Work this past week was great. Michael, Tim's other intern, showed us his final project for graduating, which was really cool, and as he was doing a bit of editing I learned different tips for making videos. I learned how to take a bunch of pictures that were taken from the same spot and make them consistent. But the actual exciting part of work was Thursday and Friday. We had to shoot cars for a car rental company that was selling some of their cars. So Thursday Tim and I stopped by Fox Studios (side note, Fox Studios is so cool! They still have some streets set up from old sets, though we weren't sure from what movie, and we saw they must have been filming something but we again have no idea what). Anyway so Fox Studios has a part that rents out lighting equipment and it was cool to drive through the place to get it. Also they have some really cool light up balloons.
So then the two of us went Thursday to set up and do a test shoot (I think I forgot to mention that instead of them bringing the cars to a studio they were in the car lot and we had to make do with the lighting around us and make it all work). So we used trucks in each bay of what's basically a private gas station, with the backs at the end, so that we could hang white sheets for a cleaner background. The weather was perfect for the test shoot. Though we were nervous it may start raining, the clouds made the cars less reflective (they were all silver), so the pictures came out great. We had a lot of down time though out there so in that time I took some of my own pictures of the cars but also just of other interesting things around the area, and Tim helped me when I had questions on the best way to shoot things which was nice. He once had a project where you had to take pictures of various objects that look like letters and make the alphabet, so I did a bit of that.
M
Then Friday, we went out again for the whole day, this time with the creative (art) director and the client. Unfortunately for us, it was incredibly sunny, and everything reflected in the cars, despite having them in as much shade as we could. The cars were also pretty dirty, but thankfully there was an automatic car wash in the lot, so the client drove them all through (I, of course, went along for the ride on a bunch of them partially to take pictures but more just because I happen to love the car wash. Sadly it was a pretty short one though, but it was better than nothing). They told me I could drive some cars through as well, but I am still terrified to drive on the wrong side of the car so I said no thank you (I felt a bit bad about it though, as we had to move cars around all day, putting them in position for the shoot and then moving other cars that we could see in the reflection to somewhere they wouldn't show, which changed throughout the day until we finally just moved almost all of them behind buildings). I did a lot of positioning of the wheels, putting on different license plates (fun fact, they spell it licence), putting white papers under the tires for contrast, choosing the best pictures on the computer. While it did get repetitive, it was still a lot of fun and interesting to see and help with. We also got free lunch again so that's always fun.
Going back in time a bit, Wednesday night we had a Halloween party from our program in the upstairs of a bar called Australian Youth (10 minute walk from us). It ended up being a lot of fun having everyone dressed up and seeing everyone and just hanging out and catching up. I dressed as little red riding hood. Some of my favorites were one of our staff, Pascal, was PSY, the guy who has the song Gangnam Style which became a Youtube hit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
Justina, the other girl who works at my studio, was Lance Armstrong losing his medals
Pam, Melanie, and Kathleen were loofas
Ridge was boxed wine (a big thing for backpackers here)
I could keep going but there were a lot of people in good costumes so I'll stop now.
Roommates: Me (Little Red Riding Hood), Alex (Soldier), Kate (Hippie), Hanna (Rosie the Riveter)
Mel (Blue Loofah), Pascal (PSY), Kathleen (Pink Loofah)
Caroline (Kangaroo), Pam, Kathleen, Melanie (Loofahs), Jenna (Koala)
Friday since we ended up finishing early, Tim dropped me back home on his way to work, which was nice since it gave me time to make a nice Shabbat dinner, with Hanna and Alex (my roommates). Then the three of us walked over to the Rocks for The Rocks Village Bizarre, where we met up with Justina, Jessica, Belinda, and Rachel. Hanna went on this blind date where they blindfolded her and then this girl took her around the area and they chatted. We actually ran into her at one point but didn't want to let her know so we just took pictures and she had no idea we were there. While she did that, we found a silent disco (where everyone has headphones and listens to different music), which was a lot of fun, and then a dancing in the street thing which had a guy leading a dance which was also pretty cool if you decided to get into it (which of course I did). I also pet one of those hairless cats, which felt how I'd imagine an elephant to feel, so I didn't really like it considering that it was, in fact, a cat and NOT an elephant. Hanna, Alex, and I then waited on two very long lines for two very short shows, one a weird sort of tequilla worm puppet show and the other a wish giver which ended with us covered in glitter "wish dust". Anyway, they were quite odd but at least it satisfied our curiosity.
