Day 9: I Need to Run

I need to run. Those who have spoken to me about my experience in film school over the past year, have no doubt heard me go on and on about a little thing I like to call balance. It's been my dream to make films since I was 16 (it was actually probably 15, but 16 seems like a better "coming of age" age so I'm sticking with it), and I consider myself extremely lucky to be living that dream. But, a strange feeling has stricken me over the course of the last year. It's a different kind of experience to throw yourself into something as completely as we're expected to here. It's almost like you lose touch with everything outside of the pursuit of a career which more or less requires absolute dedication. You almost become completely tunnel visioned as you eat, sleep, and breathe film. It thus seems inevitable that the dream would lose a tiny bit of the luster that it once held. You kind of get tired.

The beautiful thing about creating art in general is that one gets to channel their feelings through their work. This may explain why all of the films that I've made over the past year have been about characters who are, well, tired. Tired and searching for something transcendental to elevate their lives above how it exists as such. Overwhelmed, these characters tend toward extremes to find what they're looking for, which may be why their stories are semi-tragic. (Excuse me for self-indulgently waxing philosophical on my own work. I know what you're thinking: "the ego on this guy."

I personally think that happiness in life is built upon balance. And, balance is what I need in this particular period of my life right now. This sound guy jaunt hasn't yet, but I can see it wearing on me. I need to balance this out so as not to lose it completely. Thankfully, I'm extremely lucky to have a really good friend who moved here just in time, isn't a filmmaker, and whose presence allows me to escape from film world(temporarily at least). Seriously a breath of fresh air.

Over the summer, I was able to balance work with marathon training. It was great and such a release. I'm thinking I need to bring that back. It doesn't really make any sense given how cold it's starting to get, but I think it may help keep me sane. So from here on out this blog is going to have duel purposes: to detail the thoughts that occur to me as a sound mixer on set and as a log of how my training is going over the next couple months. 2 for 1.

I'll be training for a half marathon race on Jan. 24th (5 days after my last set day as a mixer).

We'll see how it goes...

Ryan the Sound Guy