Day 279

279/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

Spring break is over and it's back to school I go. On Day 196 I set out some goals for my winter quarter, so I figured now would be a good time to see how I did. 


Overall, I was kind of all over the place on these. Here's how they panned out:


1. Do well in my classes - I was all over the place with my classes this quarter. As far as attendance goes, I missed more classes this winter then I have any other quarter, which is what I was trying not to do. But in the end, my grades were good, I still learned all the material and it freed up some time to do more fun things like make movies. I'm going to chalk this one up as a win. 


2. Make some movies - This was definitely a win. I shot a movie that went to an international film festival, I made an awesome experimental movie that screened in arguably the best theater in the world, and over the break I shot some 16mm film. And I got the pre-production done on my reel loud, and was able to shoot it, so that was awesome.


3. Keep up with my 365 - This was a win and a loss. When I had time, or I really gave it some effort, my pictures were good. I shot a lot of things this quarter that I'm proud of (the fisheye series, the suicide pictures, light painting). But at the same time, I had a crisis of faith, and when I got really busy I had some really crummy pictures too. The big thing I fell behind on this quarter is posting my pictures. They would sick on my camera for over a week sometimes, and at one point I was three weeks behind on updating my blog. 


4. Keep up with screenwriting - This is another win and a loss. I got through Word Farm, the workshop weekend, and I wrote a treatment for a screenplay that I wanted to write, but I didn't do any actual writing. So I got through some grunt work, and I learned a lot, but as far as hitting 90 pages I failed big time. 


5. Work out twice a week - Huge failure. I got bogged down with work from the get go, and things stayed that way through the whole quarter. But since I wasn't working out, I wouldn't let myself eat out as much. I got really lazy this fall and ate out a lot, but I ended up cooking a lot this quarter, which was kind of therapeutic and way more healthy for me. At least I didn't become a total fat ass.  

6. Do the loop - epic fail, but in my defense I turned 21 during dead week, so this goal was kind of unrealistic. It's going to happen this quarter. 

7. Watch more movies - This was a win. But I'm realizing that in my free time, I'd rather watch good TV a lot of the time because it's way less commitment. And I'm cool with that too. 


Not bad at all. And the things that I failed on were probably less important in the long term, so I'm pretty happy with how this quarter went. Now on to the next one...



P.S. This is kind of a funky photo, so I should probably at least call attention to it. I've wanted to do more portraits lately, so I'm trying to get back into it. I've also been trying to experiment with a lot of different styles trying to see what I like and don't like, or how I would change other people's stuff. This picture was inspired by this blog, they have a crazy style that seemed like it would be fun to try. I tried a similar thing with Chad's portrait and I liked how it turned out. This picture wasn't fully executed the way I would have liked, but I just didn't have enough flashes to pull off the look, and I wasn't ballsy enough to push the processing. But to break it down, there is one light on the background with a magenta gel, coming from camera left and fading to the right. The key light is camera left, perpendicular to me, with a yellow gel. The kick light is behind me, coming from high and camera right, with a turquoise gel. Finally there is a fill light camera right, filling in the dark area on the left side of my face without any gels. 

Is it interesting looking? Yes. Would I use this set up again? Probably not. Do I want to experiment more with this kind of style? Maybe, but it's a lot of work, especially when you have to set-up everything by yourself, pose yourself, trigger the camera with a remote, and then break it all down.