quote music lyrics that really speak to you for some unearthly reason to pass yourself off as deep. But anyway.

I got a crash course in Avid from editor on the Argentina film, and then I started my second intership, which it'll only last a few days total by the looks of it, I've been doing it for two days, and then when the remaining material arrives it'll probably be one more. What I do is that I get the footage up on the screen and find the frame where the clapper comes together, then I go to the sound file for that take and listen for the sound of the clap and time them together so that the footage and sound are in sync with each other. When you've done that with all the material, you cut it up into clips, starting after "Action" and ending before "Cut" and categorize them. This so that it will be easier for the editor to start editing the film. Basically the dirty work of the editing process, although the editor has been working simultaneously with me, so he didn't take me in so that he wouldn't have to do it himself, but so it would go faster and he could start editing sooner. He's also editing the zombie film, and I overheard him talking to a class mate about a script he's written, so he's pretty busy by the sounds of it.

As am I, because beside these two internships, we've also started an evening course in sound editing now and we're starting to plan our next projects, whilst finishing up our previous ones. So plenty of irons in the fire! (and I love it!)

My next project is a short film, a drama, I've already written the script and I also want to direct it, and this time, act in it as well. It's called "Vargens timma" (The wolf's hour. Not to be mistaken for Hour of the wolf, which was my initial idea for the title, until I realized it was already taken by Ingmar Bergman in 1967...), after that I want to do a novella film (which is in-between short and feature length, and is half an hour, which I think is pretty Swedish, or at least I never heard of it in Vancouver... but bascially it's like in literature you have short story, novella and novel... only in Sweden there's no term for novella, which is pretty ironic, but anyway, I'm getting off the topic...) which I've also written the script for, "Brev till min mamma" (Letter to my mother) and after that I have two feature length ideas and one idea that can be either a novella or a feature, I haven't decided yet, but it's inspired by the (not so good) movie "Two girls and a guy" with Robert Downey, Jr. but in my film all three actually get together like a triple (as opposed to couple) and don't just talk about it for two hours, and I think it'll end with one of the girls getting pregnant and the trio deciding to raise the child together and continue living like a family. What do you think? That's my romantic comedy, by the way. The other two features are much more gruesome and extreme. Lots of sex and violence. And sexually confused and deviated characters. And bad language. And good music. And smoking, lots of smoking, because even though I'm starting to dislike it more and more myself in reality, whenever I write something, my characters turn out to be smokers, because I still have some semi-subconscious notion that smoking is cool. Well, it does look cool on film, especially with the right lighting. Like the opening sequence in "A guide to recognizing your saints" with Robert Downey, Jr. It's just him, sitting on a dark stage, holding a lit cigarette, and steeling himself to start reading from his book, and the lighting is sort of golden, and the smoke is blue. It's really quite beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful. The footage from Argentina is gorgeous. The photographer is really talented. I love it. I forget her last name now, but her first name is Iga, I have to get back to you with her last name, because you'll want to keep track of her in the future.

A quick update!

First of all, I'd like to apologise for being MIA these past weeks. I've been sort of busy.

We're still casting for the zombie film, but we should be done with that by the end of this week. It's been really fun. We've been casting regular actors for the human roles, groups of extras as zombies, children as zombies being lobotomised! Yeah, I know... and today, there is a cup of maggots in the office! a sample for the maggots we're going to need for all the dead bodies in the film, you know... regular white ones, and dark red ones as well, I didn't even know there were red ones, they're really cool-looking!

Monday night I went to the Guldbaggegalan after party with Anja, and Ragnar and Tobbe were there from our class as well. It was sort dry at first, people crowding the place, sipping drinks and mingling (my favourites) and lots of B-list (and some A-list) celebrities looking past you like you were a ghost and making bee-lines for other celebrities and comparing current CV statuses, basically, not fun, very on the surface and high-brow, but then, magically, at two o'clock, things changed, they started playing fun dance music and people started letting loose and loads of people were dancing, and for the last hour, Anja and I had a blast dancing, it was so much fun. I crashed at Anja's place afterwards. Then but into the frey the next day, which was twice as long as usual, which it'll be today as well, because our sound course has started, and the lessons start at six and end at around ten at night.

