Yeah, so, I guess I forgot that I hadn’t written about weeks 4 and 5 out in industry yet. I should probably do that. Update on the current day though, I’m sitting here watching the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals in the second round, currently 3-2 Pittsburgh in the third period of game 4. Pittsburgh has a 2-1 series lead. Playoff hockey has been quite good this year.
So… my final two weeks on my industry practicum as a part of BCIT. As I mentioned in my last post, I was being allowed more responsibility and just felt more and more like I actually belonged as a part of the crew working on this film. I was getting included in more email chains, asked to do more, and even pulled a few clips for the editors that I believe ended up in the film. At least, the most recent cut I’ve seen. Just little things to go along with simply settling in over my time at Network. It’s hard not to feel a bit like an outsider at first when you don’t really know anyone, and it’s the first film you’ve ever worked on. You’re so afraid of messing anything up that you are kind of reluctant to take on too much. Now I was welcoming challenges, and managed to solve a nasty problem we were having that managed to take up nearly a week of my time.
I should’ve been able to figure it out sooner, but other things took priority during the days.
Since I was feeling more comfortable, I was also sitting in on more meetings, even if it wasn’t with editorial. I just wanted to see other aspects of the production and keep tabs on what they were doing, in case there was anything we needed to know or any information I could relay to them on the spot.
Things were becoming so hectic in the office, and nights were running so late, I was often on my own for an hour or two upon arriving in the morning. I would take that time to watch the latest cut of the film, which meant I was one of maybe a handful of people who was 100% up-to-date with what was in the current cut and what wasn’t, something that was useful whenever discussions about making changes were made. At this point I knew everything that was in there and could recall small bits of archival footage on the spot.
That was kind of cool.
It’s quite difficult to talk about a lot of this stuff without getting into too much detail, which I have to refrain from doing. I just focused on working hard during those last two weeks and trying to learn as much as possible. The last day or two I felt a little melancholy, joking about being “banished” back to BCIT. I mean, it’s certainly a step down to go from working on a feature film to making little two minute videos and “mentoring” the first years in the program; no offense meant to the first years.
But I left my final day feeling good about things, and I do hope the crew there will be interested in bringing me back once school is complete. I’d love to get back to work, especially since I did a bit of work for the next documentary they’ll be working on already.
Anyways… I don’t really know what to talk about much on here. School will be wrapping up in a couple of weeks. I almost wonder if I should use it to get back into the swing of writing reviews again. I used to be a prolific (?) writer of video game reviews. Likely not well written, as I was 14 years old, but I wrote a lot of them. This was back when I could walk into a Rogers Video and rent all the new releases every week, instead of spending nearly $90 (with taxes) to get a new game on release day. This year in particular has reignited some of the passion with both the quality and quantity of video games released, particularly in a crazy run the first few months has had. The most recent game I played, NieR: Automata, is particularly interesting for tackling much deeper and much more mature thematic content than most games would ever dare to think of, let alone actually build a narrative around. It’s also a fantastic example of a video game narrative that takes advantage of the interactive nature of the medium (vs. a film or a novel) to strengthen the story it tells.
But that, dear internet friends, would be a story for another blog post. And I’ve got at least one or two more school-related posts in me right now, and probably a couple more once classes are finished.
Until next time.
A Stream of Consciousness 