witcote

hi

Regret

When I was in Vietnam, I spent the lunar new year with my family and it was nice. I hadn't seen them in a long time and I got taken to temples and I got to ride on the back of a motorbike like when I was a kid. I told them that I'd stay the night with my cousin and her daughters. But then, sitting in a room waiting for my parents to get back, I got anxious. I thought about how nini and bao and will were all gonna have fun and go to the park near our hotel to watch the fireworks and I got so worked up about it. So as soon as my parents got home, I told them I didn't want to stay and that I wanted to go to my friends and I took a taxi home. When I got back to the hotel I went to my room with Will and he was already ready for bed. Apparently he didn't care about fireworks. Bao was already asleep at the time also. So instead, I stayed in the room with Will watching fucking television and peering out the window to see some of fireworks in between the buildings. Will kept laughing about how easily he didn't care about frivolous things like fireworks and I got so annoyed at him but really I think I was just really upset with myself. I hadn't seen my family in years, not since 2009, and I left them without saying a word on the night. And I regret that so deeply.

I saw them the next morning though. It was nice to see them again. My nieces thought I looked like a Korean pop star lol. Bye.

I wish I had snacks rn (Working Title)

Alt. titles:

• Film School Fuck
• Lady Grey and her Mistress (Me)
• Bold

I got a compliment that I was bold, it went straight to my head. I think it was about my eyeliner.

Anyways, I think it's about time I blogged about film school.

I remember at the start of 2013, fresh out of highschool, I went to an o-day at AFTRS. I don't think I ever actually intended on applying, before or after the o-day, but rather I just wanted to pretend I was going to. I wanted to feel like I was showing some initiative in defying my parents and following film. I took the same tour of the school I took just a few months from today during orientation, I passed the same library thinking lol what a tiny library and I sat in the same theatre I attend lectures at now, watching people talk about the foundations program. Pass the time with a couple of years of self-loathing and making friends, here I am. I go to film school and it's honestly the best.

Growing up in the south-west, going to cvhs, film school seemed like a loser's ambition. It was impractical and a home for failures who couldn't handle the real world. I couldn't handle the real world. Or rather, I couldn't handle being the kind of person I was existing in this real world. Anyhow, going to a film school now, none of those stigmas, none of those comments really affect me. They did bring me down after highschool, but now they kinda motivate me. 

This tea sucks, Lady Grey's supposed to be my favourite and it's letting me down.

Everybody at school kinda acknowledges this sense of pride, you know that 'oh look at me I go to fiiiiillmmmmmmmmm schoooooolllllll' but they also know that they're going nowhere but I think we're all going nowhere happily, you know? We all help each other out too. I thought this was gonna be competitive as fk but I guess that'll be when we graduate or when we start interning. 

The Minority Report is also pretty great to be a part of. I made a small group with three other ppl and we all happen to be a minorities who attend aftrs (which btw is a sea of white ppl) and it's pretty rad. The first person I made friends with was a graduate from the new york film academy, another film school in sydney and idk, the way he talked or the things he talked about made me feel kinda crappy because it felt like he was only looking for friends he could add to his crew and I really had nothing to contribute except writing and the guy was already a writer so first day was great but lonely. Thank god for second day tho because that's where I met Louise and I think we were just looking for someone to latch onto, someone we could say hi to in the morning so we didn't have to stand around awkwardly. I also met Ella, Katherine and Gavin on the same day for our first safety induction thing with Dapherz. Eventually I met Aaron later on at the food markets and the Minority Report was formed, I like it a lot. 

I'm so happy, guys, I'm finally following my stupid, beloved dream and I'm among people who make me happy as well. It's a given, but everybody at film school shares a passion and you can really feel it when you're there. It was different from Biomed, I think. In biomed, we just all went to uni and studied academic shit, we were smart, science nerds. Hm, maybe it is the same. I guess it only feels different to me because I'm more attached to film.

Anyways, fuck the fking movies of 2015 list I have on the side of my blog hahaha I'll take it down eventually. I chose a bad year, I don't know why I didn't think I was gonna watch that many movies this year, we basically watch 1-2 a week and I'm watching so many more so I become more cultured.

I CAN'T WAIT TO DO THIS DAMN END OF SEM PROJECT AND SHOW YOU GUYS!!!!!

Here's what's up: It's a short film - a series of poems a girl who's just died is reciting, reflecting on whether or not she's been a good person or not. The film is pretty much her transition between life and death. Supposed to be humble philosophy, whatever that means. Anyways, I'm writing-directing and Michail, a school-mate, is gonna be in charge of cinematography and maria's gonna be my actress, it'll be a rad timeeee.

Maybe I'll replace the movie list with a book list. I've finished a lot more novels this year than I have the whole of many others recently. It feels nice and reading kills time on train rides pretty effectively. I'm reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway rn tho and it's written in a train of thought style and omg it is so hard to read. Her thoughts are all over the place and basically, I'm halfway through the book and I have NO IDEA WHAT'S HAPPENING. I honestly don't know what's going on. It's good writing, I can recognise that, but I'd be lying if I told you I knew what the damn plot was or what's going on in the part I'm reading or that I was enjoying the book. It is definitely not killing time on train rides and I wanna stop reading it and move onto something better but I also feel this need to finish what I started. But really, I'm dreading the dang book and it'd ultimately be a lot better to move on because I'm wasting precious reading time I could be spending on a book I like. LOL The only reason I chose Mrs Dalloway was because it was one of the books we could write our essay on and I didn't even finish the book before the essay was due nor did I need it. Goddamn. 

