My Crazy Birthday Schedule

The breakdown of the last 4 days:

Thursday. Birthday!
Awake at 8:30ish.
10am: picked up camera for Sunday trailer shoot.
10:15am: Volunteer luncheon. Served iced tea/water to ~300 volunteers and their guests.
1pm: Dropped off camera with father Laszlo.
2pm: Ran around trying to find good deal on external Hard Drive.
3:pm: Stopped by library to find more filmmaking books.
4pm: Job #2.
5:45pm: Quick break at home, met up with S
6:30pm: Birthday dinner at Saltgrass Steak House.
8:45pm-10pm: 48 Hour Film Project viewing downtown, which I went to alone but still had fun.

Friday.
Awake at 8ish.
9:30ish-2pmish: Patrol with crazy friend B.J.
2:30pm: Met up with father Laszlo to transport lighting, equipment, etc.
3:45pm: Home for extremely quick shower and change.
4:30pm: Job #2.
6:45pm: Accordion documentary viewing, The Big Squeeze. Followed by 2 awesome accordion concerts!!! Location: Houston's history El Dorado Ballroom! Awesome wonderful time!
9:30pmish-1:30am: Took friends from documentary viewing to eat at Tacos A GoGo next to Continental Club. Went to Sig's Lagoon, the Big Top, then to CC to see Big Sam's Funky Nation. Holy CRAP was this fun!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday.
Awake at 8ish.
10am: Picked up Laszlo, transported him and camera equipment to Conjunto Festival.
1pm: Ran errands like a crazed weasel. To-do list at least 10 items long.
5pm: Finally home to rest.
8pm: Arrived with S at Karoke birthday party location.
2am: Home where I passed out drunk in car. Oops.

And on Sunday was the 12-hour day trailer shoot! This day really exemplified how life works in cycles, with Fortuna spinning you on her Wheel of Fortune and some days you are up and some days you are down. The Karoake birthday party was a colossal disappointment even though I had fun. The problem is that majority of my friends just do not want to go out anymore, a subject which I have covered before in my blog. Basically I got screwed by them b/c I booked the big room in the club and since very few people bothered to show up and therefore not enough drinking was done, I got stuck with a shockingly high room reservation fee. It is so high I can't even discuss the dollar figure and I am pretty much ready to be done with several of my lame-ass friends. Still haven't decided what to do about that yet.

But getting back to Fortuna. Yesterday was the day I had some trepidation about, seeing as how my father was an integral part of the day and there were 5 interviews and 3 locations to handle logistics on. But the day went incredibly smoothly! We arrived everywhere on time as scheduled and the shooting of the interviews was great! My dad was of good cheer and my brother enjoyed himself! Basically, it was a really cool, pretty fun experience. So I was thinking that God gave me a huge break b/c man, I needed one yesterday!!! It really was like I had a guardian angel working as my production assistant or something.

Now I have to pick my "intakes" and "outtakes" of the 3 hours or so of footage for the trailer. Then begins the editing process, working with my dad on that. This being my first film production experience, I was amazed at how much there is to know about cameras, lighting, shots, etc. and I am even more amazed at how much my dad and brother know about all that stuff. I thanked God repeatedly that they were there b/c there is no way I would ever have time to learn it all.