My other project was far more ambitious, in that I combined a number of challenges. I had wanted to make a Lego movie, a green screen compositing based movie, an animated movie, and a stereoscopic 3D movie, so I decided to do them all in one project. So I shot Lego sets in 3D, and then composited in real people and digitally animated Lego characters. It was called My Roommate's Kingdom, and it was about a guy who wakes up the size of a Lego character, and how he interacts with that world, as well as the full-sized world the Legos inhabit. It was a tremendously complicated project to undertake, especially with the tools I had available.
We shot the entire thing at the end of Christmas break, and then I spent the next two months editing and finishing it for a film festival. A lot of other people contributed to the process, but I definitely did a majority of the work myself. Those were probably the most disciplined months of my life, getting up at 6am every day, running around the school to stay in shape/wake up, and then editing every spare moment until going to sleep around midnight. It was the most organized project I had ever worked on, with every file named perfectly down to the last day to keep every layer and version straight. I submitted the finished piece at the beginning of March, and that was the last day I went running in the morning.
I also got roped into giving a sermon at a midweek evening service at church the next day, so I had to compose that as well. I ended up speaking on priorities, in regards to how one chooses to spend the time between now and when they die. It was very relevant to the deliberate way I had spent the last two months, but I don't remember all the details since it was a while ago and I was pretty tired by that point.
One morning that spring I was working on a project with some friends in my room, when I got call from my Mom. She was obviously crying, which is never a good start. She likes to break bad news to people slowly, which I don't like, because I have a pretty powerful imagination. My first guess was that my grandmother must have died, as my last remaining grandparent. When it became apparent that that wasn't the case, my next guess was something had happened to my Dad. When it was finally revealed that Flash, our German Shepherd, had died that morning, that was a relief in a sense. I hardly cared by comparison to the other possibilities. So I guess her approach was effective in a way, but still not worth the stressful moment in between. Flash had been "my" dog originally, but had basically become my Dad's once I moved away. She was only seven, but in a way had never really grown up. She was an outdoor dog that was absolutely convinced she was supposed to be an indoor dog, so she never gave up on barking and scratching at the door to be let in. I guess blind persistence is a trait that runs strong through ALL aspects of my family.
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