Sheng Ri Kuai Le, Tom

Last night, we had a big birthday bash for Tom at my apartment. A lot of Chinese people came over and we all ate a lot of food. The food display was pretty interesting- it was a giant combination of American and Chinese food. It was all presented buffet style and it seemed to go over well.

We all spent a few hours eating, socializing and getting to know each other better. Then we brought out the cake. That's when things got... well... a little disasterous.

I took a lot of pictures (a little bit of video) so I've decided to make this post mostly just images with a little bit of commentary thrown in. So I hope you enjoy glimpses of our crazy American / Chinese birthday bash from last night.

Halloween bowls... definitely my touch.

This is Sue. She's a really nice girl.

I really don't know.

Guess who prepared these? This guy.

This is Liz and Alice. They are nice girls. They helped us prepare a lot of the food for the party.

Staring contest.

The man of the hour.

Cool shirt.

Heart picture? Heart picture.

Rodrigo. And a lot of food.

Long was looking pretty bad ass here.

This guy was cool. He knew English very well too. He was the only one at the party not in ESL classes.

This guy was being attacked by others when this picture was taken. I'm not really sure why.

While the cake was being lit, I decided to take a little video of the festivities. You can see the video below. It's nothing special... just a glimpse into the atmosphere of the party and us singing "Happy Birthday" to Tom. Notice the harmonica in the video... the guy playing it was playing old Southern folk songs on it all night. It was so awesome.

Okay, this was the point when things got a little stressful for me. This is all the result of another cultural gap. Apparently, when you have a birthday party in China, the birthday boy gets birthday cake smeared all over him. And, sometimes, cake gets thrown at guests / smeared all over them as well.

I was unaware of this. So, you can imagine my surprise when, in literally a minute flat, my apartment went from spotless to being covered in cake. I mean covered.

Anyone who knows me from home knows that I am obsessive-compulsive. I've been medically diagnosed with OCD and, even though I've gotten treatment and am a lot better now, this kind of situation is literally my worst nightmare.

I think I handled it well. I mostly just stood there and stared at people. I don't remember talking to any guests at all after the cake fight. I was kind of in my own world.

Luckily for me, everyone cleaned up the mess pretty quick. Girls got out brooms and mops and went to town. Still, that didn't stop me from going to town on the entire apartment for three hours after everyone left. If the place wasn't spotless before everyone got there, it sure was after.

Anyways, in my bewildered state, I actually managed to get a few photos of the cake massacre. Not many... but a few. You can see them below.

Yeah. I hate this. A lot.

Anyways, that was our party. I wish all the stuff with the cake didn't happen but it's alright I guess. The place is clean now. But man... when it happened... I guess you could say I was beside myself.

Another lesson learned? Yes, I believe so. But really... I'm tired of learning lessons. No more lessons for a week please.

Acting for the Camera

Today in my Technical Elements of Film Production class we got to do a shoot in which we basically recreated the short The Lunch Date. We split into two groups of six, assigned production jobs, scouted for a location and got to work. My team ended up using my Canon T2i for our shooting camera so, as we were setting up, my classmate Justin Andrews and I snapped a few behind the scenes pictures. You can enjoy them below.

This is my tripod and Barry's camera rig attached to it. It was a little cumbersome at first but it ended up being good for recording sound.

Kristen and Rachel were 1st and 2nd ADs today. This is them working on some pre-visualization before the shoot.

This is Justin. He was camera operator for the shoot today.

Kurt worked as our director for the shoot.

Here is Kurt working on story boards before the shoot started.

Here is Adam Tuckey, our fearless sound man / boom operator. My favorite point of the shoot was a comment he made to Kurt after some of his vocal directions were picked up on Adam's mic during a take.

The director and the ADs work on the pre-visualization process.

Adam tries to figure out the camera rig. At least, that's what I think he was doing.

Katy was one of the actors today. She had a lot of fun before the camera started to roll.

I was also an actor today. I prefer to be behind the camera but it was nice to fill a different production role for once.

I've included two production stills of Katy and I in scenes from the shoot below.

Overall, it was a fun day. We had some issues getting the right sound equipment for the T2i and, because of that, we really didn't have as much time as I wished we would have for the shoot. Things were pretty hectic once we actually started shooting but, after looking at some of the clips, things turned out pretty well visually. Hopefully, when we are done editing the piece together, we will be happy with it.

Still, it was a fun exercise and a good learning experience.