Caught up! And so close to 100--I can smell the victory! I will probably finish before Saturday ;)
Also, I think it's going to be over 100 pages when the story is complete.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
SonRise: Eleventh Time's the Charm
I am completely filled up. My cup runneth over. My knees are still protesting, and my contacts are sticking to my eyeballs, but I have been utterly and undeservedly blessed.
I was in charge of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and The Last Supper scenes. On the day-of that means we make sure the Last Supper props are set up correctly,
This year we ran 11 shows for SonRise. We have six teams that, except for one, do two shows each. The first show started at 8:30 am and the rest ran in half hour intervals for the rest of the day until 1:30 pm.
I have to start by saying that the casting of all our "Jesi" (plural Jesus in cast/crew lingo) was fantastic this year. Every one of them did a phenomenal job. The rest of the cast did too, but it was Jesus who--rightly so--made this SonRise exceptional.
I was in charge of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and The Last Supper scenes. On the day-of that means we make sure the Last Supper props are set up correctly,
and then walk from the Student Center to Hickman to get the disciples and Jesus to start the donkey ride at the correct time.
Team Compton
I really loved Triumphal Entry this year. Last year I only went to each of the first shows and not the second ones, but this year I only missed one. Even when my feet hurt or I felt like they didn't need me, I really enjoyed hugging each of the Jesi for good luck and praying with the groups before they started their shows. It was like my own special moment to be in the inner circle of Jesus.
Then they were off! As soon as the weight of Jesus touched the donkey's back, he would take off. The disciples were fantastic--they never looked tired of telling the crowds that Jesus was here.
Team Adams - Triumphal Entry
They waved and yelled their way through Jerusalem, and then dismounted and headed up the stairs at Summerour to walk toward Hackman. During that walk, the wonderful children that Annalisa recruited would run to Jesus, ignoring the protests of the disciples. This exact moment and the ones to follow were the ones that really set up how my SonRise experience would go. This is where I experienced how much Jesus loved everyone, and how innocent he was. Eleven times I watched Jesse, Andy, Dawson, Robert, Ryan, and Eric represent Christ. During Jesse's first show, after he greeted the children at the top of the stairs, he asked, "Do you want to hear a story?" And they just plopped right down in front of him to listen. My heart was already soaring.
Jesse with the kids
Then Robert Adams, a man who lives for crowd interaction, would take people's faces in his hands and look them right in the eye. These men emulated Jesus through their eyes today. Dawson was one of the most tender. He's normally a very energetic person, joking around and being silly. But today he knelt down and smiled at children and gave everyone hugs.
Dawson and the crowd
Ryan gives amazing hugs, and I even caught one before he went on stage for Last Supper. I found myself drawn to the Jesi. I wanted to be next to them. I was soaking up every moment just like the crowd.
After spending so much time with Jesus and his followers, I definitely felt like one of them, like a legit believer. My heart was filled with so much love. I wanted to finally get to finish the show, if not for another reason than to spend more time with him, to see him more. I knew what was coming, but I didn't realize how my experience from the day was going to affect my experience through the rest of the show.
Finally the eleventh show came. Dawson was the final Jesus to perform, and everyone enjoyed interacting with him. Last Supper finished and we all moved on to Gethsemane. Brandon did an amazing job with this scene this year. He was so nervous as a first-time director, but I thought it was fantastic. Jordan is an intense Satan, getting so angry when Jesus repeatedly gave up his will to the Father. I was already starting to shudder when the mob came to get him and beat him down at the end of the scene.
When I got to Pilate's Judgment I had a front-row spot. Cameron, the talented young director was in costume as a mobster and bantered with me a bit about why I should believe in him. It made me think about what I would do if someone was really questioning me on that day in history. All I could think of was what I had witnessed that day--innocence and love. Then finally Jesus was brought out, and I have to praise Dawson's acting abilities. I no longer saw Dawson. And it was looking at his face that kept pulling on my heart. I was already crying by the end of the scene. It was so hard to see the face that had smiled at children and the body that had hugged his followers--had hugged me!--bloodied, shuddering, falling over in pain. He practically crawled to the cross and slowly dragged it down Taylor Circle. I found Andy after a while and he hugged me while I bawled what I was feeling to him. I had to keep up with Jesus, I had to see his face.
Every time I saw his face I just kept thinking--all he did was love people! He truly was innocent! Why were they hurting this man? It was like experiencing it all for the first time. I stayed right behind the disciple/mobster cluster at the front with Jesus. The mobsters were jeering the crowd and the disciples kept throwing themselves on the soldiers, trying to get to Jesus. Then the "Via de la Rosa" song kicked in and I lost it again. We got right behind the line of soldiers so we could close their gap in the front row again. I was front and center as they put him on the cross. He forgave the soldiers for putting the nails in his hands. With his last ounce of strength he told the thief he would be in heaven someday.
