On the set

It's been fun being on and around a movie studio! Daily experiences include having to show my pass to security every morning, overhearing meetings about TV shows in the cafe, seeing cars with tinted windows go by, most likely containing some mildly famous person or other, and hearing snippets of rehearsals for West End shows from open windows (both Carmen and Spongebob Squarepants: The Musical are rehearsing at 3 Mills right now, and no I'm not kidding about the second one).

And then today I got to walk right through the middle of some actual shooting! When I got to school at 8:30 there were a bunch of people on the path that I walk on to get to 3 Mills: they were changing the banner on a vendor's cart so it read "Dino's Burgers", setting up lighting and sound equipment, and just milling around, and there were a couple of dummies lying on the ground dressed in various outfits for who knows what purpose: calibrating the lights or something, I suppose, though my first thought was that it was a shoot em' up type film and they'd be the victims (hee hee). By the time class ended and I went back in that direction at about 2:45, they were shooting, and I actually had to wait to walk through while they did a take! The scene they were shooting involved a guy in a cop uniform walking toward the camera and saying "Oi! You let go of my mate! Don't mess with me, ya know I'm a suicidal type bugger and you don't know what I'll do" or something of that nature. I kind of want to find out what this show is, sounds pretty amazing.

And in other news, check out what's happened to my jazz shoes after three months of constant use! They were worn out to start with, but those are holes clear through the toes! Time for a new pair...

Photos, finally!

Hey folks, here's some photos!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022049&l=61824&id=4101276

Slumdog Millionare

(Warning: Those allergic to movie reviews in blogs should stop reading now)

So today I decided to skip Space Lab (the LISPA version of arts and crafts) and go see a movie. Slumdog Millionare was at the top of my list, so I went, I bought me a ticket, and I "took it in," as they say. And now I'm going to tell you what I thought about it! (Don't worry, I'll try not to spoil anything)

I really really liked it at first. Brilliantly constructed, incredibly well acted, gorgeously shot, woven together in a plausible yet poetic way where nothing was unnecessary; beautiful and filthy and gut-twisting. (And I only had to look away from the screen twice!)

But then the director had to go and turn the darn thing into a romantic comedy fifteen minutes before the end! Why, somebody please tell me, why did he do that?!? It was like he crafted the Venus de Milo, and then finished it off with a clown hat! Some of you may be saying, "But Joanna, I thought you loved romantic comedies! I thought you were a sucker for happy endings!" Yes and yes, but I'll only buy the ending if the film commits to being a romantic comedy from the start. When Harry Met Sally probably wouldn't have been such a classic if it had turned into a slasher movie ten minutes from the end, eh? ;) And if someone tells me they're going to feed me feel-good fluff, I'll eat it up: but if you start making a movie that's that good, I expect you to finish it, and finish it well. So despite the "feel good" ending, when the credits started rolling I didn't feel particularly good: in fact I kind of wished I could see the real ending of the film.

Where Snape kills Dumbledore.
Oops... :)

My rating: :) :) :) :) :| (Really good, but probably not "classic film" material)

What a day!!!

So this morning I rose bright and early, hopped on the Tube across town, and strolled in to work at 10 am only to find that I wasn't confirmed to work today (completely my fault for not checking), so they were going to send me home. Bummer. However, having nothing to do and the center of London between me and home, I decided to have a grand touristy day out all by myself. And what a day it was! So much happened that I think I'll have to use bullet points.

So... my day today included:

-A stroll in St. James' park and some close encounters with Eurasian Coots and other foreign fowl, some very fat and tame squirrels, and the tourists who were taking pictures of them.

-Seeing Buckinham Palace and the changing of the guards, all of whom were dressed like the Wicked Witch's guards from the Wizard of Oz: the whole thing involved a lot of nonsensical stamping and yelling and pacing up and down and brass bands... bureaucracy made visual, pretty much. Oh, and yes, the hats were very large and fuzzy.

-Buying a ticket for a show this evening at the ICA and, since I was there, it was warm, and it didn't cost anything, seeing a short art documentary on Japanese bondage.

