Film Academy...

As you all know, I have been gone for the past two weeks in Oklahoma and San Antonio, TX! It was a wonderful trip! I learned lots and had tons of fun! I took almost 3000 pictures while I was gone so it's taking me a very long time to weed through them and downsize the ones I want. So you all know, none of these are edited the way I want them, but for the blog they'll just have to do! :) Also...I decided to do these blog posts in different parts! It would just be way too long to blog about, OK, New Years, The Academy and the Festival! So this is Part One I guess you could say, THE ACADEMY! This will probably be the shortest of all posts too!
Sunday, the 4th, Bethany, Caleb, Daniel, John-Clay and I all drove down to Texas. Boy, was that an adventure! If you can believe it, none of us slept, we stayed up and talked the whole time! :D :D We had some very funny conversations and well, played quite a few jokes! ;) Sorry to those who go the brunt end of them! :P John-Clay had a friend, Mr. Putz, who let us stay at his house during the academy. He was such a nice man. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone so hospitable. Bethany and I had the entire upstairs and our own thermostat which meant we could take the temp up to 75!!! :D :D He pretty much treated us as royalty! :) Also on January 5th, the anniversary for the day my Mom passed away, he bought me roses. It was SOO sweet of him. He actually left them on the desk next to my bed and it had a card with a verse from Proverbs 31 on it. His wife had died in 2004 so he definitely knows what it is like to lose someone. :(

Okay, so on to the academy! They were about the longest days I have ever lived I think! :D Although the week went by fast, the days were slower! :) Not that I'm completely complaining though! ;) I really did enjoy the academy they just had some very VERY long lectures! The first day actually Bethany and I skipped the last "real" lecture and went out in the lobby to have fun! :) It was a three hour session on Sci-Fi Movies and well, that really didn't interest me at all! After that though there was a lecture starting at like 10:30 on photography and of course I was there! Now you have to know this...while Bethany and I were out "having fun" we did get ourselves in a little bit of trouble! :D After being silly and taking pictures of eachother we decided we wanted to go exploring some! Our first sign that we shouldn't have been doing this was probably that the escalator wasn't turned on, but we ignored that and decided to just walk up it! So first we go into this one room and Bethany's like "Oh, we should run across these chairs!" To my surprise and Bethanys, I did it! :D So after running across I went into this back room and was thinking...'where am I?' It looked like some sort of warehouse! So then all of a sudden Besh heard some keys jingling and hid. I was on the other side of the door so it wasn't that easy for me. I kept quiet for a minute, then decided to look in the room and I saw a security guard! :S As soon as he saw me I took off running! NOT a good idea!!!!!!!! So Besh and I started running, and went to go in this one room, but the door was locked, I kept thinking "oh no..what are we going to do??" So we found this other door and ran into the bathroom hoping that the security guard was a guy! (I know, I saw the person but couldn't tell if it was a girl or guy) So we got in there and I was still SO scared! SHe went in a stall and I went in the next and of course, my door wouldn't shut. I yelled to Bethany, "It wont shut, Bethany, it wont close!!!" I was soo scared! Anyway to make this short, we ended up leaving the bathroom and went directly downstairs safe from the security guards! Whew! No more adventures for us!!!!




During the Academy we got to hear a lot of good speakers, Mr. Botkin, Isaac Botkin, Stephen Kendrick, Ben Botkin, and others. I really enjoyed the talks on cinematography, color correction, storyboarding, and how to improve a film in 10 minutes! :) Although you may think I didn't pay attention much, I DID take lots of notes. Sadly though, I left them all in our hotel room. :( SOooo sad!

It was lots of fun too, seeing old friends, and new ones! :) I recognized sooo many faces and names, but wasn't sure HOW I knew them. I think I started to aggravate Bethany with saying, "Oh, I know him somehow. How do I know him?" :D One day we had a pretty long lunch break, so we all headed to the Alamo. Besides the scary encounter with the birds it was a fun trip! We met up with some friends there and had fun talking! :) I learned what the Alamo was too...(I must have skipped that history lesson in school) Okay, well these last few photos were just ones I took during the academy! I have a TON more but these were either just funny ones, or random ones I took! :) I'll just leave a caption so you know who they are.

Mr. Botkin at the end of the academy

Isaac Botkin

Stephen Kendrick and his son...his son was SOO cute and friendly!

My wonderful friend Bethany, aka Besh

Scott Eash, someone new I got to meet

Sarah, a great friend I met! :) I'll post more of her in other posts!

Chad Burns, director of Pendragon

Caleb

John-Clay

Daniel

Daniel took a picture for us one night on the Riverwalk

Jimmy Broyden- professional stuntman