About days of hurry

Hey!

Like you might realize from the title, I've been in a kind of hurry. I touched the subject in my last post, but this time... it's personal. Our school started slow (like they usually do), but suddenly all the deadlines have gathered at the end of the year. My room mate said, that's the way it goes in the biz: plenty of time, and then suddenly, deadly hurry.

We're finishing our scripts. My partner and I have spent so much time with ours. Never have I spent about 10 hours of work into one A4-sized piece of paper. But it has been worth it. Deadline for the "first final" version is real soon. The deadline for the "final final" version is a week from that. Out of 11 different scripts, 3 will be filmed. The winners will be decided by voting. Democracy isn't the best way to determine the best script, but it's the most fair, I think. I hope our script is good and appealing enough.

Also I have an essay to write, about alternative screenwriting. According to feedback I received from my unfinished essay, I still have a lot of work to do. Too complicated sentences, and so forth. And I have only written 5 of 10 pages required. It's a slow work indeed. A week for writing and perfecting. Great...

Deadline for our silent film is also approaching. Not sure when it exactly is, though. But I sure am satisfied that I started editing it weeks ago. It's almost ready. It pays to be pro-active, or something.
Lots of tests also. Math and economics...! Oh boy. And our 30-40 minute presentation about the visual composition of Fisher King is not going anywhere.

I'm itching to start with our own projects, but it has to wait. And I'd like to have a life outside of school. To start fitness boxing. To upkeep my relationships. To improve my guitar techniques. To civilize myself by watching classic movies. To play video games (and I have a lot of 'em to play...).

Also outside of school, I have a camp to plan. I'm a part of group that has to plan and make seven day camp for about twenty people. It's kind of "camp 2.0" as all the attendees have already been in one or two. So... We have to make a better and fresher experience than those they've witnessed before. I volunteered for the job and I'm excited and intrigued by it and the challenges it poses, but still. I have a fine line to walk between focusing on my studies and focusing on the camp. I want to neglect neither.

Nevertheless, the stress is killing me.

J.

Catchy song from one of the best movies I've seen in the last few years. A whole hearted recommendation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DSVDcw6iW8

About home and other stuff too

Heyo!

Last week I had holidays all week. I finally got to travel to Helsinki (with a trip through Tampere and Turku first) to meet my buddies. It had been two months since I last stayed there. I had planned to visit Helsinki more often, but an excuse and so on.
So I spent all week with my friends and I liked it very much :). I also shared some quality time with my one and only electric guitar and watched awesome flick called "Drive". It used a lot of techniques I'd like to use if I'd ever make a movie. Like telling a story without much dialogue.

After that truly enjoyable week, as I returned to Virrat, it actually felt more like homecoming than my trip to Helsinki, to the city where I have lived for almost twenty years, almost my whole life. Weird.
Perhaps Virrat has grown to me more than I realize. And I've always adapted to new fast.

Still I asked myself; what is home?
My pal suggested a more subjective answer: home is wherever one feels it is. True, but a bit obvious too.
I myself thought that home is a place where a human being "becomes" herself.
This leads to conclusion that in Virrat I have already become something and I continue to transform. And that sounds about right.
Like U2 puts it in a song of theirs:
"House doesn't make a home".

Random notes:

* We have to make a 40 minute presentation about composition of the movie "Fisher King" by Terry Gilliam. Not too bad, but I would have rather watched "Raging Bull".
* Also in the making is a 10 page essay about alternative screenwriting.
* And a list of scenes of our first screenplay of which we have already made a synopsis.
* And our group has a growing interest of start working with our own off-school projects.
* So yeah, a lot of stuff goin' on, and a lot more I can't write about now.
* I dyed my hair last week, for the first time in my life. Now it's once again this weird reddish colour.
* I cut my own hair. It shows.
* I also took two new piercings to my ears. I like 'em very much.
* At last I have a working television in the house. Not that I have watched it.
(I had a two month break from television before I traveled to Helsinki. When at home I opened it up to watch something while eating. I closed it after 15 minutes and noted to myself: "still nothing")
* I attended to a Halloween-party last night. Good times, conquering the dance floor dressed as a Nazi officer.
* Weather's cold 'n wet here... :(

That's it for now.

J

I have listened a lot The National for a while now. Perhaps it's a phase. A kind of phase were you listen to music about (as pastemagazine.com puts it) "the search of love, continually increasing paranoia, fractured relationships, the deterioration of youthful innocence and a generally bittersweet world", all the while being happy yourself.
Or I'm just a melancholic person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KehwyWmXr3U