Sunday, April 26, 2015

The Final Countdown

I've entered the final countdown of my Hollywood semester!  Friday of this week is our Goodbye Dinner!  On Saturday the 18th, I slept in and then went to the Dog Haus for lunch.  In the afternoon, I began writing my final paper for Development.  I basically started from scratch, but I made some good progress!  I had over 700 words written when I decided to stop.  I think that's the only productive thing I did that day.  The rest of the day, I relaxed and enjoyed myself.  On Sunday, I slept in a little longer than I normally do.  I had a ticket to the Dodgers game that day, so I couldn't go to church.  When I got up in the morning, one of my roommates was making pancakes.  He gave me a couple, and I enjoyed them!  That was nice of him!  Later on, we got in a car and headed to Dodger Stadium!  It took us a while to get all the way inside the stadium and find our seats.  Once we knew where we were sitting, we got some food.  UTLA gave us $10 in Dodger Dollars along with our tickets, and it was nice to have a good portion of our food paid for!  I got a cheeseburger with fries, but it was nothing special.  According to my dad, some of the Cubs broadcasters talk about Dodger Dogs all the time.  Maybe I should have gotten one of those!  We got to our seats just before the game began.  It was neat being at the game and getting to see the teams play!  The visiting team was the Colorado Rockies.  As time passed, more UTLA people arrived.  We had a decently-sized group there!  Apparently, one of the screens said "Welcome UTLA" at some point before the game!  The guy who bought our tickets told us that would happen, but I didn't get to see it.  The Dodgers got a 2-0 lead early on in the game, so that was good.  However, the 6th inning was by far the best!  There were 3 home runs in a stretch of 4 batters!  It was a home run, a walk, and then 2 more home runs!  We got to see "back-to-back jacks", as my dad would have called it!  There was an RBI later in the inning, and the Dodgers scored a total of 5 points!  They got a 7-0 lead!  The rest of the game was pretty uneventful.  I got thirsty near the end of the game, so I bought a frozen lemonade.  We left after the 8th inning, so we didn't see the end of the game.  I'm pretty sure they ended up winning 7-0, however.  We didn't have much of a problem with traffic, but quite a few people started heading for the doors before we did.  After we got home, one of my roommates and I made plans to see "The Sound of Music" at the AMC theater in Burbank.  We both ate a little dinner, and then we left for the 7:00 showing.  I think there were only 2 showings because it was a 50th anniversary special.  Once we found a place to park, we bought our tickets and headed in.  I still had my free popcorn and drink vouchers from earlier in the semester, so I got my free concessions.  I got to the theater just in time for the beginning of the movie.  The last time I had seen "The Sound of Music" was 3rd grade.  It's a fantastic movie!  I liked it back then, but I obviously appreciated it more now.  I enjoyed it all the way through, and I'm glad I went!  Before and after the movie, they showed a short segment with fun facts and information about the movie.  I only got to see the stuff after the movie.  We left after that.  I think I just relaxed when I got back to the apartment.  On Monday, the second half of the class did their pitches in Development.  Since I pitched the week before, I just listened to the pitches and asked a question here and there.  In How Hollywood Works, we had a guest speaker.  He's the Head of Post Production at Dreamworks!  It was cool hearing him talk about how he started his Hollywood career and how he moved up the ladder.  He really had a lot to say!  He also gave very long answers to our questions, so he took up almost 2 hours of class!  After he was done, we talked about the pre-production process for movies.  Phil gave us an assignment where we have to outline the pre-production schedule for the movie script we read a while back.  I don't really know a lot about that, but I'll get help from the people who do.  He also assigned our final project.  We have to do either a paper or a pitch, and I'm going to write a paper.  It should be pretty quick and painless.  After that class was over, I relaxed for a while.  I did some laundry, as I do every Monday.  I don't recall exactly what I did otherwise.  This past week was very busy and kind of a blur, so that's a general theme.  I think that I did some brainstorming for my final project in New Media once I was done taking care of other business.  On Tuesday, I went to Glassman Media.  I spent most of that day scanning papers.  I might have done some shredding at the beginning of the day, but my supervisor took care of most of that.  She let me go a little early, and that was nice.  After I ate dinner that night, I spent more time working on my New Media project.  I also did my weekly homework for that class.  On Wednesday, my day at Glassman involved organizing supplies and equipment.  I started out by sorting various sets of tabs that could be used in binders.  Once I had sorted those out, my supervisor helped me arrange them in the filing cabinet.  We threw away a bunch of old tabs and ones that didn't belong to a set.  There were a few binders that we figured out we didn't need anymore, so we emptied those and threw all the paper in the shred bin.  