It was my sins that held him there. I didn't deserve all the love I had soaked up. It was literally the most unfair situation that has ever occurred, and I was powerless to stop him from dying. It was finished.
We made our way to wait in line for the final scenes in the gym. People were saying how it was a ticketed performance and that they might give me trouble for not having a ticket or an official staff shirt on. All I knew was that I needed to see that resurrection. My sins had killed him, and I needed to see God's power defeat them.
They let me in without too much trouble and we found our seats.
Mary, Mother of Jesus cried and screamed at the death of her son. Mary Magdalene expressed her grief for losing the only man who had the right to judge her, but only loved her. And then that song began to play.
I know it so well--from years past, from looking it up when I'm missing SonRise. If you know me, then you know how music moves me, and this song is particularly exceptional. I hope you get to at least listen to the song, and I hope you can somehow see how they act it out on stage. After the soldiers finally flee, Satan stalks the stage, thinking he's victorious. And then Gabriel shows up and battles him, finally punching him off the stage, burning the seal on the tomb and rolling away the tomb. I was leaning forward in my seat, gripping Rachel as we both cried. I could barely breathe, straining and waiting for Jesus to finally "arise." My favorite part finally came:
"Sin: where are your shackles?
Death: where is your sting?
Hell has been defeated
The grave could not hold the king.
Arise, my love. Arise, my love!
No more death's sting
No more suffering
Arise, Arise!"
And then he finally appeared out of the tomb with a bright light, no more blood and smiling widely, and I was complete. It had been a full, long, blessed day. I had fallen in love with Jesus in a new way, deeper than ever before. I just needed one more hug from Dawson, fellowship with my fellow SonRisers, and a moment alone on our empty stage.
I have a thing for clouds♥
Thank you to every cast and crew member, but especially those who made my experience today. I know we put on this production to teach thousands of other people about Jesus, but today SonRise was a pivotal experience in my life, and I'm eternally grateful.
As I told Ryan Moore afterwards: "All I can say is: Thank God for the resurrection."
Friday, April 22, 2011
SonRise: Before the Dawn
I can't believe SonRise is mere hours away. It feels like we've been working on it for so long, and it's hard to believe that our efforts will finally be on display.
Things haven't gone as smoothly as I would've liked. We had some interesting issues with cast this year: having people show up, working with unique interpretations, dealing with a lot of changes from what we're used to. But I think it's really come together, and God will bless this production one more time.
I really need this SonRise. My spirituality has gone on a vacation, and that's hard to admit when you're the director of two scenes in SonRise. I need to experience this production just as much as the people who have never talked to Jesus before.
I'm praying that we are able to touch as many souls as possible, but I'm also praying that my soul is stirred up and pointed back in the direction it needs to be.
Things haven't gone as smoothly as I would've liked. We had some interesting issues with cast this year: having people show up, working with unique interpretations, dealing with a lot of changes from what we're used to. But I think it's really come together, and God will bless this production one more time.
I really need this SonRise. My spirituality has gone on a vacation, and that's hard to admit when you're the director of two scenes in SonRise. I need to experience this production just as much as the people who have never talked to Jesus before.
I'm praying that we are able to touch as many souls as possible, but I'm also praying that my soul is stirred up and pointed back in the direction it needs to be.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Final Project: Accomplished
So I'm finally done with this semester! And my prize project is this final project for Digital Video Production.
Our assignment was to make a promo video for some organization in the community. I chose FLAG Camp, which you can learn about in a minute ;)
The process was actually pretty simple. I went out with them on two separate Saturdays, lugging my tripod and borrowed camera. The first day was GORGEOUS. Lots of sun and perfect temperature. The second day was completely overcast and freezing, which is usually good because of the diffused lighting. But in my case, it was not giving me continuity from my first shoot, and the clouds would sometimes part and the sun would kind of shine, which messed up my white balance constantly. Luckily, I had gotten a lot of what I needed the first day, but I still used some of the shots from the second, pumping up the brightness so no one (hopefully) would notice the contrast in color temperature and intensity of light.
Between those main days of shooting, I pre-interviewed and then shot the interviews of three of the main directors of FLAG Camp. The pre-interviewing was really just out of necessity for me because we were required to turn in a script a week before the final video was due. I didn't have time to set up a shoot for them, so I just downloaded a voice recording app on my Droid X and talked to them for like 45 minutes. I then transcribed the quotes I liked and arranged them into an order I liked for my script. And when it came to editing, I was really happy I had a script to follow. It took the work of deciding what it was going to look like off of my shoulders. I already knew. (Thanks Ruf!) I also have a habit of labeling my clips when I go through them for the first time, so that keeps things organized and the clips easily accessible (provided I can remember what I named them!).
