I’ve spent the last two nights staying up until 2am. Not by choice, but that’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed the project. I’ve spent the last two evenings editing the footage from my documentary and putting it together with still photos, slides, music, and narration to hopefully create a usable short film.

I’ve learned a few things about myself in the last two days:

• Staring at footage of myself for hours at a time makes me very attentive to detail. I had no idea I had 14 freckles on my left thigh. Cool.
• I am a perfectionist when it comes to splitting clips. I re-cut the same 30-second piece at least a dozen times last night until I got it right. My eyes glazed over around the 7th or 8th re-do.
• The more I stare at photos of candy, the more I crave it.
• I have a very limited knowledge of good music. I can’t think of any instrumentals to use for the first 90 seconds of my film. [This is my way of soliciting your advice, FYI.]
• I’m not a very good actress. Not being self-deprecating or fishing for compliments – it’s just true. I tend to smirk/giggle during emotional scenes. Took quite a bit of editing to hide those little slips.

I’ve learned quite a bit about filming and life in general:

• It can take a lot of time to set something up, but a perfect shot is worth it in the end.
• A good friend can take a picture of you stuffing your face with oreos and not judge you.
• Getting a perfectly smooth, white background takes a LOT of work in the filming world.
• An hour of footage will make roughly 3-4 minutes of film, if you’re lucky.
• Novels are much easier. Never thought I’d say that one!

Overall, though, I’ve learned that I need far less sleep than I thought was required for sustained energy and existence. I think I’m feeding off of the high I’ve gotten from bringing an idea to life. The fact that the idea came to me and that I followed through on it still blows me away. I tend to be a bit timid when it comes to diving into my writing projects, often second-guessing whether the idea is worthwhile. This is the first time I’ve really jumped into something wholly and without doubt and – amazingly – it’s coming together. Pretty humbling, I must admit.

With that being said, I’m going to pull one more late night and try to finish the edits tonight so I can present it to my teacher for review, then publish it here, on my other blog, and on YouTube by Friday.

Optimistic that I’ll need a coffee in the morning,

~ Victoria Elizabeth