Short films and such

Finally got around to ripping the Vancouver Film School DVD and selecting the few acceptable clips from the short "Tequila Rose" (that I -- I'm ashamed to admit -- wrote the script for, in addition to playing the title role) and I've edited those together into a trailer-like show reel. Because there's not way I'm ever show the whole thing to anyone, since the good moments are severely over-shadowed by the horror that is the rest of the film. And the director, photographer and editor managed to put something together that is nowhere near what I'd intended with the script, so I don't want people to think I actually wrote that. The script wasn't that good to begin with, but it sure wasn't a sketch from SNL and that's what the end result resembles.

Had a meeting with Tove, the photographer who's going to shoot my short film that I'm preparing now, and talked about the cinematography. And yesterday I met up with Anja and we talked a little about the short as well, amongst everything else between the sky and the earth, as we are wont to do when we see each other. I'm trying to coax her into helping me with the casting in addition to being Assistant Director during the shoot. She really wants to, but she's got a lot on her plate right now with school and her own projects, so it's a matter of having the time. But I'm sure we'll make it work somehow.

blue flowers.

I have been landed with a (probably psycho-somatic) head cold, this previous weekend I was running an on-and-off fever, which is always a lot of fun...

On Friday we had the screening of our Larry Kent scenes. I was quite nervous about that to say the least, but of course, in the end, it didn't match to anywhere near my worst-case-scenario mental images, so even though I wasn't entirely pleased with it, also to say the least, I was pleasantly surprised by how brief and harmless the sex scene was and how ridiculous the slashing of wrists were and how little you could actually see of my face due to a large amount of black-dyed hair was in it. So overall not too bad an experience.

Earlier in the week Gill gave me and Tony the number of her new landlord and we called her in between scenes (we were filming Gill's film last week, our second and last location shoot) and had a meeting/viewing scheduled for the end of the end of the day, and after the viewing we paid the security deposit and the place is ours; finding and securing a place has been nowhere near as painless a process as this for either of us in the past and we were rather shocked by the time we walked away from the place and the realization of how much we grew up in the span of that day came crashing down on us. I'm really excited about our new place, although I'll severely miss living with Cesar. To be honest I'd expected Cesar and I to drive each other up the walls within the first week of living together, especially in such a limited amount of space, but I can't even picture living without him now. It's us. We belong together, not apart. We compliment each other, bicker though we may, and him and Josh better get a place fairly close to ours if they end up living together after school.

Also, I'm -- well, we're -- getting a kitten, hopefully! We haven't really looked for one yet cause we don't move in until the first of April and even after that we must prioritize furnishing the place, getting head shots taken, filming our second scenes for the promo reels, working on the musical and graduating and all that stuff before we can start worrying about pets... yeah, I almost had myself convinced with that one, but no... as soon as we're in, I'm getting a kitten!

Oh, and in regards to the title of this entry, I bought some really cool blue and green flowers the other day, I was going to give them to Gill in case me and Tony ended up going over to her place for a visit, cause we've been talking about going over to meet her kitten and just hang out and stuff, but we didn't end up going that day, and also my fever got worse so I went home... but the flowers are now in mine and Cesar's apartment, two in a bottle of Cabernet Savignon and one alone in a bottle of Shiraz...

just breathe

This year has been such an emotional rollercoaster so far that almost feel numb now. But I'm on top of the school work and despite having the script to worry about/work on, the issue with my stolen goods, a lot more homework, upcoming auditions for the location shoots on thursday as well as the monologue competition on friday, I still feel like I'm keeping on top of things, I don't feel like I'm drowning at all, yet, which is good I suppose. In fact I was walking home after the monologue competition coaching with Jim Bates last night at around half past nine, and I could physically sense all these things that are looming over me, threaten to cave in, but I just focused on my breathing and it kept them at bay, and then I noticed how beautiful the clouds were against the night sky.

We just had singing class and sang one of the group songs for the first time, and although I thought the song seemed extremely boring when I read through it, it was actually quite fun. It's called "An Old-fashioned Wedding" and in the third chorus the guys and the girls sing their respective choruses at the same time, completely overlapping each other, and it was really cool. Even though there were only the three of us (Gillian was none present today for some reason) and way too many of them. I still think we managed to get our point across. My favourite line: "Love and honor, yes, but not obey..."

I also had some revelation in singing class today, well I had two, and that was that my body instinctively shuts down when I partner with just one person whereas I feel completely free and in my body when I'm engaging with the entire group now, and today I tapped into that and discovered that I was afraid. And it struck me that I feel that I have to give that person my all, more than I have to give, and I, not only lose myself completely, but I also feel extremely pressured. And then I realized that I'm like that in my private life too, and that's why my social life is quite fucked, and why I feel like I don't have any friends but lots of people have me as their friend, that's why. And I told Alisa, not about my social life, but about the singing, and she gave me some good support and advice and basically told me that no-one else is my responsibility, I can only be responsible for myself, and that makes complete sense, and I know that, but at this point I'm obviously acting on instince, not intellectually. But now that I am aware of this, I can work with it. Not against it, but with it.

