Day 53, 3/14/2010

Day 46, 3/7/2010


This was a Sunday I slept most of the day. Nothing seriously excited happened. A sixteen year old friend of my host family wanted to meet me so she came over at around 2 in the afternoon. She stayed till around 4 talking when Trudy's mom and aunt came for there afternoon coffee and cake. We sat and talked and ate. Then after that I did my usual evening thing then went to bed.


Day 47, 3/8/2010


This was our second week of Videography. This day started early that sucked but I was ok. We started the day with another lecture and not much more. We also did some lighting situations with three point lighting to try and help us out with getting the shading correct on people in an interview situation. This was fun because first it took up most of the class and two because we were able to get some really cool stuff with the dramatic effect of the lights. We interviewed both Catie and Trisha because that was the easiest at the time. We spent all of the morning doing that. Then because we were done by lunch we packed up and Jens our teacher left. We all grabbed lunch I don’t remember what I got I think I went with everyone else to the burger place down the street. Then after we ate it was time to do a little work before going home. I spent the first part of the afternoon talking to Colton coordinating because we still had stuff to do. Then I got to go home fairly early. Typical evening at home, except the talking on the internet part was a little longer than usual.


Day 48, 3/9/2010


Today was our second filming day in Videography. The nice thing was that we didn’t have to show up really early so I got to sleep in just a little bit. When I got to school I was almost late but no worries I wasn’t. This was a filming day so immediately grabbed our cameras and headed out. Colton and I knew what we wanted to do so we headed toward the place that we found last week to do some more filming with a coffee cup. We spent the morning right there gathering footage for our coffee cup scene in our animation. This took a while. That was all we did that morning because we had so many different things that we wanted to do with the cup. Plus we wasted some time trying to find the location and grabbing me some coffee so we would have a cup to work with. After we filmed it was time to head back to the AIB because we were supposed to be having a group meeting with pizza. So we got back and dropped our stuff off. We decided to keep the tripod and the camera even though later we didn’t use it and it ended up being the worse inconvenience ever. I had to take the tripod home. You can imagine how heavy that thing is. So we dropped our stuff off and went into the classroom off the main room for the food. Turns out that we needed to wait for more people. All of us were crowded around the pizza just waiting for the go ahead to eat. We were all hungry. Nobody waited for the go ahead as soon as Jacob and Brian, the two guys we were waiting for showed up, it was a free for all. People were just grabbing left and right. I didn’t even get one of the slices I wanted to try because of people grabbyness. I guess I should have expected it; they are guys after all. After we all had our pizza and drinks we sat down to eat. We munched on the food for a while and when we were done we had our group meeting getting us ready for Spring break because we would be leaving at the end of the week. It was basically just an update meeting and what could we do better meeting. After, that meeting I stayed around to do a little bit more work on the computer but since I didn’t have my Wacom I wasn’t able to work on the story boards. I also wanted to go home because I wanted to pack. I headed home, talked to Sean packed my bag. Stayed up too late and regretted it in the morning, yet again.