Editing is my favorite part, and it went really well--except for a minor scare when the server decided to play hide-and-seek-the-project and mess with my adrenal glands and tear ducts. Ruf saved the day, and all was well with the world. Anyway, the first parts to go in were the sound bites that I had planned out in order. Then it was music-picking time! Annalisa was hanging out with me that day, and we headed to OmniMusic.com, typed in the ridiculous password that Southern chose (to keep everyone from getting their hands on vast-quantities of stock music...?), and started looking for fun songs. We pretty much knew it was the one when we found it. We played with a few, but that one just sounded so fresh, so upbeat.
Then it was intro time! I had a couple clips in mind already, including the opening shot which I had planned as soon as I saw they were wearing their special t-shirts. After the intro came together, it was really pretty simple. Something I had also consciously planned, was matching the words from the sound bites to the images. It may be like a DUH thing to some people, but I guess it was a lesson I realized from this class. So I dug up the images that I thought expressed what they were saying and dropped them in my timeline.
Pretty much all that was left was volume management and color correction. And then I was done! It was probably about ten hours of editing, give or take an hour or two. And maybe 12 hours of shooting, counting set-up and take-down.
So, without further ado, here is my final project.
Things I learned from this project:
1. Kids are hard to shoot! Especially many, many young children.
(A) They do not ask for permission to manhandle your equipment, or they ask and manhandle it anyway. They also like to try to steal tripods and yell into the microphone.
(B) They also move really quickly. Sometimes I felt like I was just throwing the camera in their direction trying to catch something cute.
(C) I don't know how to interview children. The young ones freeze up and don't know how to comprehend English suddenly, and the older ones talk over each other and can't stand still. And I just don't know how to get good answers out of children.
2. Lighting is not my strong point, but I think the main concepts are finally starting to stick to my brain. The lighting for my shoot took forever to set up, because after I set it all up the night before (thanks Michael!), someone walked off with my key light the next morning. Soft-box and all. So I was scrambling and grabbing random people to help me decide if I should just shoot with two or try to finagle a third diffused light somehow. Ruf finally came to the rescue again, and helped me set up another light. Something about it never seemed right, and when I looked at the footage later I didn't like how you can really tell that it's a sheet hanging in the background. Next time I would like to fix that. I think it's decent though, just not super professional-looking.
3. I really enjoy editing :)
Our assignment was to make a promo video for some organization in the community. I chose FLAG Camp, which you can learn about in a minute ;)
The process was actually pretty simple. I went out with them on two separate Saturdays, lugging my tripod and borrowed camera. The first day was GORGEOUS. Lots of sun and perfect temperature. The second day was completely overcast and freezing, which is usually good because of the diffused lighting. But in my case, it was not giving me continuity from my first shoot, and the clouds would sometimes part and the sun would kind of shine, which messed up my white balance constantly. Luckily, I had gotten a lot of what I needed the first day, but I still used some of the shots from the second, pumping up the brightness so no one (hopefully) would notice the contrast in color temperature and intensity of light.
Between those main days of shooting, I pre-interviewed and then shot the interviews of three of the main directors of FLAG Camp. The pre-interviewing was really just out of necessity for me because we were required to turn in a script a week before the final video was due. I didn't have time to set up a shoot for them, so I just downloaded a voice recording app on my Droid X and talked to them for like 45 minutes. I then transcribed the quotes I liked and arranged them into an order I liked for my script. And when it came to editing, I was really happy I had a script to follow. It took the work of deciding what it was going to look like off of my shoulders. I already knew. (Thanks Ruf!) I also have a habit of labeling my clips when I go through them for the first time, so that keeps things organized and the clips easily accessible (provided I can remember what I named them!).
Editing is my favorite part, and it went really well--except for a minor scare when the server decided to play hide-and-seek-the-project and mess with my adrenal glands and tear ducts. Ruf saved the day, and all was well with the world. Anyway, the first parts to go in were the sound bites that I had planned out in order. Then it was music-picking time! Annalisa was hanging out with me that day, and we headed to OmniMusic.com, typed in the ridiculous password that Southern chose (to keep everyone from getting their hands on vast-quantities of stock music...?), and started looking for fun songs. We pretty much knew it was the one when we found it. We played with a few, but that one just sounded so fresh, so upbeat.
Then it was intro time! I had a couple clips in mind already, including the opening shot which I had planned as soon as I saw they were wearing their special t-shirts. After the intro came together, it was really pretty simple. Something I had also consciously planned, was matching the words from the sound bites to the images. It may be like a DUH thing to some people, but I guess it was a lesson I realized from this class. So I dug up the images that I thought expressed what they were saying and dropped them in my timeline.
