Why hello there ladies and gentleman! It’s been a little while since I last posted here. Of course I have been somewhat busy these past couple of months or so, which explains my absence in the forum. So exactly what has kept me being away eh? Well I spent the majority of November and December prepping, shooting and then editing a student short film. A lot of problems occured in the making of the short, such as finding actors was a complete nightmare, then location changes due to weather, only to end up shooting in a radio station with just one actor because that was the only place where it was actually sound proof and because of communication errors with one actor.

During that period, I was swarmed with assignments that had to get done before the new term in Janurary. However, my old computer died on me but fortunately for me was that I saved all of my work onto a USB memory stick, so I managed to finish a screenplay assignment and essay in time as I do have a laptop as well, just no Internet connection. So I spent about two weeks or so with no computer that, until I managed to brand new one as opposed to my old one which was second hand. Even during the Christmas holidays, I had assignments to do.

So now I am back, but I am now yet again preparing for another film shoot, at the moment I am working on two storyboards. I’m assuming if I got the timetable worked out right that I will end up shooting in about two or three weeks time. So between now and then, I again have to hunt for actors, just this time I’m doing it at an early stage as opposed to before where I attempetd to gather actors about a week before shooting. I am also on my second screenplay assignment, I decided to take a different direction to what I normally write, even surprised a lot of the other students in the class when I pitched my idea to the class. Mind you, next Friday coming, a film producer is coming in and will listen to everyone’s idea, then give feedback before we can actually write our screenplays. But for the moment, its just writing plot outlines and treatments.

 And thirdly, I am also in the middle of preparing for a major essay, comparing New Hollywood films if I recall correctly.

This is one of those rare days where I feel like I’m in a very good mood. Well actually its the second day I’m feeling like this, which is in fact even more rarer for me, since most of the time I’m very stressed and unhappy. But yesterday I recieved a letter from the student loans company, informing me that they finished my student loan application and listed what I was entitled to over the course of the year.

Why am I happy about this? Because of the fact that I sent the application three months late, I completely forgot I even had the renewal application form, which I only completed and sent off a month ago or less than a month ago and despite that they good people at the student loans company managed to process it in time for my re-enrolement that will take place on Tuesday. And I think it was vital, perhaps essential that they had to get it done, because I needed that final notifcation letter which I recieved yesterday in order to prove to the university that I have a student loan in order to pay for my education for the year.

Had I not recieved the letter yesterday, I did send an email to my lecturer informing him of the situation just in case I didn’t get the letter in time, which he did respond back saying just enrole on Tuesday and that might help speed up the process a bit of my application. But seeing that I have the letter now, I no longer need to worry about it. So yeah, ’tis been a good two days so far =].

I am almost done in preparing for my second year of university, just need to await for a book that my lecturer has recommended me to get. Although I was reluctant to even get it, I really had no interest in getting it, but I got it anyways. The book itself is on screenwriting, how to structure a script and developing narratives and all that jazz, but I feel like I don’t really need it, since I know the basics of writing a script because I been reading them online since I was thirteen years old in high school, I even used to sit at the school library during lunch times reading them and learning how to write them.

I downloaded an article in high school, which I still have by Robert Gregory-Browne entitled How to Format Your Screenplay Like a Pro and not only do I stil have it on hard copy, I still have the digital one both on my computer and saved on my SkyDrive account.  To me however, I expect that the article will be much more helpful in comparison to the book that should arrive here tomorrow at noon-ish or Saturday by Robert McKee.

If that name is familar to you, he’s a screenwriter instructor who has “story seminars” when he was a professor at the University of California. He is also somewhat critcised in the Nicolas Cage movie Adaptation. But my lecturer has been advising pretty much everyone in my class, to get the book, which is ironic to me, since my lecturer works mainly as camera-operator and editor outside of the teaching profession and he himself had to buy the book in order to advise us on how to do script-writing.
My initial problem is that I rather explore  and be creative in writing rather than be expected to follow rules or expectations by someone who I think is often making assumptions in regards to narrative, dialogue or about they assume how the audience thinks.

Which brings me to another point, I have a problem with how audiences are being treated as stupid and incapable of understanding anything. I been told and advised last year in the first year of uni, that I should not write dialogue intelligently, because apparently “normal people don’t speak like that” and that they “won’t understand it”, which I find insulting, like what the hell does that even mean exactly? The audience should be given a bit more credit than this, considering more and more people are going through college and university, yet somehow they’re suddenly incapable of understanding what’s being said? Please.

I have finally sorted out my tution fee renewal problem for my second year of university! So that’s now completely sorted, so ladies and gentleman, I can now relax for now.

Watching an episode of Californication reminds me when I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. But now I’m into screen-writing as I find it much easier to, since I may not have the patience to write a book. Although that is to say that screen-writing itself is easy, since I been studying film both in college and uni, I have a respect for writers in general as they really put a lot of work into what they write as they have to think of a lot of things, mainly starting with characters e.g. what they’re about and their motives.

The problem I often have with writing scripts is trying to think of everything that I’m expected to think of within a script. Like for example if I were to write a scene where it takes place in the woods, for some reason I’m expected to know why it’s taking place in the woods, even if the reason’s not written in the woods. I perfer to just write and allow others to interpret what they want and that not every scene requires a reason behind it.

The second problem is that I find it much difficult to write during the summer holidays due to lack of inspiration to even write properly.  I do have that urge to write but not write for an hour or so. Ultimately, I can’t wait for the summer break to end for me, getting back into class so I can actually get down and do something productive, more or less that is.

I have to say, I don’t like people that much. At least with the ones that I annoy the hell out of me anyway, specifically at this moment for the past week now is my family that are the ones I currently don’t like. After a dramatic, pathetic incident between my mother and father, in which my mother suspected that my father was cheating on my mother, which led my father to walk out of the house, stayed over at a friend’s house and came back.

I don’t quite know the details, nor do I care for them but since he’s now back here, I assume it’s either a misunderstanding where my mother got carried away with her suspicisons of him doing that or that he’s given yet another chance. What currently pisses me off is that while my mother for the next ten to eleven days staying at my sister’s to help out looking after the kids, as my sister gave birth a week ago to a baby boy whose name I can’t remember right now…but while my mother’s there, I am asked to log in times of when my father goes out and whenever he returns. I really don’t want to do that, as it’s none of my business, none whatsoever. I hate the hypocrisy of it also, since my father does have the tendency to moan about how long my mother’s out or times her and she’s asking me to do just the exact same thing.

I do want to tell my father this, but again, I feel that its not my place to, plus it will exacerbate the situation between my parents, if I were to tell him.

Besides that I spent much of the time not talking to anyone, just so I can clear my head and try to relax myself, as I’m really stressed as hell about all of this. I hate the summer holidays.

Good evening children.

First post in my new blog, huzzah! Yeah, I am not that great when it comes to first posts exactly. However, you may know me in the darkness forums already.

Anyways, its been a long shitty day for me, I really don’t have the stamina to write something, but at somepoint will do.