October's coming.

Well, September's almost over already. I'm at a loss as to where it's gone, but it's been greatly occupied by the good sort of busy that I'll look forward to continuing in the next three months. Being immersed in this film student mentality once again has gotten me back on my feet, and I'm now able to reflect on the past year of my life with a strange sort of... omniscience. It's like I dropped this breadcrumb trail of myself and can now trace it back and pick up bits that need to be kept, and leave other bits to be carried away by ravens and the like.

I guess this is what aging feels like.

Second year of this film program has proven to move forward at warp 9, which isn't entirely what I expected - seeing as how I've spent the past 6 months under the impression we shoot our second year films sometime following January 1st, but we do, in fact, shoot this November. In five weeks. So, that's caused a bit of a discombobulatory panic that I haven't much liked. However, since that elusive piece of knowledge was dropped on us, things have sort of gotten up to speed and now we're on our way. The most intense two hour brainstorm occurred on Tuesday at the Acme Cafe over delicious delicious pie, where my group's idea sort of rose from the ashes of a number of less fortunate ideas and came into play as what we would be spending the next seven months bringing to the silver screen in the form of a ten-minute short film. It's going to be a rather epic adventure, I think.

On this second year shoot, I've stepped up to the plate as the director of photography. I've sort of taken this up as some sort of combination quest/challenge that's going to make me wise up in the more technical aspects of filmmaking - the aspect I enjoy most, but know the least about. The more sets I work on outside of school, the more I see myself getting pigeon-holed into these paper pushing jobs I typically see women doing on a set. I don't want to end up paper-pushing on a set - it's important to know how and have excellent people who do that around - but it doesn't appeal to me and I don't particularly enjoy it. The obstacle here, for me, is getting out there and not allowing myself to fall behind, to know how to communicate what I want on a set and to have the chutzpah to go out and be a valuable asset on sets.

I've been doing a lot of reading - thankfully I've been blessed with a semester that doesn't make reading a wretched and horrible thing and I've been able to read a lot of things at my own leisure. I finished reading The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald and In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch last night, and have started in on a book for school, Believing is Seeing Mary Ann Staniszewski and Audio - Visual by Michel Chion today. I'm going to try and get as many film books under my belt in the next four weeks as possible. A broader perspective, nuggets of wisdom and general knowledge are all things I will need to the nth degree come to our shoot in November.

I've been steadily working through my ever-growing 'films to watch' list. Magnolia, Midnight in Paris, Bridesmaids, Rear Window, Vera Drake, Thor, The Shining, Road to Perdition and My Own Private Idaho are some I've crossed off my list this past week or so. The film journal I started a month or two back has proven valuable on a number of levels - familiarizing myself with all sorts of names, trends in director's/cinematographer's works, pointing out things that evoke particular emotion, amazing instances of photography - I tend to remember things much better if I write them down.

However, reflecting upon films I've seen since August in a little black book have lead me to this unnecessary, but incredibly nagging feeling that I must now watch every movie I've seen prior to August 2011 again so I can reevaluate it. It's terribly redundant and there is no way in hell I'm sitting through Transformers 2 again just to say it caused me to have explosive naps. But whatever.

Anyways, I pulled two entire heads of lettuce out of my garden today - I'm at a loss as to what kind of lettuces they were, as I put down a number of varieties that came in variety packs themselves, but both were rather wonderful in a salad. It was surprisingly filling. I'm unsure if it was the variety or the fact that these grew without aid of growth hormones and have had two months to become gorgeous, full heads of lettuce instead of the meek stuff you buy at the super market.

A wicked wind rolled through Vancouver last night and blew  over my Brandywine tomatoes. I spent a good hour staking them back up with anything I could find. They've gotten stupidly heavy with tomatoes the size of my fist and I'm not entirely sure how they'll hold up if we get another windy day, but we'll see how it goes. I weeded the second garden bed today and am drawing up a bit of a space saving regime to plant that will come up over winter and in the spring - a variety of hardy lettuces, carrots, radishes, beets and garlic.

Digging in the rain drenched soil today, I rediscovered the curious world that I knew as a child that exists around the roots of plants and around the edges of the garden bed. Earthworms and red worms were plentiful, I must've come upon a dozen just weeding out dandelions. When I'm out there, dirt up to my elbows, flip flops and sweatpants (so many reasons there why I get all the guys, but that's an issue for later), I relax completely - not a lot bothers me. I brush elbows with mama wolf spiders, roll sowbugs around in the palm of my hand - I realize that these are things I should not fear. And I think, a hiatus from the outdoors and a super-city mentality allows these insecurities and itty bitty fears to come creeping back.

Because I'm obsessive-compulsive about the animals I keep as pets, I'm so very glad to say that my dear old catfish, Leonard, turned two last week and my other catfish, Samson, is turning two next week. May they have many years of lazing around, being catfish before them!

Well, after this million-word-count blog post, I should probably go to sleep or something. I've got a week of hellish stress on a budget of zero dollars ahead of me. I'm sure I'll enjoy it. Hope everyone has had a nice start to their autumn and here's to starting October on the right foot.

Things we can both be excited about:

VIFF - oh you sweet, sweet film festival

Drive - read this review by FilmDrunk

This guy's youtube channel - this video in particular

Aerlan has a blog - you will go to there!