The fun never stops

WOW! What a week. So the other day I wrote about how the power went off in some offices for a little bit. Well, Thursday night I am watching "Big Bang Theory" on TV, when there was a literal big bang. The electricity on our street only went completely out. It was pitch black! I grabbed a flashlight, did the customary looking outside "are you out too? oh, yeah, ummm, wow the whole street" and then went back inside. A few minutes after the power out, I heard the elevator alarm :o Could you imagine being stuck in a dead elevator?! The power outage in total lasted just over 2 hours. Eeeeekkkkk. I only had to deal with my boredom, they must have been pretty terrified though. To pass some time, i painted my nails by flashlight. lol. I think they turned out quite well considering. I had plugged my cell into my backup battery computer pack so that i would have enough juice for the alarm to go off if the power didn't return that night. But my back up battery pack only lasted about an hour into the blackout and made the most annoying beeping sound of death you've ever heard :-/ Anyway, I went off to bed and the power was restored about 11:30pm. YAY!

And, then it was Friday :-) And what a lovely and fun Friday it was too. I need to officially declare that I LOVE WORKING FOR DISNEY!!!! hahahaha. Jason has been encouraging and supportive of me taking on different roles and trying new things within the organization. And so I had a talk with Cary, from Creative and more specifically video, and asked if I could help out. Yesterday, I got my chance. We went over with a small crew to Disney Publishing on the Glendale Campus. First off, Glendale is amazing. The walls are covered in art, they have stores and commissaries, and great creative outdoor green spaces (though they couldn't be as enjoyed on account of the rain :-() Noho is officially the red-headed step child of the LA Disney organization. In order I would say, the Lot, Glendale, Tower and Channel, and then Noho. But, in a few years we'll be in Glendale, so there you go. But, back to the shoot........so, call time was 8am. Now, I know no one ever arrives at call time (except me) but I figured since this was Disney and not an indie shoot, things may be different. Nope! I was the only one there until about 8:15. I was actually quite worried that I was in the wrong place cause I had never been to this building before. But the others showed and we lugged all the equipment in and got set up.

It was a very small crew (Jessica was producing, Nate was camera and sound, Dan was lighting, Cary was supervising, and Barbara and I were the PAs). What was nice about the small crew and relaxed attitude, though, was that I was able to learn a lot about the lighting etc. I was impressed by how much production terminology I remembered.

*Stingers = electrical cords
*Gels = colored film that goes over lights
*C47s = clothes pins or in this case we used binder clips. lol
*Striking = turning on a light or alternatively breaking down the set and packing up

The shoot was to interview various Disney artists/legends and to film them drawing as well. The most fascinating of out candidates was Floyd Norman who started working for Disney when he was 19 and he is now 75! His first project was to be one of the assistants drawing the Fairies from "Sleeping Beauty" He had a zillion stories and it was all very amazing. His wife, another interview candidate that day named Adrienne was equally interesting. Her story was about why she never got to go to art school. She was in high school in the 1970's and when she went to her counselor to apply for art school he told her "you're a woman, you're black, and you'll never make it as an artist." He refused to even give her the paperwork for application and since he was her only source she was denied being able to go to art school. What a PRICK!!!! But she did make it and is now a very successful Disney artist being featured (hopefully) on Disney.com. So take that evil counselor guy!

For the drawings they made while we filmed, there was Donald Duck from Floyd, Adrienne drew Sully from "Monsters Inc." and Caroline drew Rapunzel from "Tangled." I got the Rapunzel drawing :)


And since Adrienne did Sully on the computer to show the power of digital art, she emailed it out to Barbara and I got that one too.


Unfortunately, Floyd's Donald Duck was water colors and Jessica got that one, but it's still pretty awesome. After we finished around 2:45pm we lugged all the equipment back out to the cars, where it was now raining harder, and made our way back to Noho. I managed to turn the wrong way on Magnolia coming back and couldn't turn around again cause of crazy traffic. So it took me till 3:30 to get back to the office. By then Jason had already left and Jen told me he said I should just go home. Which was sweet :-p I caught up on emails I missed and then was able to make it out of there early.

Of those emails came the announcement that was a long time in coming. Paul is "resigning" at the end of January. So both he and Jennifer will be gone soon. I am bummed as I like them both, but business is business I suppose. Still sucks either way though.

While getting out of the office early was nice, the weather made it unfortunate. I was supposed to go to an outdoor skate rink downtown in Perishing Square for a skate and Journey music night with the Sierra Club. But because of the rain the event was canceled. So I basically hung around the apartment instead. Which wasn't bad, but I'm tired of rain, and the ice skating would have been fun. New Years resolution is to start participating and getting out more. I also need to get back to my exercise. I was doing so well, but then dad visited and I got sick all this week so I did nothing while also eating like crap. Monday I start anew!

Milo is being EXTRA cuddly these last few days :-) I really hope he does alright without me for 6 days. Toni, the landlady, will look in on him, but he's such a social cat I really hope I don't come home to him having pooped and peed everywhere in protest. Love my Milo baby.