Okay, our advanced extra, a miss Maria something, is here to audition for the priest! Have to go!

Up the rabbit hole.

So I'm sitting in school now, and I'm the only one too, besides some staff members, and it's getting light outside but I got here when it was still dark about an hour ago, only to realize I don't actually have anything that I can do, because what I was supposed to do was call around to a bunch of strangers that have shown their interest in being zombie extras in the film and book about 160 of them for group auditions for monday and tuesday next week, but since no studios seem to be available for booking, I can't very well book any zombies because we won't have anywhere to put them and it's not like we can have the auditions in the hallway... and despite having slept on and off for three days, I'm getting tired already, can you believe it? I didn't sleep any this morning, which is probably why... I woke up at half past nine last night and I've been up since, so I guess, that's twelve hours, yeah it makes sense that I'm getting tired doesn't it? or does it? how long do you usually stay awake in a normal day if you're a normal person? you get up at like seven, you go to bed at what eleven? ten? no that's fifteen-sixteen hours, I shouldn't be getting tired yet... which means that in three or four hours I'll probably krasch. Great. Then, since there is no-one here to keep watch over me and make sure that I'm being productive, I'll cave in and go home and fall asleep and then wake up at midnight and still be stuck in this upside-down day rhythm... Great.

I feel like I'm not really real. And this is a deleted scene from a Roy Andersson film, or something. The bleak light. The falling snow outside the window next to me. The quiet around me. Except for the very annoying tick-tock of a clock somewhere.

My teacher Hanna had left an envelope for me at reception with my letter of recommendation that she's written for my grant application, though, and it was really flattering. So that made it worth while to show up here this morning.

2010

So, 2010. A decade since the new millenium started. Time flies when you're having a decent time, right. So tomorrow this intermission will end, I'll go back to Stockholm with my parents. My niece Milou's birthday is on the 4th and they're having her party tomorrow, and then I'll get a ride home afterwards. Back to reality (funny how the definition of "reality" is subject to such wide interpretations, when you work with film for example, the definition is almost contradictory to the true meaning of the word, if you think about it...)

So guess who fulfilled their two new year's resolutions for 2009? (they were to quit a certain special someone Brokeback-style, and to finish my book, for those of you who don't remember or haven't been told...) I think that's the first time that's ever happened to me... I'm making it a bit easier this time around in order to achieve some sort of winning streak; I resolve to make a film, no specifics on the length or budget or success, only that it should not be part of my curriculum, i.e. not a school production, so either a project I'll do in my spare time if I'm still in school, or after this course is over. My second resolution is to get my fourth tattoo, because I couldn't think of anything else on the spot.

News for today: snow, lots and lots of snow. About a metre of it, and not the good kind either, that you can make things with (we call it "hug snow" - not really, but directly translated, but it comes from "hugging" the snow into a snowball kind of thing, but yeah, hug snow, and  I always loved that name for it as a kid) but the flimsy kind that gets everywhere at the slightest touch of a breeze.

The show must go on...

One chapter ends and another begins; we had our group feedback meeting with our teachers today. Didn't do much good, but at least it went down civilly, and I'd feared some kind of nasty row, but it was fine. It started getting ugly towards the end, but I put my foot down and asked that we just ended the meeting, because nothing good would come out of rehashing these issues. Kalle and I are on the same page, and Azigza is reading a whole other book. I'm not going to work with him ever again, and the feeling is mutual, so what's the point in arguing over this? At least we could all agree on that.

So now Kalle and I are editing the film. Azigza is making his own, just for himself, to learn more about the editing process. It was his idea to step back from it and leave the project, and we were more than happy about that. It sucks that it should be that way, but that's the way it is, and you're not always going to get along with people you meet and work with, apparantly. It's been a really great and educational experience and my overall experience with the whole project has been really positive. I've had great fun. I've discovered that Kalle and I work extremely well together and I want to work with him again. I managed to get through the shoot and do my job as well as keep on a straight face in front of the actors even after that nasty occurance on the second morning between Azigza and me, and everything that happened, one thing after another that just added to the pile of tension and frustration. On the one hand I'm really glad that it's all over now. On the other I just want to keep going, I want to keep filming, I miss it already and I can't wait to get started on my next project!

story boarding.

