I had my internship today, and the first thing we were filming was for BBC Breakfast. We showed up at what is becoming known as "The Rock Hotel" in London and went up to the beautiful lounge on the roof. 3 hours later these men showed up:

If you don't recognize them or cant really tell from the picture that's ok, it is kind of far away. When they are together they're known as The Foo Fighters. The easiest to recognize will probably be the lead singer, Dave Grohl, who has the dark hair and is leaning forward. The interview was very interested and I'm excited to see what the final product looks like. 

After this we went on to film something else for BBC Breakfast, but that's for a film that I'm not gonna tell you about :P 

Now I have to go and back because my bus for Aberdeen (a 12 hour ride) leaves in 3 hours. Must get ready and get out of here! I'll be back in a few days with hopefully lots of pretty pictures. 

Have a good weekend folks!

Tasarion

This video is some my favorite bits from the exhibit I went to this morning called "The Doctor Who Experience". Sorry for the lack of quality, I was partially sneaking video, and my camera is seriously dying. The exhibit was amazing though, and it was definitely a different look into the culture that I'm currently surrounded by. 

In the US Doctor Who tends to be a more adult thing for some reason. Teenagers may get into it, but most parents wouldn't show it to their children. Here in the UK it's a completely different story. When I walked in I found myself surrounded by little kids dressed up as The Doctor, including several carrying mops and wearing fezzes. I wish I had some pictures of them to show you guys, but I didn't take any of the kids. Trust me though, it was adorable. 

It was interesting to see so many families at the show. Moms, dads, children, and even grandparents were there. The beginning of the exhibit started with a walk through adventure type thing. You're brought in and you're told you have to help The Doctor escape from the Pandorica 2 (yeah, they actually built an extra just incase he escaped the first. "It's not even a different color! Boring!") This was my favorite part of the whole thing. You get to go inside the TARDIS, you get attacked by Cybermen, Daleks, and Weeping Angels, and you get to see some really cool props from the show up close. The best part was probably the end when all of the villains are shown on a 3D screen (yes, I like 3D like this. It's how it's meant to be used). When the Weeping Angels and Daleks came out and reached towards us I could see all of the parents grabbing their children that were too scared to watch but somehow couldn't look away and couldn't stop grinning. Some of the adults genuinely looked a bit frightened as well. Part of this is showed towards the end of the video, try to imagine it actually popping out at you if you watch back.

The second part of the exhibit included things like all of The Doctor's costumes, all of the companions costumes (It was hard to not steal Jack's and the 9th/10th Doctor's. I behaved though). It showed the Daleks through the years, and models of so many creatures. There was also an area that you could walk through a bit of the TARDIS control room on your own. I spent a good amount of time there looking at all the buttons I wasn't actually allowed to press.

Overall my day was spectacular. After the exhibit I went out for a walking trip of the city with my friend Kayleigh, we got lost, found cool stuff, and overall, I at least, had a lot of fun. 

If you want to see pictures from the exhibit you can click here, and if you want to see some pictures from my walk around the city you can go here and scroll to the bottom. 

If you've never seen Doctor Who you should check it out. It's really an amazing show, and worth putting the time into getting to know. 

I hope you all have an amazing night

Tasarion

Over a week ago! Middle of semesters here really suck don't they? Up until now we've had almost no homework, and all of a sudden every class has at least one paper due in a week. Anyway.

Last Saturday we woke up bright and early at 4am, and started our travelling to the airport. Somehow we made it just in time despite going to 3 wrong bus stations and by 10am we were in Scotland! We went to Glasgow. This trip started out being planned because I mentioned I was going, and then everyone else wanted to join in. Here's a brief recap of everything that happened.

Saturday:
10am arrive in Glasgow
1045am get to hostel, told we can't check in til noon
11am get to place to eat breakfast (at this point only 4/6 of us are here)
12 Finally find everyone else we're in the city with, go back to hostel
1pm wander around Merchant City, go to the GoMA, take lots and lots of pictures
530pm go to dinner and have amazing sushi
9pm go to DRAM, a local pub.

