Time Rant.
Damn, I did it again. I delayed posting stuff in my blog. The post below was written probably a month ago.
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I'm done for the semester and I'm pretty glad it's over. I have been busy before but not as busy as this time. I'm not even kidding.
I don't know, I had to do a video shooting assignment, a 2D animation short that lasts for at least one minute, 3D modeling, building a website and some other stuff. This semester was the busiest ever for me.
It also brought out the ugly side of me.
The toughest assignment would have to be either the video assignment or the 2D animation but the video shoot really took A LOT of my time. I had to travel a lot between locations and there's a total of five days shooting.
It all began when our lecturer gave the assignment not really long after the semester started. That's okay, because you need a lot of time to think about what to shoot. We had to present our idea to him and the few better ones get chosen to go ahead. I was fortunate to get my idea accepted.
My very first idea was to portray time as a human being and show how he/she affects our lives, in a physical way. It was interesting for my lecturer, and he asked me to dig deeper and find out what I could do more with the idea.
And so I did. And that was also where all the chaos begin.
I wasn't really creative, I admit. The shots that I imagine was probably dull compared to the imagination my lecturer had. So, I had a hard time, wrecking my brain for ideas when my lecturer thought they were boring.
I thought of scrapping the idea of time as a human, and replaced them with random shots, still showing how time affects our lives. But compared to my initial idea, it wasn't as refreshing and interesting.
I snapped at one point. I was like, I don't give a flying potato what my lecturer thinks and I'm going with my way. I was tired of him saying that my ideas were boring, tired of him "suggesting" better scenes and I decided to just nod with whatever her said but going with what I think is right. I feel terribly sorry for my lecturer while typing this but I was the director, the story writer and I think I had to right to decide.
Finding the actors was also a tough. Because our video is accompanied by a narration by Time himself, we wanted someone who has a nice voice to act as Time. Besides Time, we had to find two more people to help us in the roles.
Unfortunately, the actors and actress that are from other courses couldn't commit to the project. I don't blame them, it's probably a lot to ask for when they have their own things to do. In the end, we used our own members of the group to act, but without a lot of arguing with a team member who doesn't like the idea of using our own members.
Either way, this was the assignment that brought out all of my inner F bombs for my poor friends to witness. I still don't curse in real life but I'm cursing a lot in my mind and in written text now. I'm trying to get rid of the habit.
There was a lot of obstacles that we had to go through to get the perfect shots but I'll mention just a few because they're just so memorable to me.
Our video included a scene outside a door but we went a few floors up my friend's apartment because it was brighter there with the sun nearer. But of course, we had to ask permission for the door that we decided to use.
With our incredible luck, the apartment was occupied by no, not a Chinese, not a Malay or an Indian, but a Japanese. A Japanese lady with zero knowledge in English. Wonderful.
We spent probably 10 minutes, trying to tell the lady that we're doing all of that for an assignment. We mostly converse through Google translate with her holding an iPad while my friend holding his phone. My Japanese conversing skills didn't not help much.
But she agreed in the end, and we're really grateful for that. To that lady, ありがとうございます。
Another interesting incident that happened was when I was looking for locations to shoot. We used a park near my friend's apartment. The park was huge with a lake in the middle. There was two exits at both ends of the park and one of the exit is connected to a hospital and only opened at certain hours.
Me and my friend couldn't convince the guard to open the gate and we were too lazy to walk all the way back to the other exit. Thanks to a kind uncle that told us a shortcut, we decided to take it. But while we were walking towards the short cut, we noticed a pack of dogs.
We took a wrong turn and when we turned back, the same pack of dogs was there. One of them growled and we started to panic. There was only two of us girls and we had nothing in our hands in case they decided to attack us.
So we decided to climb a hill, away from the dogs. Fortunately, the dogs didn't follow and eventually we found the shortcut that the uncle was talking about. So much excitement for a video assignment, sigh.
After we confirmed our ideas, confirmed our actors (we're our own actors), the video shooting sessions went pretty great. Well, it wasn't all easy either but I didn't snapped as much as before. We shot for a few full days and it was really tiring, but yeah, we made it.
We also used the recording studio as we thought we'll need a clear audio for our video. It was the first time we were in it and it's a really great experience.
The end product was satisfying. I had a great team and everyone contributed to make our video possible. Being a director was I guess, a great experience. It's a tough role and it required me to explode my head many times but I guess, an experience is an experience.
I would like to thank all my wonderful members and also apologize for losing my cool many times in front of them. Ah, I'm so glad it's over.
