LA Update: Week 8-9

After being off of Facebook for a couple weeks, I got back on and saw that like a bazillion people had made their profile pictures of me and them. I can't tell you how blessed I was to see that. Whoever decided to get everyone together to do this - thank you. You have no idea how timely this was. In the darkest moment of my life I was reminded that I am not forgotten and abandoned. I love you all and thank you for your support and love towards me.

Tuesday, March 8
One of the film groups that I am held a casting session today, in the meantime I have been sound editing for a project which you will see in a little bit on this blog.

Wednesday, March 9
This evening all the sound designers got together so we could watch our sound projects. The assignment was that we were each given a specific clip of an action scene without any sound at all. Without watching the original scene, we had to dissect which sounds we would need and add those in. So every sound that you hear is something that I added in. This is my scene from The Incredibles (I recommend listening to it with good speakers or headphones):


Thursday, March 10
Today in class we got to watch the film that I had acted in over the weekend (last blog)... oh man. :/ (the pic is of me doing some ADR for the film)
My acting was pretty horrendous, but hey, I'm glad I gave it a shot, and maybe someday I'll get to act the part of something I would really love - an awkward character like Michael Scott, or someone in a Jared Hess film.

Friday, March 11
Good news from the skies! Holly is in town! I picked her up at the airport and as tradition goes for visitors, I immediately took her to the holy grail of fast food - In-N-Out. When we got back to the apartment, Jake and I stayed up really late finishing our script, storyboards, and other miscellaneous pre production work for our shoot the next day (not a good idea - get it done ahead of time!)

Saturday, March 12
Spent alllllll day shooting our film. Quite extensive - I think we were working on set for around 15 hours (thankfully that's not exactly legal or necessary with a crew and budget). I got rather upset... elements of my old self trying to rise up. Another late night storyboarding... I feel really bad not being able to hang out with Holly much this weekend, but thankfully she's been having a good time meeting up with friends.

Sunday, March 13
We shot for our film all day again today. My old self started to resurface, getting frustrated with people and decisions, thinking highly of myself, and not focusing on God or others at all. Aaron really put me in check. He asked me if I had been reading the Word, to which I replied "No." "I can tell," he said. BAM - conviction. I realized I was being a total idiot, letting my busyness become an excuse to not spend time with God in the past few days, and it certainly showed. Thankfully God straightened me out.

Thursday, March 17
I drove to Newport to pick up Holly tonight, she's done with her conference and gets to hang out with me for another weekend. (Or at least part of it, unfortunately she came the two weekends in a row when I am shooting for our different films). Here is one of the videos that I have been working on at my internship for a client. I redesigned the logo, modeled it in C4D, created all of the sky elements - clouds, lightning, etc, and animated them. It was awesome to be given the opportunity to have such a big part of a project.

Brain Hero from Center on the Developing Child on Vimeo.

Also, we just put up our brand new website for Psychic Bunny (my internship)




Friday, March 18
I went to work early today so that I could get out early.
Holly went with me so she could see my work, and meet some of my coworkers and then she got to hang out at Ikea while I was at work. I got done really early in the afternoon and so Holly and I went shopping. I have two "Believe it or Don't!" moments of the day. First - I actually bought an article of clothing - I got this yellow V-neck for $6! Second - the men's section at the H&M that I went to actually looked like the clothing was for men! Anyways, Holly and I had a great time shopping on Sunset Blvd and then I took her to the tourist area - the infamous Hollywood and Highland, so that she could see the stars, Kodak theater, handprints, Chinese theater, etc. That night she and I drove to Laguna Beach and had a great dinner there with our wonderful friend Michael and his girlfriend Jess. After dinner we got to walk around on the beach and have a great talk about how if the nuclear reactors in Japan blow up, everyone west of Utah will die in three months. It was nice hanging out with them, espesh since I haven't seen Michael since like the second week I was at school.