The other things is that the connection between the resonators in your body and the support in your lowest resonator (your gut) all made sense to me. My voice teacher in theatre school nor Mikal Grant managed to get that through my thick head, apparantly, because when Alisa explained it to me today the pieces all just fell into place...

tequila rose and other unfortunates

my first meeting with nathaniel geary, the director, went fantastic. we met up in this cozy coffee shop and had an immediate connection. when we were discussing my script i could tell we were on the same page. i am so looking forward to working with him now. we start filming in a month and i have a lot of work to do on my script. plus i'm auditioning for tequila rose.

last night was a surreal nightmare. i went for dinner at earl's after school with cesar and sarah and when we got up to pay the bill and leave, my backpack had completely disappeared from its spot on the floor next to my chair. we hadn't seen anyone even walking by that side of the table and we never left it, we sat there the entire time and we didn't see anything. that backpack contained my laptop, my wallet with my visa card, all my homework and papers from school, basically my entire life. the waitresses were really nice and said it was probably some misunderstanding, they took down my information and said they'd give me a call if it showed up at the end of the night.

me and cesar went home. i logged onto my bank's website to cancel my credit card, just in case. and as i checked my account i discovered that huge amounts money were being withdrawn from it at that very minute. within an hour of losing my bag, i'd lost next to $3000 from my savings account. i phoned the police and reported it stolen, they were very unhelpful, then me and cesar tried to call the bank in sweden to cancel my card, but his phone wouldn't allow international calls, so we ran down lonsdale from gas station to gas station trying to find a international calling card. we finally did and i called the bank from a pay phone and cancelled my card.

i emailed nathaniel and asked him to email me back my script, which he just did, so that i can work on the script which needs to be rewritten by monday. tony said he'd help me contact dell on monday, because according to him they have tracking devices on their computers... i'm trying to stay positive despite my glass being as always half empty...

Done.

It's been a tumultuous past month, what with my own personal problems in my private life as well as with the end of term school work, but we're finally done with our presentation now and after a critique session with our singing teacher tomorrow we're completely done with second term and I get to fly home to sweden and celebrate christmas with my family. I am so looking forward to it. Several reasons why; I haven't seen my family in eleven months and twelve days (my mother informed me today via e-mail), I haven't seen my soon-to-be one-year-old niece at all, I really need the break to breathe and take a step back from everything that is my life here in Vancouver and get some perspective on things, plus refuel myself with energy for third and last term at VFS.

I am sitting in our basement computer lounge at school right now, waiting for a belated voice class to start at three. And we all just remembered our teacher saying something about a test a while back and none of us have prepared for that at all. It never rains but it pours, eh! (sorry couldn't help it) And (here's a Fry & Laurie quote for you) sometimes it rains and pours at the same time!

so, it's all over. we finished all our presentations with our movement pieces yesterday afternoon. it was fine. of course, no-one really takes movement and the pieces seriously, so it wasn't that big a deal, unlike the day before, tuesday... that's when we performed our monologues. the scariest and most exciting thing ever. we all sat on the floor upstage against the wall, behind the actor performing, facing the audience while we waited for our turn to and after we'd done our monologue...

the scary thing was your name was drawn from a bowl so you had no idea when it was going to be your turn! and to make things even harder you had to draw two other pieces of paper for yourself once you were up there and quickly do whatever was on them, in my case it was teenage mutant ninja turtles (on the one note) in gibberish (on the other), and for example, rodrigo who went first, got arnold swatzieneigger (i have no idea how to spell his name) on ice. that was meant to get you out of your head before doing your piece, and made things a bit more light for everyone, cause most of the monologues were really intense and dark... i performed gill's and that was about her boating accident when she was eleven and it was very graphic...

anyway. i survived. we all did. and last night we went out for drinks!

i went for a coffee with cathrine before joining the guys at the pub and brett, darryl, mark and josh walked by, high as kites, they'd taken e and were heading toward granville street to get drunk and check out girls or something... i know it's none of my business now, since i broke up with him, but i couldn't help but to worry about brett for the rest of the night. i care about him so much. i hope he's fine.

i am a snowflake.

it was snowing today, real snow, real big snowflakes, the world was a whirlwind of white noise, and it was just like home. so that was a good thing. the singing, not so much... and we're going up tomorrow... i'm doomed.

so i'm on the verge on a nervous breakdown and my social life etc are starting to suffer from it, but i'm just going to try and ride this one out for as long as i can and either it'll pass before christmas or if it doesn't i'll be going back home to sweden over christmas hols and if that doesn't give my fucked up head and chest the space i think they need, then i don't know what it'll take...

i'm at a couple of friends' place right now, crashed here last night after the party and early morning coffee with another friend, we were going to go swimming in the pool but then realized that it was three o'clock and the pool closes at midnight, so we postponed it til this afternoon.

pointless; i am going insane.

We were supposed to read a book called "Mastery" for voice class with Ian and it's left me quite conflicted and i think i might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But a huge mug of coffee has been brought to my attention and a pack of cigarettes are awaiting me on the porch, so I will have to make this a (very lame) cliffhanger and return to the subject at another juncture further ahead in time, i.e. too be continued...

a happy new life

so i'm back again.

i'm living in vancouver now and have done so since new year's eve 2006/2007. i am an acting student at vancouver film school and loving every moment of it. it's as though i've come home, at last.

i worry about the future though. i really want to stay here after graduation.