Wednesday, January 14, 2009

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

7 comments:

theTwins said...

I'm glad you had a good time!
Sounds like a lot of fun!

crik said...

Looks like so much fun! :)

So we should go exploring together sometime... :) I bet the two of us could get into lots of trouble too! lol That was such a funny story! :)

Can't wait to see more! :)

(This is to funny! I just realized my sisters must have been reading this at the same time I was! They posted a comment only a few seconds before I posted mine!)

Danielle said...

LOL, that's funny! Thanks for the comments! It was tons of fun! :) And yeah Crystal, I think we could get in some trouble together! :D :D

Bethany said...

Such fun times, I loved every bit of it! But HEY I think you posted like the WORST pictures of me....I tried to be nice on my post. :D :D Oh my.

Well, at least you know what the Alamo is now...and those birds were fun! :D

Miss you and love you so much!

Besh

Lee family said...

Glad that you had a good time! You have some really cute pictures of you and Bethany.
You had a fun adventure! What is life without adventure :)
That was so sweet of Mr. Putz!
love you,
dawn

Bethany said...

Oh, I forgot one thing....yes I did have to just convince myself that you knew EVERYBODY there almost...even JOHN REEVES!! :D :D :D

Love you,
Besh

John-Clay said...

Fun pics! Can't believe you posted that one of my crazy face though :D

Can't wait for Part 2