Also, I shot a silent, one-minute sequence starring Aaron Healey and Louise Dietz-Henderson. The prompt I chose was a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald from Flappers and Philosophers:

This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colourful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes.

Click here to watch the video.

I wish I gave myself more time to film it because I would've filmed it a little differently. I would've kept the shot static during aaron's scenes and made them really lively and move around for louise's for more contrast. Like at the start, I would've kept the shot on the window and had Aaron's silhouetted body walk in. I also should've fucked the one minute limit and kept louise's shot after the title sequence a bit longer. Dang. Oh well. EDIT: I GOT MY MARKS BACK AND THE MARKER WAS LIKE MAYBE YOU SHOULDA KEPT THE MAN'S SCENES STATIC???? :((((((((((

I guess that's it. I'll post a photo post eventually. Thanks for sticking with me, if you're sticking with me. Bye, everybody. 

This is what I look like now, just btw.

Why u should go see mad max (lol ya i know i'm way late but this title is linked to the post topic below, i swear)

So I just saw fury road and ofc, it was amazing. Action from start to end, killer score - holy hell, gorgeously portrayed female characters and visually so stunning (that scene in the sand storm, brah). And after watching Charlize Theron absolutely kill it, I went on to finally read those meninist articles about mad max tricking men into watching feminist propaganda and I thought it would be amusing but jesus lawd, men are the worst. Their egos go through the roof and they act as if their physical strength will always ensure that they'll be on top. And after reading Aaron Clarey's shit, I thought that the comments would slaaaaay him but it started with a couple of men going right on! And every time a woman tried to defend her gender, she was beat down by a frenzy of fuckwit, lowlife meninists recycling the same poor ass excuse, it was awful. I'm sure or at least hoping that if I were to load more comments, they'd be great and they'd destroy Aaron Clarey and his backwards beliefs, but I could not stay on that godforsaken site a minute longer. Anyways, sorry I haven't been blogging lol. My assessments are over now tho, just a pass/fail project left, so stay tuned :) Bye.

Twenny

Fog

Easy Easy

I went to the beach to celebrate Jess' birthday and it was a pleasant Easter. I actually had a lot of fun this Easter, really. Maybe I always do, but today people asked how my long weekend was and my response every time was, "in retrospect, pretty dang good". Anyways, maria painted on the beach and I wrote a poem. I'll post the photos and show you what I came up with within the hour Jess and Andrew went in and out of the water.

Jess snapping her shoes and me trying to develop some sort of a photographer's eye.

Maria's photos:

I realise now,
Muted blue on greying sand,
Neverending smoke of clouds,
That there was beauty in the,
Dim light,
Cold night,
That I wasn't there for you.
I wasn't fair to you.
I wanted too much.

Fog against dew,
And like a forest bloomed,
All at once, gorgeous,
Under winter daze,
You left me.

And I understand why you did.

But I remained a lonesome beach,
Waves crashing - a rage,
Muffled, compressed under,
The clouds of my ego.

I guess I'm glad that you left.

But are you?






Anyways, for my first cinematography and design assessment, we were supposed to analyse a painting and take what we thought were the themes and shit of that painting and create a photo that used those same principles. This was the painting I chose, The Lacquer Room by Grace Cossington Smith:

And this is what I came up w/ maria as my muse and model:

I guess I shouldn't have left it to the last minute or realised earlier that I couldn't do any of the assignment until I finished the picture because I could've done something bigger and better LOL But ja, I bullshitted my way thru the explanation as to why I did this and that and I think I did okay in that department.

I also wrote a poem at the start of my story and writing lecture. They give you like ten minutes before the lecture starts and ten minutes into the lecture to write whatever. They give you prompts and stuff based on the lesson themes ahead but I try not to follow them anymore. Anyways, I wrote this:

Hollow

I had seen oceans and oceans,

Meadows of flowers, bloomed vastly,

Change, blossoming right before your eyes,

No leaf left unturned in your wake,

And yet, when confronted,

So ghastly,

The truth materialised,

A simple life at stake,

You stopped the tides.

Your waters, as still as never,

Bubbled, and steamed, and fogged

Whatever glass of a life we had,

Managed to bring about,

Yet idle seas were the mark,

Of one last change.

You looked at me,

No gentle breeze to calm,

No slow rock til kingdom come,

You looked at me,

And you said that I,

Your flower, just the right amount,

Of petals and leaves,

That I had changed. I was rotten.

Nightshade, trenches, darkness,

On what used to be,

A gorgeous day. I had cheated your

Happiness from you,

And for that, I would never,

Never be forgiven.

So now here we are,

Roads crossed, crossing roads,

And you simply turned away,

And walked.

And I remained. Forsaken.

An ocean drained.

A meadow starved.

Hollow.

Okay, dat it for today. Bye. I'll eventually blog about VN and fill in the gaps between my last post and now. Eventually.