-Having lunch in Trafalger Square, where you're not supposed to feed the pigeons. :(

-Strolling along the Thames and being completely awed by the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, and especially the Houses of Parliament: they're just so gosh-darn BIG!!!! There's this part called the Royal Gate or something (it's really a ridiculously ornate tower with a gate in it), and you literally have to look straight up to see the top, and then the clouds moving makes it seem like it's falling toward you... I pretty much would have immediately sworn allegiance to whoever came out of that thing.

-Wandering along some back alleys, finding both the Royal Courts of Justice and the tiny shop that makes the silly wigs the lawyers and judges wear, getting lost and catching a bus back to Trafalger Square.

-Stopping in at the National Gallery (for free!), watching another short documentary, this time about the Impressionists, and getting entranced by this painting (like I literally stood in front of it for about fifteen minutes): http://www.mystudios.com/rembrandt/works/rembrandt-sp-1640.jpg , and also seeing some Turner, which we'll be doing in class tomorrow.

-Having a lovely dinner at a little Indian restaurant off Trafalger Square, where a guy and his date sat next to me, and I was almost certain that the guy was a celebrity (he looked really familiar). They were talking really fast in French, but I'm almost positive that they said stuff like, "Do you think she (me) knows who I am?" "I don't think so, she's American." "Oh good." Not sure, of course, and I certainly wasn't going to ask. But still possibly exciting!

-Randomly meeting up with a bunch of LISPA folks (including Janice!) at the show I'd bought a ticket for earlier, which was a really crazy play by the Russian company Akye, based on the story of Faust: it involved lots of bells and whistles and sound effects and cigarettes and paint and shadows and puppets and awesomeness.

-Coming home to find that someone had left me a candy bar (presumably to thank me for having fixed the washer/dryer on Friday), but a fruit and nut candy bar, which means that I couldn't eat it, so I gave it to Jill.

Whew! Time for bed. :)

Today's film:

Touch the Sound, about deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Really cool, once again. Kind of mind-blowing. Definitely recommend. :)

Ridiculosity

I went to see Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill Jr." today, with live accompaniment, and man was it good! I'd highly recommend it if you haven't seen it. Cool fact about the film: Keaton performed all his own stunts, and the following one, which the producers tried to convince him not to do, was so dangerous that the camera man couldn't watch: he set the camera rolling and turned away. Of course, it worked just fine. But still!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zsyRhRR5Iu4

If that clip doesn't play (it's uk youtube, so it might not) just search for buster keaton steamboat bill jr. on youtube: it's the clip that 11 seconds long.

Pure genius.

Thoughts for a Thursday night; or, Why market research is like fishing,

(Warning: if you're allergic to elaborate metaphors you'd better stop reading now)

So you all know that I kind of like market research. I've been pondering the question of "In God's name, why?!?", and I think I've come up with an answer. It's like fishing. How?, you ask? Well, I'm going to tell you, gosh darn it!

As a "fisherwoman," I work for the scientists of the fishing world: my company's mission is to observe in detail the traits of as many fish as possible, and then compile the data to present to various big-wigs who are interested in fishes and their spending habits. I'm one of the interns at the lab, as it were, and my job is to dangle some bait in front of a constant stream of randomly selected fishies and try to get them up on the dock so I can probe them for as much information as possible before throwing them back in. Trouble is, there are lots of other fisherpeople farther upstream whose bait looks a whole lot like mine and who will take you home and eat you if you're not careful, and this makes for an awfully cautious/hostile bunch of fish (if you don't know what I'm talking about, just try talking with people who think you're a telemarketer).
So just getting a fish to bite is quite a challenge. It's kind of exciting though, since you never know when you get a bite whether the fish will jump right up on the dock with you and talk your ear off, tell you to shut up and go away, or even ask for your number (as happened to me last night).

So you've gotten hold of a fish: the first thing to do is make sure it's the right species for your particular experiment (half the time it isn't). If it's the right species, you then have the difficult task of keeping the damn thing on the dock for as long as possible before it loses interest and jumps back in the water, all the while trying to take accurate measurements while it's flopping around all over the place and telling you about how last Christmas it got the most charming new casserole dish from its son-in-law when all you want to know is how many fins it's got. Takes a lot of time, patience, and energy, especially when the fish speaks with a heavy Scottish accent and is 83 years old.