Saturday, March 19
We shot most of the day today for our big short film (the one that we spend all semester on and have a whole budget and crew for). When I got done, Holly, Anson and I, went to the store to get some groceries to make dinner with and then we made an amazing manicotti. Then we watched a sweet ski movie that Holly brought. I MISS THE SNOW!!!! Someday I will live by a ski resort again and I will snowboard every weekend! ....well hopefully. Speaking of snow. There is this new band I found thanks to Pandora, and they are freaking awesome - Miike Snow. (Some of their songs don't have very wholesome lyrics so skip those, but this song here is sweet).

We then went to Yogurtland and then walked around the museums.

Sunday, March 20
Because of this giant marathon thing in Hollywood, church was cancelled today, so I finally got a morning to sleep in. I took holly to airport and then returned for my last day of filming. We got done around 11, and then I took some much needed time to worship and blog. It was sad to see Holly go, but I was so blessed to have her come visit. She really is the best sister ever (she even cleaned up our kitchen!) It's also just nice to have the company of family when you're having a tough time.



Well life has been quite the trip. I am walking through the valley of the shadow of death in my life, but God has been my shepherd, leading me through it. As much as I loved my past four years at Evangel, it is nearly impossible to recall my memory of it without pain. It is now interwoven with so much hurt. I don't know how I'll ever be able to look back on it the same. But I praise God for the work he is doing through this time. I am learning so much, I am knowing Him so much more, I am surrendering all to Him, and I am dependent on him.
For the first time in my life, I am really beginning to understand joy. What is joy? It supersedes all that we know as happiness. Happiness is shallow, happiness is temporary, happiness is fleeting, happiness is an emotion, here for a moment and gone the next. But joy lives on. I have found joy in Christ. It's an interesting concept, so opposite of what our humanity teaches us. People ask me how I'm doing and it's hard to know what to say. Obviously life really sucks and I'm full of pain but I'm good, because my hope is in Christ, because he is my strength and I find joy and hope in knowing him and knowing that he is always with me. Happiness cannot survive through trial and suffering, but joy lives on through everything. It's awesome to finally be able to grasp a piece of that.

LA Update: Week 11-12

So my sister tells me my blogs are depressing... Funny, because I thought they were incredibly hopeful given my circumstances. I may be sad, but certainly not depressed, as I mentioned in my last blog, I have found joy in Christ, joy which gives me comfort through tears and sorrow. Now that that's cleared up, here is another blog!

Monday, March 21
So today at my internship... quite interesting. One of my bosses had this old water cooler that looked like it was from the 70's (I think because it actually was from the 70's), he asked me to get some spray paint and paint it white. So I walk around downtown and went to this art shop and the only spray they had was the legit like tagging spray paint. So I take this cooler and paint it and wow- that was the freaking most powerful paint I have ever smelled. No wonder people wear gas masks when they tag. I would literally have to take a huge breath, spray as much as I could and run about 40 feet away to breathe again. And I think I still got high... okay well not really, but holy crap that stuff freaking killed some brain cells. Since church was canceled the day before because of that marathon, we had church tonight, so I went straight there from work. It was a really informative sermon on women in the church. Chordle has had one of his friends (also named Luke) visiting this week, so when we got back that night we went to this really cool local burger place and hung out there for a while.

Tuesday, March 22
I'm not sure if I have mentioned it yet, but I have been working on this title sequence for our short film. It has seriously been one of the most fun projects I have ever worked on. I'm pulling my inspiration for it from three different title sequences - Catch Me If You Can, Kung Fu Panda, and a third one that I can't think of right now. Anyways, I'm sure I'll put it up online when it's done. After dinner and a good dose of free samples from Yogurtland, we had our bible study and then I had some good blogging time.

Friday, March 25
We filmed for our short film today (The Adventures of Andy Wilston). We filmed at this really awesome park which overlooks LA. It was a really cool location and we hired these stunt guys to be pirates and ninjas in our movie and they were super legit, it was pretty awesome. At the end of the day, I realized that I had gotten a nasty sunburn though. Which taught me a lesson that I've learned many times before and still haven't grasped - even though it's overcast, you can STILL GET SUNBURNT. Anyways, I went to the hot tub with some friends when I got back. That was just what I needed!

