A happy Triptophan hangover day to all, and a happy Birthday to greymalkin. Did you know you happen to share a birthday with my other favorite capoerista, Lateef? Can't say I know the guy, but he's sure fun to watch... hope your move went well, you domesticated old man.

Like cheap housing developments, we pack our lives full enough and close enough and the fires of burnout can spread far too easily...



Really not sure if I can keep this up or not. Next quarter will help me tell if this is a completely unsustainable load for me or if it's partly just things like the battles I'm still fighting in systems class. Already have several long-standing theatrical commitments for next quarter, so it'll probably be just as full as this one has been; full time work, part time family (which is a bad thing to have part time; seems the less time you have, the harder that time is), falling apart house, theatre & film gigs (see the MySpace Blog at any time for a sense of what's going on with that)...



Family in town most of this week, which both helps (parents took A. for a couple hours last weekend so I could do a homework assignment. Still not caught up though) and hinders (need to spend time with people while they're here, and had to do some prep before their arrival).



Sad to have missed the chance to do more real stunt work with the Zombie film last week, but just couldn't do another all-nighter. Had a very long yesterday as it was, and never would have made it through if I'd been up all the night before doing stunt burn safety, etc.



Yesterday included props returns, kid-wrangling at a Shinto ceremony for 3, 5, and 7 year olds (who the hell designs a religious ceremony for kids that age which involves them sitting still for extended periods, and supposedly in a separate section from their parents?), a pony-riding (for the kids only) birthday party for our daughter's best friend (fun, but tiring), and a school group meeting- plus about four hours of driving inbetween.



On the plus side, got good feedback from someone I'm tentatively planning on working for/with next year, whose year-old theatre company has been getting great reviews and just expanded into a new space. They had asked for examples of my work they could see, and left the following on my MySpace page:



hey Kevin

I just saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Awesome fight choreography!!! The audience was walking out of the theatre imitating it. Congratulations! Looking forward to working with you...

:)



I do believe in the importance and usefulness of communication, and of Strategic Communication, and I definitely believe in the value of a mostly-free Masters degree that could apply to just about any field. At the same time, I'm fighting some of the cultural aspects of this program, and wondering if I should be focusing on how to get into an MFA or other theatre program... assuming I can, or could...



The program I'm in includes far too much reflection on your own life experiences, especially since they primarily want examples of positive change and healthy learning experiences. That'd probably work better if I was happier with the thought (or fact) of spending that much time thinking about my life.



Back to work- the main thing I'm working on in the day job right now (accreditation renewal packet) is still only about a thousand pages long, and will probably be double that before it's done being compiled, edited, and reformatted.

Re-posted from the MySpace Blog, since there's folks on LJ who I think might have interesting... perspective on this.



Perspective



Question for those of you who choreograph... or even those who just think about movement stuff:



When you picture yourself doing something, what's you point of view? Can anybody really picture doing a shoulder roll or a flip and 'see' it as though they were seeing it, helmet-cam style? Me, it's always third person kinda views, camera usually to the side, wide shot, maybe a bit higher than eye level.



Not something I usually give much conscious thought to, but there it is. You also often hear people talking about dreams which involve them, but which play out more 'movie style' where they can see themselves from the outside.



I wonder if this was true before movies and TV became so ubiquitous. I suppose there's always been some sort of live theatre, and cave drawings, and who knows what else.



I wonder if the profusion of First-Person-Shooter video games is going to change that at all, and if there are people out there now who dream more in FPS view, and who think out their own movement more from that point of view. My inclination is no- if people really wanted to see things that way, that type of camera-work (POV) would be much more common in general entertainment media... but I could well also be inserting my own biases.



I wonder about this in part having tried briefly to play Halo 3 the other day (I say tried because I was really sucking at it)- my wife won an XBox 360 at that Battlestar screening I mentioned, and picked up Halo 3 for me. I've never played any of the first two games, and haven't done much FPS gaming in general, and I found it really disorienting. I'm sure I could get used to it, but having purely visual cues combined with tunnel vision makes it really hard to be aware of your surroundings, and to know what you're doing... for me, at least. Very easy to end up walking in circles, or trapped in a corner, etc.



It's just interesting that FPS games are trying to imitate the real experience of being there, but often when I'm really being there, my mind is trying to imitate a more god-view third person perspective that allows me to do things like keep track of my surroundings (even when I can't see them), keep track of which way is up when doing a roll or spinning, etc. Sorta like in classical music you try to make your instruments sound like voices and your voices sound like instruments. I've heard the same type of thing in martial arts- treat chain/rope weapons like sticks, treat sticks like chain/rope, if only as a way to find more of the possibilities in the weapons.



Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a how-to manual that showed things from the point of view of the person doing the action. Are we just used to learning by watching others, or is that first-person POV just really awkward to try to draw and interpret? Without the kinesthetic, aural, and other input we're used to, is our own direct visual experience just inadequate to construct a full world 'view'?

I think C. and I are both kinda zombies today, being low on sleep and a little sick. Birthday festivities for A. seem to have gone well, and she got quite the birthday haul. Didn't get much cleaning or other work done on the house, which is bad (Parents come back Friday and will be staying in our disaster of a basement), but I got at least most of my homework done for the week, got at least most of the prep done for tonight's shoot, and nobody's dead... yet. Poor C.'s all on her own with A. for the next day and a half, but at the moment I think seeking solace and comraderie with Tersa and Odessa. I'll be heading straight from work (I think- they kept waffling on whether I'd need to pick up squibs from Pete on the way) out to Port Gamble for an all-night (and probably cold and wet) shoot, then heading back to Antioch at least tomorrow morning for a meeting. Remains to be seen how long I can keep functioning after that.



Just trying to keep my head above water in pretty much all the categories in my life right now (work, school, other work, family, house), but there's enough other goop in my respiratory system right now it's hard to tell if it's working.



On the bright side? Should get free coffee both on set and in tomorrow's meeting.

Wouldn't it be interesting if political speech-writers were unionized like TV scriptwriters? Wouldn't you just love to see what happened when they went on strike?