Pretty much all that was left was volume management and color correction. And then I was done! It was probably about ten hours of editing, give or take an hour or two. And maybe 12 hours of shooting, counting set-up and take-down.
So, without further ado, here is my final project.
Things I learned from this project:
1. Kids are hard to shoot! Especially many, many young children.
(A) They do not ask for permission to manhandle your equipment, or they ask and manhandle it anyway. They also like to try to steal tripods and yell into the microphone.
(B) They also move really quickly. Sometimes I felt like I was just throwing the camera in their direction trying to catch something cute.
(C) I don't know how to interview children. The young ones freeze up and don't know how to comprehend English suddenly, and the older ones talk over each other and can't stand still. And I just don't know how to get good answers out of children.
2. Lighting is not my strong point, but I think the main concepts are finally starting to stick to my brain. The lighting for my shoot took forever to set up, because after I set it all up the night before (thanks Michael!), someone walked off with my key light the next morning. Soft-box and all. So I was scrambling and grabbing random people to help me decide if I should just shoot with two or try to finagle a third diffused light somehow. Ruf finally came to the rescue again, and helped me set up another light. Something about it never seemed right, and when I looked at the footage later I didn't like how you can really tell that it's a sheet hanging in the background. Next time I would like to fix that. I think it's decent though, just not super professional-looking.
3. I really enjoy editing :)
Caught up!
After much tribulation and struggling to figure out what comes next, I have finally gotten caught up on my script!
Today I was supposed to be at 66.6 pages, and I got to 67! I'm super duper stoked. Yesterday and the day before I finally wrote out what I wanted from the next section, so I'd know where I was going. Then I wrote for most of my four hour shift at work today, and got almost ten pages done! Thus, caught up I am.
I'm really enjoying this challenge! It really is the worst month to do it, but somehow it's working out! And I super loving being a writer. My characters are definitely coming into their own, and the story is just working itself out. I update my roommate on them as if I've been watching a soap opera (the two oldest of which just got cancelled: sad day for stay-at-homers everywhere).
I can already see parts that will need to be re-written, a process that I'm actually looking forward to, even though I didn't think I would. For example, the younger sister needs to have more edge, more teenage flippantness (thanks for reminding Kylee). So that will need to be more apparent in the beginning, and then it'll make more sense that she actually goes through a little bit of a transition, and that you actually realize she has thought about her future and wants to do good things. And as other things come out about the characters (that I didn't even know before), I realize I may need to set them up differently.
Anyway, just wanted to say that I'm really excited about how this is going and how much fun I'm having.
Ciao!
Today I was supposed to be at 66.6 pages, and I got to 67! I'm super duper stoked. Yesterday and the day before I finally wrote out what I wanted from the next section, so I'd know where I was going. Then I wrote for most of my four hour shift at work today, and got almost ten pages done! Thus, caught up I am.
I'm really enjoying this challenge! It really is the worst month to do it, but somehow it's working out! And I super loving being a writer. My characters are definitely coming into their own, and the story is just working itself out. I update my roommate on them as if I've been watching a soap opera (the two oldest of which just got cancelled: sad day for stay-at-homers everywhere).
I can already see parts that will need to be re-written, a process that I'm actually looking forward to, even though I didn't think I would. For example, the younger sister needs to have more edge, more teenage flippantness (thanks for reminding Kylee). So that will need to be more apparent in the beginning, and then it'll make more sense that she actually goes through a little bit of a transition, and that you actually realize she has thought about her future and wants to do good things. And as other things come out about the characters (that I didn't even know before), I realize I may need to set them up differently.
Anyway, just wanted to say that I'm really excited about how this is going and how much fun I'm having.
Ciao!
Thursday, April 7, 2011
One fourth!
I'm a fourth of the way there! Twenty five pages. I'm very excited.
I wasn't sure how committed I would be, or if I could stick to the story. But I'm doing it! And it's going pretty well. I have gotten a lot of what I planned into the script, and I have a few events still to go, but I'm starting to dip into unknown territory. It makes writing a little halted and harder, but it's also cool because I have the confidence to just keep writing and see what comes out.
I think my horrible self-criticism has really subsided. It's great because I'm not afraid to make mistakes, or erase seven pages of notes and try something new. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time, and that's what this challenge is all about!
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Crawl.
This is one of my all-time favorite songs. [Thank you Rachel!]
Don't watch the video; it's really lame, compared to the epicness of the music.
Put on some really good headphones, sit back, close your eyes, and let the music move you.
Don't think about it as just a love story.
Think about what's hard, but worth working hard for in life.
The stuff that requires baby steps before you can fly.
I have a spectacular idea for a better video for this song.
It inspires me just thinking about it, but I'm not going to post about it because I don't want it to get stolen ;)
Senior project? Ehh?
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