Day 12: My Lungs/Granderson

Hey there sports fans. Today I have to lead off with the best/worst non-sound related news that I've heard in quite sometime. My favorite player on the Detroit Tigers, Curtis Granderson, was today traded to the oft-vilified New York Yankees. This sucks. I love the Tigers (and have hated the Yankees since the beginning of time) and their trading away my favorite player makes my heart hurt a little bit. And, to make matters worse they lost my other favorite player, Placido Polanco, to the Phillies last week (he was a free agent and Philadelphia offered him more dough). Next summer is going to feel very strange without seeing those two guys in center field and at second base. I remain a fan however, and will openly embrace the new lineup.

The good side of this, is that my favorite player is coming to New York (!) giving me a damn good reason to attempt to start liking the Yankees. When I first heard of this trade, I imagined Curtis and I hitting the streets of Manhattan reminiscing about the good ol' days in the D over a few drinks. That's right folks, Curtis Granderson and I would be best friends. No, I'm not delusional, I of course know that this is in fact going to happen. But, I'm most excited about being able to wear my Detroit Tigers Granderson jersey to Yankee Stadium when the Tigers come to town and not having to worry about getting punched, shoved, stabbed, or spat upon at by the most obnoxious fans on the planet (Yankees fans, that is). I'll be rooting for the Tigers under the cover of being a Curtis Granderson fan. It's perfect. Feel my nerdy excitement.

Sorry, Steph. I know that you just thanked me a few days ago for not talking about baseball in this blog. If you've read this far I am deeply grateful :) We'll make a sports fan out of you one of these days.

Alright now for something that actually has something to do with my experience sound mixing...

I think that this may be killing my lungs. Seriously. Two weeks ago I complained about the persistential second hand smoke inhalation that was reeking havoc on my bronchialisitic operations (I feel like making up words right now). Today, asthma struck again. The culprit: the moldiastic basement in which we shot. Breathing is a good thing, guys. It feels good and it's good for you. Don't get me wrong though, if filmmaking is prohibitive of breathing then I'd be willing to forgo perfect lungular performance to pursue the dream. It would just be very uncomfortable is all, as tonight I shall be forced to wheeze myself to sleep. A difficult task given the whole painful shortness of breath thing.

I guess it's all fitting given that one of the movies that really made me want to study film was Jean Luc Godard's "Breathless." While the film had nothing to do with asthma, it had everything to do Jean Paul Belmondo making funny faces in a mirror. I guess I'm living the dream right now as my shortness of breath face looks a lot like Clint Eastwood's trademark scowlsquint.


Get off my lawn.

Ryan the Sound Guy

Respite: Training Day 2 (Better Than Advil)

I did it. I found a slightly uncomfortable yet quick way to cure a headache. And, no I don't mean this. Get your filthy minds out of the gutter. Filthy.

I'm not sure if it was my out of wack sleep schedule, the accumulation of stress, or the mental feat of attempting to complete the Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzle yesterday, but I woke up this morning with a terrible headache. Just awful. Tried advil, tried napping, tried sitting quietly (by far my best skill), nothing worked. Realizing that I had a six day shoot in front of me and that the half marathon was only six weeks away, I decided that it was necessary for me to run today, headache or no headache. So I ran.

Initially it was a little annoying. Every time that my foot struck the ground a surge of pain shot to my head. "Why am I doing this to myself?" I thought (which is ironically what I often think in the middle of particularly difficult runs). I didn't think that I would be able to make it and was prepared to stop pretty much as soon as I started. As a newly inducted member of the school of Completism as founded by my dear friend, Cathlin, I decided to run on. The terrible headache tearing me apart bit by bit. My faith in completism diminishing by the second.

BUT, Wait! Stop the presses! Hold on! I said wait the hell up! I hit my stride. The pain diminishes and then...well what do you know about that? The headache is gone. McDonald's once asked us if we believed in magic, and I'll be damned if they didn't hope we did. I am a firm believer now, my friends.

I'm sure there's some scientific explanation for this, but I'll chalk it up to a big fat miracle; especially given that I ran 3 miles in 21:18. So kids, if a headache is putting a downer on your day, lace up your running shoes and take to the streets. You'll be glad you did!

If I break 21 minutes by the end of the year, I'm treating myself to some kind of absurdly unhealthy reward. No, I'm not going to take up smoking so don't worry. Binge drinking was an option but I'm sure I wouldn't have the energy, time, or concentration for it given all these film shoots. No, I was thinking something along the lines of ice cream. A big thing of ice cream. COMPLETED in one sitting. A solid reward for 21 minutes of strenuous work. What do you think, Cath?

Ryan the Intern

Addendum: 100,000,000,000 points if you know why that photo is at the top of the blog.

Respite: Training Day 1

3 Mile Run-21 minutes 30 seconds

I have to figure out a way to write about my training without sounding egotistic and self-congratulatory. 21:30 is a pretty good time for me considering I haven't been running much over the past month, but I'm not going to publicly pat myself on the back about it here. It's like those senseless post-game interviews that happen after close NBA games where an interviewer asks the star player something like: "At which point did you realize that you were going to have to take the game into your own hands to dig out the win?" And the star comes back with something like: "Well you know, I kinda knew all along that my team always depends on me to win, you know it's been that way all season and I knew the same thing would kinda be true tonight so I just kinda had to step up and you know win one for my team." The stupid question gets the obvious answer where the player is more or less forced to attest to his or her awesomeness.