Sunday:
9am wake up, get told off trying to everyone else up, and go downstairs for breakfast
945am Toya wakes up, yells at me for not trying to wake her up (remember, she just told me off 45 minutes ago), go downstairs for breakfast again :D
1030am go for a walk along the river and take lots of pictures
130pm meet up with Rachel (our RA who is from Glasgow), go to lunch, have lots of cool things pointed out to us
300pm go to the University, find the orchestr rehearsing, record the through the keyhole in the door, walk home
5pm go out on my own, walk to some museum and then down one street as far as it went. Found flatmates in Cold Stone
930pm go to tea shop, order "fairies blood" tea (it was a beautiful red)
11pm go to sports bar across from hostel
1am go to a church that's been converted into a bar
3am flatmates go to hostel, I go to hang out with people I met at the bar
445am run back to hostel
5am get in cab to go to airport
6am at airport, falling asleep on a chair because the amount I've had to drink is finally hitting me (that's something I should admit on a blog my grandmother and mother read huh?)
10am home and going to bed

Want some pictures? Check out here, here, and here.

Since this has all happened I've had classes, gone to m internship, had two days of doing nothing except setting up a booth at the national wedding show and spending 8 hours teaching myself to use a sound mixer and one of the cameras at work. Oh, and Friday night we had a nice trip to the hospital with one of our flatmates. Everything's ok now, and I'm glad it's over, but it made for a very long night. 

Today is homework, editing the website a bit (hopefully including some videos for you), and more homework. Tomorrow I go to the Doctor Who Experience! 

Links are being added here for all the places I've been that have websites

Take care!

Tasarion

I haven't been doing too much updating of anything but twitter lately and I'm sorry for that. I've had so much I wanted to update you guys on too. I went out one night and got horribly horribly lost, ended up in the red light district on my own, made it out alive and took awesome pictures. I was even gonna talk about these 3:

I don't really remember what I was gonna say anymore, but there's a folder labelled "Photos for Blog" on my desktop, which means I did have a story. I assume the first two are because I ended up in St Giles Square, and saw Rupert Street which reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you don't know why, you are not a whedonite and you have homework to do. Go watch Buffy. I was so excited when I saw these signs. The third though I just remember thinking was pretty. Maybe that's why I wanted to specifically show you?

Then of course there was my Beatles fieldtrip I went on last weekend. I have pictures from it here and they're actually labelled so you can know what they are if you click through the slideshow. We also went out one night and for class we were told to draw all over the city with crayons. Scroll down to see the pictures of that. Anything vulgar was not written by me, and is gonna be taken off my website prolly tonight. 

My internship the past two days has been amazing, I got to set up lighting today, and we got free food for lunch each day. I love the car rides involved with my internship. It's the best time to get to know the people I work with and the people that live here in general. 

I'm leaving now to print my tickets out for everything I'm doing this month. Doctor Who Experience, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Nottingham. I feel like I'm successfully packing quite a bit in. I also have to go to bed soon...I'm getting everyone up at 4 so we can leave by 5. 

I promise a proper blog soon. Probably after this weekend since I'll (hopefully) have lots of stories to tell you all. 

Goodnight,

Tasarion

I wrote this last night, but fell asleep before I got a chance to post it, so read it as if it was written yesterday :P

The past few days have been a bit wild. Wednesday I went to Westminster Abbey and walked on and saw the graves of people like TS Eliot, Lewis Carrol, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and Geoffrey Chaucer. There are pictures of the outside and hallways here (You're not allowed pictures inside the church):

Westminster

Thursday I had my internship. We went to a motorbike show to film promos for "I, Superbiker" but I think the most exciting bit was when I found an orange Triumph that was actually small enough for me. It was so beautiful..I didn't have my camera with me, but I'm trying to find a picture so I can show you all. When we got back I was sat down with some broken lights and told to fix them. It took a bit to figure out some of them but I feel very good that I was able to get them all repaired. 