Saturday night I went with Hanna, and we met up with Kendall and Esther for Pixar in Concert. (Yes, I actually payed for this one.) This time in the concert hall (which is perfectly set up for the sounds of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra so that they don't need any mics when performing, only others who perform there need them). The orchestra played pixar songs with short videos of each movie on a screen behind them. It was great, though I realized that since I was paying so much attention to the video I oddly did not really look much at the orchestra. It was interesting to me that some of the video clips went through the whole story of the movie, and some just focused on one aspect (for example, Finding Nemo mostly just ran through clips that matched the tone of the music and just seemed basically like an underwater sequence instead of a story- I also was disappointed that they failed to show the Opera House in the movie since we were INSIDE THE OPERA HOUSE! Silly planning if you ask me. The whole thing was framed by the Toy Story trilogy, and in fact the program had a picture of Buzz Lightyear as the conductor and so I was hoping the conductor would come out in a space helmet, though sadly he did not. It was a lot of fun though, and then Hanna, Kendall, and I went to see the Opera Bar, which has a great view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. We met some guy who told us he was a koala shoo-er, that his job was to go out early every morning onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge and shoo all of the koalas off of it. (I really hope that anyone reading this realizes that this is NOT a real job, as no koalas are ever on the bridge).
Me and Hanna
Anyway, from there we went on to two bars in the Rocks that we'd never been to, The Glenmore, which was a really fun, chill place, and then Jackson's on George, which was fine but not my favorite.
Yesterday morning, Hanna and I headed out to Bondi for the Sculptures by the Sea. The idea is that sculptors get a location and make a sculpture specifically for there. Some were very clever, and some were things that could only be in that location, which I really liked, whereas others were kind of just the same sculptures you could see anywhere, and while I love sculptures, they didn't seem so special. Overall I liked it but was a bit disappointed. On the other hand, we later learned that there was a part we missed (we were of course hungry and went to eat lunch instead) and that part was apparently the best part. Oops.
Hanna
Then we went to Watson's Bay and did a bit of hiking around there, with beautiful views, and got only a little bit lost. We then made it to Camp Cove, where we met up with Chris, Melanie, Sarah, Kendall, Alex, Victoria, and Leah. It was a nice small, not crowded beach, with fun calm waves, and an amazing view. It still seems odd to me that we went to the beach in November (and we could even swim!) The weather was perfect, not too hot to lay out on the beach, yet warm enough to go in the water (though it took a bit of getting used to). There were jellyfish in the water, but we were told if they were clear it was fine, it was only the blue ones who sting, and there were none of those. The clear ones were pretty cool to look at though. We all then went over to some rocks and found crabs and snails and took a lot of pictures since it was just so beautiful there.
Hanna, Melanie, Chris, Kendall
Melanie, Hanna, Victoria
Melanie
I used the ferry ride back as another photo opportunity, on Brett (Justina's boss)'s suggestion, standing in one spot and seeing what I can see from there. It was fun, though there was a lot of sea spray at points so I had to block my camera. I also saw a lot of these purple trees. I've seen them around a lot and asked Tim what they are. Turns out they're called Jacarandas, which actually originated in South America but have become known as Australian. When you look out over an area, they stand out a lot. They also drop their flowers a lot, but they are quite beautiful. They usually just bloom in the month of November, and by around the last week all the flowers are gone. (Tim told me they were early this year when 2 days before November they'd already bloomed).
Hiding from the spray
Jacarandas
That's all for now, another exciting week coming up.
Just as an aside, and I apologize for the tangent, but this has been on my mind of course, coming from New Jersey and going to school in Boston. We followed hurricane Sandy pretty closely this week, (there were photo updates on NYtimes.com as well as the news of course) and thankfully my family is all alright, and I hope everyone reading this is alright and that those they know are as well. Honestly, while I love it here, I have to say that in the hours I couldn't hear from anyone at home, I wished I was there just to know that people were safe and to be with my family through it. I know that despite the fact that the storm itself has passed, it has left a lot of devastation in its wake, and that there is much work and cleanup to be done, lots of lost homes and work, and that this will put a strain on many people for quite a while. I wish I could be there to help, and I hope that things get back to normal as quickly as possible. I am thankful to everyone who is working to restore the devastated areas to normal, and proud of how people have come together as they always do in times like this.
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