In The Hat

Thing One:

I went to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library on Friday. It was, as Adrian Mole might say, "dead exciting". The Academy building has some nice greenery around it, which is appreciated in this dirty town. The building itself has some very fancy wrought iron work and giant doors, but for all that, isn't actually that big. Inside, donor plaques of people you know cover the walls.

The process of actually getting into the library involves filling out a form, locking your stuff, except for paper, in a locker, giving over your ID, and telling the woman behind the counter three times that it's a MECHANICAL PENCIL you're packing and not a forbidden pen.

The library itself is small, even though it is, as the man at the special collections desk mentioned, the best collection of cinema whatnot in the world. (Or not...?)

I looked at some microfiche (which always makes me feel like I'm in a movie) and some production stills (for which I was made to wear white gloves that were ridiculously small). Good times. The library was nice and quiet and had lots of staff, which I always appreciate. Also, sometimes I'd look up from what I was reading and notice a clutter of Oscars on a shelf in a cabinet.

Thing Two:

We shot 200 feet of the brilliant film "The Ballad of the Deadly Nevergreen" yesterday. I have the bug bites to prove it. Holy shit, DPing is so much more fun than directing. Getting someone else to decide on the action and the angle and then setting it up to make it look pretty is great. It's not that I don't like directing, more that DPing is considerably less taxing work and therefore less stressful. Especially compared to, say, directing and acting in your own movie. Not that that isn't brilliant too though, cause personally, I think it's so whack that it can't help but be brilliant.

Because we were shooting in the bright sun, I got Jordan to get me an eyepatch. Yeah, that's right, a fucking eyepatch. It's more than a little ridiculous, or as Brooke put it, "obnoxious", but even she had to agree that putting it over the eye not up to the eyepiece made a considerable difference in being able to relax your face enough to get a decent image.

The good news is that I put enough sunscreen on to not get an eyepatch tan. That would have taken the ridiculousness further than I am personally willing to go.