The thing about distance running is that it is a completely solitary endeavor. The results that one gets are totally dependent on the work that the individual puts into the workout or race. Most runners that run aren't going out to races on the weekend to win, but rather to set personal record times for themselves. The victories are mostly individualistic (unless you are the extraordinary runner who has the stuff to beat a field of thousands). Thus, if you're feeling like you put in some pretty good work during a workout or race nobody really needs to question you about it.

It's cool when you cross the finish line at a race and see everybody smiling. No need to ask how the race was for them. You summon the will to compete and finish, you win. It's the beauty of running.

Ryan the Sound Guy

Day 11: Wrapped V.3 (random)

In the crazy spirit of the shoot that just wrapped today I'm going to just make up a lot of random stuff and hope that it pieces together into some kind of narrative. I think this is the best way to capture the craziness of not only myself during these three days as I slipped into delirium during each night of shooting, but also the the craziness of the film as well, which even if I tried I couldn't really explain to you and do it justice. So here goes. Randomness meant to summarize the story of my week.

Grizzly bears gone fly fishing with fly swatters and bloody butcher's smocks.

Cold coffee cocktail con crunch and munch popcorn garnished with flattened Rolo wrappers.

Speed. Still speeding. Reset. Reset. Reset. Reset. Reset. Cut. Tailslate. Already cut.

Common Sense Foresty (sic)

Good whale hunting.

A dog circles the spot in which he prepares to lie down and lies down subsequently.

Sound guy dives into the ground.

Everywhere we go. People want to know. Who we are. Where we come from. So we tell them.

Clothing rustle and unusable lavaliere sound.

Break. Coffee shop. Waiter visits table a half dozen times. Indecisive patrons. Can I have a cup of coffee?

Boom operator gives life lessons. Awesome guy.

"I got it bad and that ain't good" as sung by Frank Sinatra (Great Duke Ellington song that pretty much sums up my life these days. :/

Bad sleep schedule. Baaaaaaad.

Ron Artest drinks Hennessy during games (Is IT in You?)

Watch for the dancing Santa is this crazy video I took with my crappy phone...


How can I not love this time of year with stuff like this happening on the streets of New York? I must be a grinch :0

Saw a dog peeing on a TV on the sidewalk. Wanted to take my phone out to take a picture, post it here, and make some wry comment about the quality of television these days. Thought twice. Too obvious. Plus the new season of Scrubs looks promising.

In Fear and Trembling Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard talks of the similarities between love and faith. Both require an absolute concession to irrationality. Fitting.

The Tigers find a way to lose one of my favorite players. Next summer may be emotionally disastrous for me.

Tiger cheats on his wife. Tiger cheats. Tiger, Tiger, Tiger.

If I were a rich man, ye be diba, diba, diba, diba, diba, diba, dum.

Dumb Tiger(s).

Schlepping sound gear to and from set everyday.

Full weekend and Sunday Times Crossword Puzzle and brunch with good people to look forward to.

Loving life...

...Kierkegaardian irrationality and all.

Ryan the Sound Guy

Day 10: Don't Do It!

It's December 3rd. December. The high today in NYC was 66 degrees. Farenheit. What was I doing during this beautiful day? No, not running. I was sleeping. I spent what was likely the last gorgeous day of the year and a perfect day to inaugurate my half-marathon training, slumbering. Another reason why overnight shoots are inherently evil.

Alright, I'll stop complaining (especially considering my last few posts have been spent doing just that). What I really want to do is give an after school special type warning to all the aspiring sound mixing boys and girls out there. Yep, this is a serious one folks. The contents of this posting may save a life someday.

Last night/this morning I learned a very valuable lesson. When you're fading fast, and need a caffeine boost and happen to not have eaten anything in a while, stick to coffee. Never, NEVER, ever take a 5 Hour Energy on an empty stomach. Unless you're prepared to feel sick to the stomach for the remainder of the shoot, then stay as far away from those devilish little bottles as possible.

See, it takes a certain amount of patience to not go crazy as a sound mixer. As I've mentioned, most of your time on set is spent waiting for the rest of the crew to finish setting up the next shot. You wait and wait and wait and when everybody else is ready to go then you're expected to be extra ready. You kind of need a clear mind to make this happen. You can't by any means be agonizing over how sick you feel in combination with how you exhausted you are as it's likely to make you a little irritable, and nobody likes a irritable sound guy. I was the irritable sound guy this morning, and while I tried my best to conceal my irritation, I still realized that I had no business being irritated. Which was irritating itself.

So kids, if you're fading fast on an overnight shoot drink a coffee or soda, have a candy bar, go for a jog, but by no means should you drink a 5 hour energy.

The life you save may be your own.

Ryan the Sound Guy

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

Day 8: Wrapped V.2 (FML)

Alright.

Day 8 was a rough one. Left my apartment at Noon on Monday. Returned at 10 AM on Tuesday. Up at 3 pm to write. And I haven't been consistently sleep the last five hours either. Another shoot to go to at 8. Will I sleep in the next five hours? It's pretty necessary, I'd say. 8 pm to 7 am that shoot is scheduled to go. Relatively simple in comparison. And all indoors which is a major plus.

My classmate Saba (the awake one in the foreground of the photo taken above somewhere around hour 19) put the question across best last night on set somewhere past the twelfth hour when she very earnestly asked me, "Ryan, what is this life worth?" Hilarious.

I've been saying it since my undergrad days and I'll say it again: filmmaking is bad for your health. Aspiring filmmakers are amongst the most masochistic people imaginable. Have never been looking forward to the weekend more than I am now. Imbibing is inevitable...

...that and sleep of course.

And maybe a movie or two.

Ryan the Sound Guy