the last day

of NZ IDOL is today, for me at least. Now that the show's live, having two editors is silly, and so I'm rolling off.

I'm debating the wisdom of using this unexpected break to take a trip of some kind. On one level, this is a bad idea, as I don't have my next job locked down and don't have particularly large savings (although greatly reduced credit card debt, so that's something!). On the other hand, I've never particularly regretted taking a trip, even when the outcome has been financially stressful, if I have anything remotely resembling the means to pull it off.

My original plan, when I was slotted on NZ IDOL til the end of October, was to spend early November in the Great Barrier Reef, as it's been way too long since I've been snorkeling, way too never since I've been to Australia, and the sea life ain't going to get any better (cheers, global warming!). But it seems a little chilly to go right now, and plus if I went to the States I could go back to Portland, sell a lot of crap, and at least partially finance my stay, and make a couple side trips. Plus I could finally see Mission of Burma, celebrate my 33rd birthday up there, etc.

Need to think this through. Ideally someone will offer me an amazing job starting October 15th, and then I can fully justify pissing off for a month.

are you there, blog? It's me, Margaret.

(apologies for the Judy Blume reference.)

Sorry to be out of touch. Still figuring out where I want to go with this blog, and got really busy with work and the film festival. But the film festival is over, and work is over shortly as well - last day's in two weeks. Time to start hunting something else.

Will try to type up a festival summary soon, for my own personal memories if nothing else. Short version: see LONGING, 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST, THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP, and THE HOST if it is at all within your power.

Also finished watching WONDERFALLS, which is a great little TV series that got cancelled before its time. It might be a wee bit too self-consciously quirky for some, but I loved it. I also fell in love with some of the editing techniques, and managed to figure out how to do some of them, so look for some interesting split-screen action coming to the small screen soon (unless it gets cut between then and now). It turned out to be easier than I thought when I discovered the previously-unused (by me) "Border" control in Avid's picture-in-picture, which allowed me to easily bring in images with black lines on the edges that could then wipe up/down/sideways/whatever. Right now, I don't think anything satisfies me more in editing than playing with picture-in-picture - perhaps it's a unconscious desire to control the image composition, which you have (mostly) no control over otherwise as an editor.