Day 49, 3/10/2010


This is Wednesday, and yet another excursion, this time to Dusseldorf. This day started out bad because I wanted to get there at my usual time and this time I was late. Very late. I almost missed the train. I got up just way later than I should have. I know it’s my fault. I just need to avoid staying up late the night before but since my body is programmed to stay up late at night and not wake up easy in the morning I was unable to get myself out of bed as quickly as usual. Most of the time I end up staying up too late because I want to talk to Sean and since his time is 7 hours behind mine that time is about right for talking to him. Anyway, I got to the train station just before it left. Lars had the door to the train to Dusseldorf held open for me. I ran as fast as I could to get there after I got off the train from my stop. I caught the train, just in time. It was nice. After that we got on our way. I talked to Lars most of the way there. After we got there we headed over to an area nearby to start our day. This time instead of a city tour they decided to give us a scavenger hunt for buildings. I liked it but Trisha was in my group she made it very known that she didn’t like it, but I’m getting used to her not liking things. Trisha, Garrett, Jacob and I made up our group. We got our list and we were off. There were way too many places for us to go in the time allowed. It was impossible to finish. I was ok with this but it was hard because the boys can move faster that I can. I simply can’t walk very fast. I’ve never been able to. I don’t really understand why I can’t. I think it’s because of the shape I’m in but that can’t be fixed in this short period of time. I don’t quite understand why everyone walks faster than me. Well we went through the questions and we found all the ones we were able to. It was sad because we didn’t get to see most of the city because of how we answered the questions but at least we weren’t last. We walked all around this certain area to find what we needed. It was cool because we got to see three Frank Gehry buildings. That was very cool. I’d never seen one before and It was cool to get to see my first. Other things we saw were parliament, a building that they used to sell coal out of, a sculpture that tells the resources currently being used in Germany, and a Tower that tells the time according to windows in the side of the column to the top. There were several other things as well. I got to see an interesting building sculpture of these weird amphibious creatures climbing the buildings. They were all bright neon colors. Other minor things I got to see was the Alte Rathaus, the Rhine and a brewery. It was a long morning trying to find all that stuff and dealing with Garrett and Jacob running off. Trisha wouldn’t shut up about how Brian and Tyler had left the other two people in their group behind so I know that’s why they were running. I stopped trying to keep up after a while. When that was finally over with, we headed to the restaurant that we were meeting at for lunch before our company visit in the last part of the day. This was a great restaurant. I loved the food that I got. Potato soup with smoked sausage inside; It was wonderful. The Rye bread that was served with it was amazing as well. After we ate Lars gave out the prizes for the scavenger hunt. Our group got third out of four groups. Fairly lame. First and second tied so they had to figure out what they wanted out of the prizes provided. I was happy with the third place prize which was a bread cutting board with the Frank Gehry houses imprinted on it. After lunch everyone headed outside. I waited on Jason because he left his jacket on the chair while he went to the restroom. Then we headed out and joined the group for the company visit. This one was the best one so far because the company we visited was a larger one and they actually knew before hand what they wanted to show us. It was very nice. We learned what game they were working on, called Civilization VII. The game comes out March 25 in Europe. I doubt I’ll be able to get it because I don’t know when it comes out in America. The studio was really cool as well. They had tons of posters and sculptures everywhere of famous games and they showed us some animations that they were doing for their game. We were able to talk to them more. It was just all around more interesting. After the game company it was time to head back to the train station and head home. It was a long day and now it was over.


Day 50, 3/11/2010


Thursday was not as exciting as Wednesday. We had studio in the morning where we basically did the same thing as we did in the last studio because they asked the same questions as before. We were also able to get our character a lot more nailed down as opposed to before when she wasn’t as clear. Oh, I don’t remember if I told you about our character. Basically she is a Monstress from the underworld that dreams of becoming a stewardess. She loves flying but hates anything else that can fly because she can’t. She kills the other things that can fly with her crossbow umbrella. The animation we have her doing will be something really simple because we don’t really have a lot of time to spend on this. I’m hoping that It will look impressive enough to use in a demo reel someday.
We worked on that in the morning, again I forgot my tablet. *face palm.* After studio that morning we had lunch then headed out for our second day of shooting with the film camera. We also used the afternoon to try to get permission to use the locations we scouted out for our time laps. First we decided to go to the Stern Hotel. This was the first place that we chose for a good location it was our first choice. After only talking to them for a few minutes, they told us no. It’s a good reason, so I didn’t argue the matter. Next we tried to see if a Fitness place would allow us to film for a little while out one of the windows. After they found out how long it would be they didn’t even want to talk anymore. So we were at a loss. We didn’t know what else to do so we headed to a location to do some more filming. This time we were going to work on trying to film some pigeons. This took the rest of our time. We filmed the birds and a few other shots to try and get our places covered. Then we headed back to the AIB to figure out what we needed to do to get this time laps recorded. We talked to Jens. He didn’t know what to do. So, we went to talk to Lars. He had some better ideas that might get us the location where we can film. We told him not to rush because we had a lot of time to get this done. It was no problem. After talking to him our day was done. I messed around making sure that we had our stuff written down that needed to be done and then I headed home to make sure I was ready for the next day, Spring Break. Again, I got to bed late. 


Day 51 3/12/2010

This day was a long but awesome day that I don’t have time to write about now. First day of spring break.