one thing followed by another.

Last night two eventful things happened. The first one was intense, thrilling and fantastic. Second was intense, thrilling, and terrifying.

We went to the movies, and it wasn't a matinée, with a bunch of friends and saw Batman - The Dark Knight. I am ecstatic about this film. Every character was thought thru, true to their nature, complex, diverse...well I could go on and on, but I'm a big believer in not giving away anything when it comes to any art form. I think people should experience things on their own terms, not on someone elses...and frankly, I think my raving opinion would give some people cause for pause and cause them to go into seeing this film with to high of an expectation. So, forget what I said, I take it all back. What I want to say is go and see it. If you like good characters and an adventure in another universe then you'll like (dare I say, "LOVE") this movie.

The second event of the evening still has me shaken. Last night we called the police at 12:45 a.m. because it sounded like our neighbors were abusing their little girl.
One reason I'm still shaken is that we've been getting ready for our party tonight and we've been doing house cleaning and yard work all day (it's 1:45 pm right now as we're pausing for a break) and we haven't heard a peep out of the entire house since the incident.

The cops, we think, ended up showing up sometime between 1:45 and 2 a.m. We don't know what happened when they did, or if that was them, but the bedroom light came on around then.

I don't want to go into much detail here, but I will say that the little girl we've seen in the backyard can't be more than 4 years old. She's a tiny thing, and the guy we've seen in the back yard is like around 6ft tall/350+ pounds. They were mad that she wasn't in bed. It began with them telling her to leave and go to sleep, but from there it became more angry and loud, expletives were flying, she was crying and then sounds you never want to hear when another living being is involved exploded from the house. That's when we called the cops.

They said if we ever hear anything remotely close to that again to not hesitate to dial 911. I just pray she's alright.

a follow-up

So friends, I'm not going to the mid-west...next week. Things in the estimate freaked out the client, like the price for last minute airfare to anywhere. And, they said the people they wanted us to interview wouldn't be available next week. Ya. So that's problem #2. Buutttt...all this means is they are either going to have us find cheaper tickets and fly out in a couple of weeks, or they're going to send their Leer to pick us up.

Ya. I'm voting for option 2.

Ka-blam!

an explosion of photos.

On set. 5th Avenue New York, New York

It went from this...




To this...







Crew doing their jobs...







Alright, that's not fair, we had the best crew around and they moved so much I could barley get any usable shots...here's the few I could get...they're kicking ass like they did non-stop for days.









Phil doing one of my "jobs" (checking monitor, I know it's blurry, but he's just so serious!)



At the end of day 2, 14 Interviews, 14 set designs, 14 -insert something else that seems like a lot when you say "14" of it - all the gear is gone and it's still light outside. Sheesh!



On location in the Bronx
We used a track and dolly to capture a beautiful shot in Hunts Point Riverside Park











Job well done fellas.



Days off.
In a subway with a pretzel



Drinking pints in the oldest bar in NY
(I hadn't had beer in I can't remember how long...it was amazing.)

You order by the twos. Light or Dark.




The first time I saw the skyline...
sorry it's blurry, we were moving, coincidentally, this was also my first ride on the subway.



Some of my favorites









Until the next explosion. goodnight.

It started around 3 o'clock

What do you do when a client calls and wants you to fly to somewhere in the mid-west?

Well I know what I did....
-began a detailed budget, which meant...
-pricing plane tickets
-checking hotel room rates, making sure to stay away from the rising rivers
-figuring out what,how,where to rent a vehicle big enough for crew and gear
-figuring out how to rent grip equipment in another state on short notice
-calling our trusty crew members to see if they're available

(did I mention...this is supposed to happen next week?)

-compiled a list of items we could bring, how much they'd weigh, and budgeted for "extra luggage"
-came up with a nice round number that I'm sure will be rejected and then went home for the night cause they aren't getting back to us until tomorrow. Did I mention they want this all to happen next week, like on Tuesday?
No, I'm not freaking out, why do you ask?

It's ALIVE!!!

The Pushplay Productions blog Push This is alive and well. We've posted a few "practice" blogs here and there, and the first up-to-date-official-blog was posted last night.
Check them out, comment, post your wishes, thoughts, links, and hates...we want to hear it all!

Cheers to the start of a beautiful new blog-ship.

A brand new day.

goodbye. ello.

It seems like all of a sudden life went topsie turvie. I don't know if I've said it before but I kind of can't believe what my life is right now. I'm strangely, seemingly sitting in God's good grace in every way imaginable.
so goodbye old ideas and welcome new ones.

In the past, the way my life seemed to work was one tragic moment followed by some time of calm, which would inevitably lead to another moment of tragic. By tragic I mean a trial, a hardship, to some it would be thought of as a moment of sharpening, evolving, becoming...but it seemed to always be by way of pain, suffering, tears.

(For those that don't know my story, I'd like to say that this isn't a pity party of a girl that didn't get the diamonds she wanted for her sweet sixteen...it would be shameful to use the word choice I have "pain, suffering, tears" if this were the case, and that isn't me. It just isn't.)

I've lived my life, not cursing the One that brought it all upon me, rather I've overly embraced the pattern. This is not to say that I didn't fear the next tragedy...I have lived a lot of my life in that fear. But even more sad than the constant wondering of when the next bad thing would come, I was unable to dwell on the goodness, the times of happiness.

I don't know if I'm making sense so here's a little picture of the struggle I had. It looked like this...

I've just married the man of my dreams, when's he going to die, leave me, become someone I don't know?

We just bought a house, hooray, now when's it going to burn down, fall apart, get broken in to?

And on and on. If the moment was a good one, I would instantly worry about when the tragic would strike.

I've finally begun to learn that it's good to succeed. It is good to be happy, to be blessed. It is righteous to be grateful, thankful, appreciative.

And so. I am blessed. I am thankful. I am enjoying the blessings, but there's still this little part of me that won't be taken for a fool, and so my saving's account will continue to grow, cause I'm no fool.

The beginning of the picture explosion. A last hoorah with my girls.

at least it isn't a full month later that would've been worse.

Note: This post was originally finished on June 16th at 6:52 am.
I am just now getting around to writing the last line and posting it.

New York, Day 3 Tuesday June 3rd, 2008

4:30 am. The alarm goes off. Up until now I have refused to compare the time here and the time back home for fear of freaking myself out. But hell. That’s 1:30 in the morning, and let’s be frank, I hadn’t adjusted to the time change at all. Plus, I didn’t get to bed until after 2:00 am on day 1 and after 1:00 am on day 2… so, let’s just say I was a bit tired. Yeah.

I called a cab at 5:20, we needed a van to get all of our gear to the location and we hit the road on time to arrive at 5:45 on Park Avenue.

The freight elevator operator showed up right at 6:00 and the great unloading of the truck began.






The set design begins...and 7 editors later. We left for the night.