Life Takes Harmony.

IT DONNED ON ME participated in the Visa "Life Takes" Invitational this weekend. Another 48 Hour Film Project. This is the third one for our team, and it's still exciting as ever. The stakes are obviously higher for this one, being that it is the Visa Invitational, but my team was ready for just about anything.

It's about 8am on a Sunday morning and I am creatively, mentally, and physically beat. I probably slept a total of 10 hours in the past five days. Between the NFL season kick off game in Indianapolis and this Life "Takes Visa" competition, I am dangerously close to burning myself out. My blood shot eyeballs are so beat up that they are screaming for an enucleation. Hence, I decided to give them pupils a break and put on my beaten up pair of glasses instead. They say that the eyes are the window to the soul, but today, these windows will have a protective plexiglass in front of them. My eyeballs feel like squishy rotten grapes this morning, so I won't torture them by sticking contact lenses into them. I am TIRED, but I will stop ranting about my fatigue.

We are 36 hours into this 48 Hour film project. We met up at Dolby on Friday night to collect our required elements, and to my surprise, there were none! Actually, let me rephrase that. The required elements were not what we expected in that we go to choose our genre! In addition, there was no character, the prop was a Visa card, and the line of dialogue was "Life takes (fill in the blank). At first, I thought that this would make the project easier, but in actuality, it made it harder, at least in my humble opinion. Did I really just say "in my humble opinion?" Seems so un-Borm. In any case, we had lined up "Flying Without Instruments," a Bay Area acapella group, and the Dolby Theater for this project, so we wanted to incorporate these items into our project. We made up our minds to make a musical, but trying to figure out a plot that worked proved to be quite difficult. We threw ideas back and forth and even walked up to the theater to find inspiration. It didn't happen. At about 11pm, we all looked at each in frustration and I feared that defeat was right around the corner. Our audio guy thought that we should move away from the acapella group and theater and try to come up with something completely different. We went with the flow, but nothing seemed to hit us. We did have a good laugh during this process, but I wonder if the laughter was from fear of not having anything concrete so late in the night. Luckily, at about 11:30pm, the light bulb lit up. Someone in the group mentioned ghost story, which lead to the fantasy genre. Before I knew it, our story was written. I let out a sigh of relief. We finished brainstorming a little after midnight and made plans to meet up at 9am in San Francisco the next day. When I got home, I emailed Flying Without Instruments with the plan. I then crashed.

On Saturday morning, Dinah and Sig rang my door bell at 8:15am. I thought I was dreaming. I remember reaching up to my alarm clock and attempting to press the snooze button but had no luck. I remember opening my left eye thinking, "ah shit, that's Dinah and Sig coming to get me." I jumped out of bed, stumbled to the front door, and let my two "love ladies" into the house (inside joke, I'll have to fill you all in once I am coherent again). Even without contacts or glasses, I could see both ladies look me up and down. I guess they weren't used to seeing me in my scrubs and boxers. I've been around these IDOM'ers so much that I could be completely naked with my Vietnamese ass hanging out and it wouldn't phase me. In any case, I quickly got dressed, and the three of us headed up to the city. I swear, that Saturday was the longest Saturday I've had in a long time. As the producer of this project, I had to make sure that everything was in place, so I spent the bulk of this day running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Yes, gruesome visual, I know, but I'm so fatigued right now that I can't come up with anything else. Please bear with me. A number of things stressed me out, but the key thing is the fact that I am responsible for everything that goes on at my work place, so it didn't help calm my nerves any when I had to run a bunch of errands. Technically, I was supposed to be in the building at all times, but oh well. I'll do whatever it takes for the team. In any case, below is a rough time line of hours 12 though 36 of this Visa "Life Takes" Invitational:

• 8:15 am. Sig and Dinah arrive.
• 9:00 am. Tony, Sig, and Dinah get stuck in Saturday morning traffic. WTF?!
• 9:30 am. The IT DONNED ON ME Crew arrive at Dolby.
• 11:00 am. Flying Without Instruments (FWI) arrive.
  
• 12:00 pm. The technical crew attempts to start filming while FWI rehearses.
• 12:30 pm. Tony scrambles to get lunch, costumes, and props, for the team.
  
• 1:00 pm. Lunch in the Dolby break room. Through a mix up, the star did not have his lunch, so Tony runs back to Potrero Center to get another sandwich.
• 2:00 pm. FWI audio recording takes place.
• 3:00 pm. Filming begins.
• 5:00 pm. Actors and crew hurry to Potrero Hill to film final scene before the sun goes down.
• 6:00 pm. Dinner. Tony provides an Asian feast.
• 7:00 pm. Filming continues.
• 11:00 pm. Filming ends.
• 12:oo am. Tony goes home and passes out.

So there you have it. Can you see why I am beat? I spent the whole day running around like a mad man, but like I said, anything for the team. I did manage to get about 6 hours of sleep, so I'm good to go. I did, also, get to sneak in a nap in the screening room some time last night. Big mistake. Someone with a camera snapped a few shots. Boy oh boy, I looked like an elephant seal. Am I surprised that my fellow IDOM'er took this picture? Nope. Am I happy about it? Yeah, I am. The reason? Because this IT DONNED ON ME TEAM is so comfortable with each other that we can play around like this. Yeah, I look like an oversized mammal, but it's funny. I really do love this team.