Soon after that, I went to a different part of the office and organized a bunch of cords and cables.  I wrapped up some cords and rubber banded them, and then I sorted them as best I could.  We cleared off a set of drawers and put a different kind of cord in each drawer.  They want to consolidate the cords and cables as much as possible, but they have so many that it's going to be tough.  After I was done there, I went back to the apartment and came up with more ideas for New Media.  Because so few people signed up to do their presentations this past week, we weren't sure if the professor would call on random people.  Thankfully, our papers aren't due until this coming Wednesday.  I decided I would be ready for my presentation in case I needed to do it.  It turns out that a few more people signed up than I had thought.  It still wasn't a whole bunch, but he didn't call on anybody else.  He let the 8 people who were presenting have a little more time than the rest of us will have.  Some people had some really nice presentations!  We have to present ideas for a transmedia campaign to promote a property (movie, TV show, video game, etc.) that's coming out later this year or sometime next year.  My campaign will focus on "The Peanuts Movie".  I've got some really good ideas, and I'm excited to present this week!  After that class was over, I went back to the apartment and made some dinner.  I think I just chilled for the rest of that night.  On Thursday, I went over to Karga Seven.  I believe I started the day by recording the text and graphics in an episode of one of their shows.  I know that I ended the day by taking production stills from footage for one of their shows.  Basically, I just had to watch through raw footage and grab screenshots of some of the people, animals, and landscapes that they recorded.  I hadn't done that before, and it was kind of cool!  Watching through raw footage isn't fun, but finding good shots is!  At the end of the day, I went back to the apartment.  I made myself some dinner, and I'm pretty sure I got some more work done on my Development paper.  On Friday, I went back to Karga Seven.  I caught a late bus in the morning because the bus that normally comes at 8:38 must have been extremely early!  I watched through another episode of the same show and took more production stills.  It was nice getting to watch through a completed episode rather than raw footage!  Once I had finished that, they had me watch through another episode and record the text and graphics.  Unfortunately, I didn't get as much done as I could have because of computer issues.  The computer acted up a lot this week!  I didn't end up getting through the whole episode, and they needed it all done by the end of the day, but they took care of the rest after I left.  I worked as fast as I could, and I didn't feel too bad - I've done so much work for them already!  (Not to mention the fact that my supervisor didn't tell me how soon they needed it done until the last part of the day.)  At one point in the week, I also checked a couple DVDs and made sure they worked properly.  After I was done there, I went home and Skyped with my family.  I've been looking forward to going home and seeing everyone, and I wanted to talk to my family.  I had a good time!  There's some exciting stuff going on in my family, and it's good to hear about it!  After I did that, I ate some dinner and relaxed.  My roommates went on a trip to Death Valley over the weekend, so they went on a late night grocery run to prepare for the trip.  I needed some groceries myself, so I went with them.  After we got home from that, I watched an episode of The Middle and took it easy.  On Saturday, I slept in, ate some lunch, and then got back to work on my Development paper.  I got a good portion done!  As my dinner was in the oven, I switched to working on my New Media paper.  That one is even easier to write, and I got a ton of that done!  At night, I decided to stop writing and go to the hot tub.  I stayed there for a while, and then I came back to the apartment.  I watched some TV, but I went to bed earlier than I normally would because my roommates were gone (and I needed more sleep).  On Sunday, I got up and went to the continental breakfast.  Then I got a ride to Calvary Bible Church.  The worship time was nice, and it was another great sermon!  I'm really glad I went!  After that, I had some lunch and took care of some random orders of business.  Just as I was about to continue working on my papers, my roommates got back from Death Valley.  They had a fun time, and they posted some cool pictures on Facebook!  I would have loved to go, but the timing was problematic.  I ended up finishing a rough first draft of my Development paper.  I need to change some things, but I'm glad I got through it!  After I ate dinner, I did some more of my New Media paper.  That one has to be 10 pages long - I have a lot to say, but I hope I can say that much!  Since then, I've been relaxing.  I need to get up early tomorrow morning to work on my How Hollywood Works homework.  For Development class, we're taking a field trip to the Disney lot in Burbank!  We're going to learn a lot about the animation process!  That'll be cool! Then, after we get back, we'll have a free lunch!  Woo hoo!

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