We had our second major group crisis meeting today. We all got upset. But in the end, we came together and finished the storyboard and parted on good terms. That's a good day's work, wouldn't you say? We also decided on which actors we wanted and did some paperwork (well, I didn't, but Kalle did, so the group did and anyway it was done.)

Tomorrow we're assisting our sister group as crew. They've promised a long and hard day with definite overtime. So that'll be fun. (such luxuries... we need to be working overtime too, but we won't even get full time because our lady star has to leave early every day to go pick up her kid from daycare!) But they will be providing coffee though, so that's a plus. We have to bring our own food on the other hand, which means I have to magically cook a lunch box out of the red tea bags and ketchup and other useless items that I actually own at the moment since I haven't had the energy to make it to the store this past week and today I didn't have time before they closed for the night... I'll have to think of some solution though, I can't go all day on an empty stomach, since I did that today and I'm still recuperating from my flu/cold. (I have some Swedish crispy bread and Cup A Soup if all spells fail... don't worry!)

Keeping busy

I'm getting on the stressed side now... We shoot in less than two weeks, more like one week. But at least we've had some stupid luck in terms of finding stuff quickly; yesterday we went and for an oxygen mask and a tube (like an IV tube) from the doctor's office near the school and the nurse gave them both to us for free and basically no questions asked, and on the way from there to the school in town where we were heading to listen to the producers of the Nordic film competition awards (the Finnish producer was the only one not there, and from Sweden the director was there as well as the producer -- Lars Von Trier, surprisingly, wasn't. But his producer was. And she was rather cool...) and as we were on the metro, Kalle called the number for the junk yard thingy for cars on death row whatever that Azigza had found and he got another number to call, and that guy said, Sure thing, just swing by next week and see if you can find a car that you like! And we even get to smash the windshield of it, which means we can use the same car for before and after the crash! *fingers crossed for finding a good one*

On the downside, just to balance things out, we had a look at the studio while we were at the school, and realized that it's not going to work very well at all. So now we still have to find a flat with a spacious and nice looking bedroom!

And we have to do a storyboard, find actors and have a casting session (it was so much easier being on the other end of this, you wouldn't think so, but it is!) and besides all the production stuff in school, I have the audition for Teaterhögskolan on Monday! Which is not even a week from now, it's a weekend from now!

thoughts on images and stories

I feel like I'm better understood here, I don't know if it's a language thing or a culture thing, but the type of stories that I want to tell and the type of ideas that I get make more sense to people here, or some people I should say, but I think in general I feel more at home in the European, and Scandinavian in particular, film culture, and I think my stories fit better and would be more accepted here.

But maybe it's because they also think in images, these people that understand what I'm trying to say or do, as well. That's something I've realized lately, well I've always known it of course, but it's become clear to me that it's the root to some of my problems with misunderstandings and difficulties expressing myself, because I think in images and I struggle first to put those images into words that make sense to myself, and then I have to try and translate those words into new words that makes sense to the person or people I'm explaining it to, and most of the time I don't get my point across at all and it always frustrates me, but that's something I've just got to work on I guess, putting words to my images. It's really weird, that. Because I usually don't have a problem with that when I'm writing, at least not when I'm writing prose, but I guess that's because I've already processed the images enough by the time someone else reads it so the translation is already made, whereas when I'm trying to tell someone of an idea, that's where the problem starts. Half the time, when I've had an idea, I've been convinced it's not complete or good enough or something, and so I've abandoned it, and that's just because I've become so frustrated with myself for not being able to express it the way it looks in my head.. but at the same time, the other half of the times, it's been the opposite, where my idea really benefits from the discussion that erupts from the misunderstandings or confusion when I can't explain it properly, so it's not always a bad thing. But I think I still need to practise expressing myself, or at least practise not getting frustrated with myself when I can't get a point across immediately!