And if you get far enough to wish the fish a good evening and throw it back in, congratulations, you've got some data to report! But make sure you toss the bait right back in there, you've got to keep landing fish if you want to keep landing shifts, there are plenty of other interns who want your job!

And there you have it. It's really not as bad as it sounds: yes, you get really abusive folks, but you also get to have conversations with the most lovely people (a couple weeks ago a nice Scottish lady actually offered me her spare room to stay in if I was ever in her part of the world). And though it is ultimately about money, it's also about gathering knowledge, and I find it kind of exciting to get a little glimpse into the lives of strangers who I will never meet and never speak to again, just as I take pleasure in the little glimpses into people's windows that I catch from the Tube as it's speeding by their houses at night. Since I'm really here in this city to learn, all in all market research isn't a half bad job to have, even if it does seem a bit fishy at times. :)

Back to a new home

Hey folks, I'm back! And back to class, in a brand new space! LISPA is now housed in Three Mills Studio (http://www.3mills.com/ if you're interested), a lovely film and TV studio where the likes of Guy Ritchie, Gordon Ramsey, Tim Burton, and Rowan Atkinson reportedly hang around sometimes (http://www.3mills.com/aboutus/credits/index.htm will give you some sense of the kind of people I could possibly see in the coffee shop. Gosh, maybe I'll get to see the stars of a film like Lesbian Vampire Killers, or even Sex Lives of the Potato Men! Oh the excitement... Of course we've been advised to just "leave them alone" if we do recognize anyone really famous. Just being within spitting distance of anyone like that would be enough excitement for me).

The place itself is quite nice: it's located on the site of some historic mills, I think the oldest mills of their kind in England, if not in Europe (or so said the nice gentleman who informed us about the history etc. of 3 mills today). It's a pretty little island that you access via a bridge, and it's under 24-hour security of the sort where you have to wear a photo ID badge on a special lanyard and they yell at you via loudspeaker if you go places you're not supposed to go. The badge is quite exciting, makes me feel like a VIP or something.

Classes are held in two temporary spaces, until we move into our new space in February, where we're told there are sprung floors and the faucets in the loo run with milk and honey. Until then, we're still dashing between classes in different buildings, catching a bathroom break when/wherever we can in poorly supplied and unheated bathrooms, and freezing our butts off all over the place. The worst space is Studio B, a huge hangar-type place that is pretty much just as cold as Hackney (our former space, which we lovingly nicknamed "The Refrigerator") and has about 30 feet of ceiling for the little heat we're supplied to disappear up into. The other space is much nicer, a nice little warm well-lit room that I pretty much just want to move into. We also finally have a proper student lounge with couches, microwave, and fridge where everyone can hang out together, but due to LISPA's crazy scheduling we have literally no time to eat, let alone hang out. It's a recurrent topic of conversation among us that one should never have to choose between peeing and taking a drink of water at their break, but so it is. We get 15 minutes for transit twice a day, which is barely enough time to pee and get to class, let alone eat. And of course the smokers are completely screwed. But it's all good, the administration is really flexible and understanding, so they'll probably give us longer breaks if enough people ask about it.

Today we started having classes with the entire first year: we'll be split up into two classes at the beginning of each week, and the make-up of those classes will change every week. It's nice to work with new people and have fresh faces around, but it is strange to have seen half your class cry and not know the names of the other half. Kind of a unique situation, so we'll see how it goes.

After classes today (which were a combination of tour/orientation and class as normal), we watched the documentary Rivers and Tides, which is about the Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy. I'd highly highly recommend it to everyone: besides being a brilliantly made film about an equally brilliant artist, it addresses some interesting points about art and artists in general (which is of course why we watched it). There's going to be an optional video-viewing of this sort every Monday, and I'll post the videos we watch here, just in case anyone's interested. I'd also love to hear what y'all thought of the movies, if you do watch them: feel free to shoot me an e-mail about it! ;)

So that's the start to Term 2! Future adventures include me possibly getting a new job (that doesn't involve an hour+ long commute), seeing some celebrities (who knows, maybe I'll just run into Johnny Depp one day? hee hee), and of course the continuing adventure that is LISPA. I'll try to keep updating reasonably often: keep in touch, folks, and thanks for reading! :)