---
I'm done for the semester and I'm pretty glad it's over. I have been busy before but not as busy as this time. I'm not even kidding.
I don't know, I had to do a video shooting assignment, a 2D animation short that lasts for at least one minute, 3D modeling, building a website and some other stuff. This semester was the busiest ever for me.
It also brought out the ugly side of me.
The toughest assignment would have to be either the video assignment or the 2D animation but the video shoot really took A LOT of my time. I had to travel a lot between locations and there's a total of five days shooting.
It all began when our lecturer gave the assignment not really long after the semester started. That's okay, because you need a lot of time to think about what to shoot. We had to present our idea to him and the few better ones get chosen to go ahead. I was fortunate to get my idea accepted.
My very first idea was to portray time as a human being and show how he/she affects our lives, in a physical way. It was interesting for my lecturer, and he asked me to dig deeper and find out what I could do more with the idea.
And so I did. And that was also where all the chaos begin.
I wasn't really creative, I admit. The shots that I imagine was probably dull compared to the imagination my lecturer had. So, I had a hard time, wrecking my brain for ideas when my lecturer thought they were boring.
I thought of scrapping the idea of time as a human, and replaced them with random shots, still showing how time affects our lives. But compared to my initial idea, it wasn't as refreshing and interesting.
I snapped at one point. I was like, I don't give a flying potato what my lecturer thinks and I'm going with my way. I was tired of him saying that my ideas were boring, tired of him "suggesting" better scenes and I decided to just nod with whatever her said but going with what I think is right. I feel terribly sorry for my lecturer while typing this but I was the director, the story writer and I think I had to right to decide.
Finding the actors was also a tough. Because our video is accompanied by a narration by Time himself, we wanted someone who has a nice voice to act as Time. Besides Time, we had to find two more people to help us in the roles.
Unfortunately, the actors and actress that are from other courses couldn't commit to the project. I don't blame them, it's probably a lot to ask for when they have their own things to do. In the end, we used our own members of the group to act, but without a lot of arguing with a team member who doesn't like the idea of using our own members.
Either way, this was the assignment that brought out all of my inner F bombs for my poor friends to witness. I still don't curse in real life but I'm cursing a lot in my mind and in written text now. I'm trying to get rid of the habit.
There was a lot of obstacles that we had to go through to get the perfect shots but I'll mention just a few because they're just so memorable to me.
Our video included a scene outside a door but we went a few floors up my friend's apartment because it was brighter there with the sun nearer. But of course, we had to ask permission for the door that we decided to use.
With our incredible luck, the apartment was occupied by no, not a Chinese, not a Malay or an Indian, but a Japanese. A Japanese lady with zero knowledge in English. Wonderful.
We spent probably 10 minutes, trying to tell the lady that we're doing all of that for an assignment. We mostly converse through Google translate with her holding an iPad while my friend holding his phone. My Japanese conversing skills didn't not help much.
But she agreed in the end, and we're really grateful for that. To that lady, ありがとうございます。
Another interesting incident that happened was when I was looking for locations to shoot. We used a park near my friend's apartment. The park was huge with a lake in the middle. There was two exits at both ends of the park and one of the exit is connected to a hospital and only opened at certain hours.
Me and my friend couldn't convince the guard to open the gate and we were too lazy to walk all the way back to the other exit. Thanks to a kind uncle that told us a shortcut, we decided to take it. But while we were walking towards the short cut, we noticed a pack of dogs.
We took a wrong turn and when we turned back, the same pack of dogs was there. One of them growled and we started to panic. There was only two of us girls and we had nothing in our hands in case they decided to attack us.
So we decided to climb a hill, away from the dogs. Fortunately, the dogs didn't follow and eventually we found the shortcut that the uncle was talking about. So much excitement for a video assignment, sigh.
After we confirmed our ideas, confirmed our actors (we're our own actors), the video shooting sessions went pretty great. Well, it wasn't all easy either but I didn't snapped as much as before. We shot for a few full days and it was really tiring, but yeah, we made it.
We also used the recording studio as we thought we'll need a clear audio for our video. It was the first time we were in it and it's a really great experience.
The end product was satisfying. I had a great team and everyone contributed to make our video possible. Being a director was I guess, a great experience. It's a tough role and it required me to explode my head many times but I guess, an experience is an experience.
I would like to thank all my wonderful members and also apologize for losing my cool many times in front of them. Ah, I'm so glad it's over.
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