Saturday, March 26
We had to get up real early and filmed all morning and afternoon, but we got done at like 3:30, so that was pretty cool having the rest of the day open. I took a short nap, which of course turned into a much needed 3.5 hour nap. After that I had a really good talk with the parents and then went over to the school to work on stuff. Some friends had just started watching Jaws, so I gave myself an excuse for a distraction and joined them in watching the movie. Afterwards I didn't really feel like working on homework so I just blogged for a while, that was good. I think blogging is good for me, it's kind of comforting to be able to list off my thoughts and feelings and listen to music. It's kind of an escape from the constant busyness and noisiness of LA.

Tuesday, March 29
Normally I don't go into my internship on Tuesdays, but today they were doing a shoot for a promotional webisode we are shooting for a website, (I sure hope my work doesn't sue me for uploading this picture of me slating the video and wearing their T-Shirt!)


Wednesday, March 30
After my internship I stayed up all night editing and color grading the final cut of a short film that our group had done a couple weeks prior. It's actually pretty cool though that this was my first all nighter since I've been here, the work load has definitely been a lot less because of being able to work on group projects.


Thursday, March 31
Quite an eventful day. Tonight we are having a huge party at my work, so they asked me to take tomorrow off and come in today to help set up. After class I went back that night for the party. I knew the party would be awesome but I wasn't personally thrilled about it. I'm not really a big fan of being in a place with a bunch of people that I don't know and I don't really want to intrude on the conversations of others. Anyways the party itself was awesome, but I kind of awkwardly shuffled around and just talked with one of my coworkers. After about 45 mins or an hour of that I met up with my good friend Caleb Pyles. I met him over at the Dream Center, which was actually my first time actually being at the Dream Center. It was really good to see him though and we walked around Echo Park (which apparently is one of the more ghetto areas of LA) and we had a really good talk catching up and everything. THEN my friend Zachary Kidder is supposed to be flying in tonight so we started driving to the airport to pick him up. Unfortunately my car has been having trouble with the rear brakes and my car just skidded forwards. It was pretty freaky so I pulled into a McDonald's parking lot. I couldn't move my car and didn't really know exactly what was wrong with it, so I had to have a tow truck called and waited till 3:30am for that to show up. So that all kind of sucked, but there's not much in my life that seems like that big of deal anymore compared to other things I've faced. I was actually really blessed how everything worked out... first of all that my car froze up literally right before I pulled onto the freeway, secondly that Caleb was with me and we were only a couple blocks from the Dream Center. He was able to walk back and borrow a friend's car to go pick up Zach at the airport and then they came and met up with me and hung out in the parking lot until the tow truck showed up. Sure, I wasn't at all thrilled about this all happening, but I don't think it could have happened with better circumstances for me, so praise God for that! Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time I got back and not excited about having to pay money to fix a car worth like $500.

Friday, April 1
Gmail Motion looks soooo cool!

April Fools! I seriously just looovvve Google's annual April Fool's day jokes. Incredible! Today I gave Zach a tour of my school and then he and I worked on some homework for a while. Then we drove to Huntington Beach to meet up with my roommate Jake who had been staying with his family at this fancy beach resort. It was such a great night. Zach and I got bodyboards from the hotel and got to use them in the ocean. It was so fun. But I was pretty exhausted after that. After we dried off and got cleaned up, Jake's parents took us out for a great BBQ dinner and ice cream.

Saturday, April 2
Gotta love waking up at 7:00 AM on Saturday, huh?! This morning Zach and I got up and went with some of my classmates to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena for the Reel Spirituality Conference: The Death of the Critic. It was really awesome getting to hear some film critics and filmmakers speak about the role of a critic and they're importance. We also got to view the Academy Award winning short film "God of Love"