We're doing scriptwriting this week. I'm itching to start, so far though it's been a lot of talking, but it's the first day, so that's valid, but I was getting really restless, because all of last week was all seminars and introductions and theory and film viewing, and I just want to do stuff, I'm crawling out of my skin with pent up creativity! Which is a good thing, I suppose, or preferable to having no ideas or inspiration at all, but it's also frustrating when you don't find the time to do anything. My mum was visiting this weekend, so I hung out with her

(we spent all of Saturday at the Modern Museum, and then we got crisps and soda and went back to mine and watched The Green Butchers in my room, and on Sunday we went for brunch at this vegetarian restaurant that she'd discovered at some point that I hadn't been to before, and it was awesome by the way, and then we window shopped in the pouring rain until she had to catch her train..)

and during the week I've been really out of it when I haven't been busy with school stuff and trying to get some sleep. But tonight, I've decided, I have to finish my novel. It's like an albatross about my neck.

Off to a bad start.

This photographer/agent that my aunt knows and dragged me to see a few months ago got in touch with me again. He just got back from Italy, he says. And he wanted to see me (without my aunt being there and making him stressed ...) so I told him I only have weekends available because of school, and we decided on next weekend. So I've booked my train tickets, and dad was going to call my aunt and see if I could stay at hers... I don't know how I get myself into these things, I really don't. I'm not a model! I don't want to be a model! Ah, whatever. Maybe I'll get some extra cash or at least a couple of nice photos that I can put on my website, that is in serious need of updating by the way, and I've promised Ana to make layout pictures for her web site as well, and I haven't even as much as thought about Photoshop since school started (it's threatening to file for divorce ...)

This past week seems to have taken its toll on me finally. I woke up dead. And then I realized I was running very late. And then somehow managed to drag myself out of bed, out of the house and onto the bus, and I was doing okay until I reached the metro ... then I got hit with this weight of nausea and broke out into a cold sweat and could barely see ... so I took off my sunglasses. But I was still bleary-eyed and shaky. And I decided that the amount of strenght and energy that would be required to get my arse all the way out to Alby for school would kill me a second time and I'd still be inexcusably late, so I folded under pressure and went home again. Coffee and Hammerfall and a big blanket later, I'm feeling less pitiful and less dead. Now I'm more of a zombie beating itself up for missing a day of school.

And it rains.

My throat is killing me, but at least I'm not running a fever anymore. It's raining.

That reminds me of a sketch by the guys from Varan-TV.

They did a sequence of sketches making fun of directors and essentially the whole Hollywood thing, where there's this typical director guy making new movie adaptations out of Astrid Lindgren's books (Pippi Longstocking?) and each one is an action movie made with adult actors, and drugs and guns and stuff, and each time when he's summerizing at the end of the sequence he always says the same thing, "It's dark. It's the ninetees... Oh, and it rains."

We started editing stuff in school now. Final Cut. I stayed late with a couple of others until I was fed up with everything between here and today. Then I went home. Got here at midnight and made myself a huge mug of disgusting tea with honey in it. For my throat. I was going to drink some this morning as well, but it's really not helping, so I'm helping myself to some coffee instead. So, there.

Fisherman's friend, Ida's better half.

Time for another update, I think.. So it's Friday evening. Another week has gone by. A particularly exhausting one, I have to say. But fun.

So on Monday we got our cameras and stuff, a not-so-brief-but-at-the-same-time-not-so-thorough-either walk-through by one of the staff, clearly not a teacher, and clearly not a film-maker either, I mean, who says, when asked something along the lines of, "What if I want to do this shot where the character does this and then that and I want to do this and that, how to I do that with the camera without fucking the exposure and white balance and blah"... "Oh, yeah, Uhm, you don't have to worry about that, this is a simple exercise, just cut inbetween the two different shots..." is creative? Is that in any way a problem solving attitude? I don't think so.

Tuesday, I woke up feeling dead, except worse. I can't really pin-point where in my body the problem lay because EVERYTHING hurt, my head, my throat, my eyes, my lower back, my chest. I was dizzy and nauseous. I was convinced I had the swine flu. And most definitely running a fever. And this is they day we get divided into small groups and get our first filming assignment. Teacher, Maria, gives us a little piece of paper with a statement, and we make it into a scene or a three minute short, so morning is spent brain-storming and script-writing, then after lunch we should be ready to start shooting, and by three o'clock we need to be ready. This is also the day I'm supposed to direct. Not a very successful shoot, as I'm sure you can imagine, in my pitiful state...

Wednesday, a lot more successful, I was feeling a bit better physically, and I was acting instead of trying to direct, didn't learn anything, but I got my confidence up again.

Wait... I'm missing a day... today's Friday, what the Hell...

Well, then I don't remember Monday.

Today, I was acting again. We had a really good time. According to the two behind the camera, the end result wasn't as good as yesterday, we didn't get all the shots we needed, we weren't as organized as we were yesterday, but that's not too surprising, because yesterday we did a simple head on sitting on a couch scene. Today, all four of us, five when the teacher came to sit in and observe, cramped into a little bathroom, with tricky through the mirror shots, and Anja and I who were acting, didn't really make it easier for Ragnar who was directing today, cause we got so into our characters and the scene that we kept going, and improvising all over the place, and barely paid any attention to him or Mireya and her frame, so it was a bit chaotic. Plus the air went rather quickly, so we were all suffering from the lack of oxygen and getting pretty dizzy as well... Oh, Ces, in the scene I wore my seahorse necklace that you got me in Chile!

Al in all a good week. My throat is really sore, but I feel more energized. I'm going to devote my weekend to getting some more writing done and possibly getting in touch with an old friend of mine who live in Stockholm.

Over and out.

Weekend drivel.

School is wonderful, not much more to add than my previous rant, except yesterday we set out to socialize after school, yeah, you guessed right, drink.. The other D.I. people in town had organized a game of brännboll (that's the swedish equivalent of cricket, or baseball, or something.. we always had to play it in PE at school as soon as spring showed up and I always hated it, so I was the only one not playing besides the judges.. go figures.) then we just sat around on the grass and drank and smoked and talked and got to know each other. Then it started raining.

A guy in my class wanted to drag us all to this block party, so we set out across town, got there, it got a bit darker, we were all walking down the street drinking our various beverages (I had red wine.) and then the street ended and we realized that it wasn't so much a block party but a bunch of people standing in the middle of the road drinking or thronging at the entrances of various clubs and restaurants... so basically like any other night, apparantly, I wouldn't know, I've never gone out in Stockholm... I stood talking to a Production student and a Scriptwriting student (although he didn't say much, I think he was the shy sort... what am I saying... he was writer, plain and simple!)

Another guy knew of a party in the middle of nowhere, I rather stay and finish my conversation with the guy I was talking to, and then go home, but was persuaded by Katta to come for a bit, mostly because I wouldn't know how to get home without company or at least directions... so we went out in the middle of nowhere, met the guy's sister and cousins and friends, then they wanted to go out clubbing so we went all the way back into town, and Katta and I got away from the others and decided to call it a night. My journey home was a nightmare, because I was dead exhausted and the train took forever and then I realized I'd missed all my buses and got a bit panicky... luckily I went and asked a bus driver on break if there was anyway for me to get to Enebyberg or at least closer to it, and he told me he'd be driving by there, so ten minutes later I was on a bus going home.

Borrowed two student films on DVD with me home, Elkland and Janna & Liv (wasn't on imdb for some reason), that I watched this morning whilst eating my breakfast, they were really quite good, not as good as that short I (think I) told you about before, Victor & hans bröder, which was just absolutely amazing, but still, they were really good, especially for students, I mean, you would never have guessed, they were completely professional -- and I can't wait to make my own films!! -- next week we get our film cameras and we get to start filming! I'm so excited I could listen to the song!