Today at work was the big day. We were shooting a music video for the band Man Raze. If you haven't heard of them they consist of Simon Laffy, the guitarist from Girl, Phil Collen, the guitarist from Girl and Def Leppard, and Paul Cook, the drummer from The Sex Pistols. We started the day by cleaning the entire studio (the entire office is friends with these guys, but they always want to impress them). I now know that every light works, where it is, where its stand is, and where every cord we could ever need is. Once we finished wrapping cords and organizing lenses it was time to set up the studio to shoot. Paul had called ahead and asked Nick and Liam to set up his drumkit, but neither knew how, and everyone else is just a frontman for their bands and didn't know either. The task fell to me. 

As they were bringing the drums down I was already nervous. This was Paul Cook's drumset and I was going to set it up? They brought all the cases down and left me with them. I nearly died when I opened a case and saw which set it was.

Yeah. It was his Union Jack Sex Pistols drum kit. After calming down and double checking that I was actually allowed to touch it I built him the set almost perfectly (one cymbal out of place). While we waited for him to show up I played with the camera using the drumset as my subject. I'm finally becoming more comfortable with cameras. 

When Paul finally showed up we were introduced and he told Nick that he did a wonderful job setting up his drums. Nick was kind enough to give me my credit and Paul complimented me on my ability to put a kit together. I got a compliment from a Sex Pistol! (None of my roommates understand why this is so exciting to me, so I'm gonna brag about it here). He and I talked about music for a bit and about why I was there before we started shooting. Getting to watch him play so close up was incredible. 

When we were done Christian and Paul were talking and I heard my name come up so I walked over and they were talking about getting me a signed pair of Paul's drumsticks as 'payment' for my internship. Paul says I'll have them sometime before April, which will be so incredible. 

The other guys were cool as well, the whole shoot only took about an hour though so it was very short. I love The Sex Pistols, and I love Def Leppard so today was very exciting for me. When the music video's done I'll post a link to it so you can all see. 

Time to head out for the day!

Tasarion

PIctures of Westmister Abbey

Pictures of Paul's drumset

Pictures of my first proper night out

As I'm writing this post it is 3am, and I have a paper due in exactly 6 hours, which I have to print out, which means walking about a mile to the other residency where they have printers. I haven't started the paper yet. Is anyone surprised that this would happen the first time I have a real paper due this semester? I thought I was going to be better about work, but that was just a happy little lie that I told to myself. 

Instead tonight I have planned my spring break. 3 days in Aberdeen, and 5 or 6 in Nottingham, followed by a weekend in Prague sometime. I'm figuring that I can spend lots of time with friends this way and then do some travelling on my own instead of in a large mass of people that I don't really like. 

I guess I should probably go and get my work done now. I have a presentation to finish too, but at least that's not due 'til 1. 

See you in the morning,

The Champion of Procrastination

"Before Stonehenge they built Woodhenge and Strawhenge. But a big bad wolf came along and blew them down, and 3 little piggies had to be relocated to the projects. ...Whatever that means"

~Eddie Izzard

Yesterday we went to Stonehenge. I've taken a day to try and decide what to write about it, and I'm still not quite positive what to tell you. 

Getting out of the city was fantastic. The openness there is amazing and something that I'd definitely needed. Once we were close the guide started to tell us the history of Stonehenge, but I zoned out after about 10 minutes. I'm a fan of believing in the magic of things and so I wasn't really interested in hearing about my beliefs being crazy and how the whole thing is really "not that remarkable". We were told that many people go to Stonehenge and find themselves very underwhelmed. I'm not sure if the intent of being told that was some kind of reverse psychology but the overall opinion seems to agree with it. I found it to be extremely amazing and moving though. There's a lot of pictures here:

Stonehenge Pictures

I wish that I could give more detail on what it was like but I don't know how to put it in words. It may sound silly but I felt an intense power come from being there, and since I left I've wanted to go back. Maybe I'm crazy? When we were done at Stonehenge we went to Bath to tour the old Roman Baths. It was really awesome and so much warmer than standing out in an open field. There's pictures of the baths and the city here:

Bath Pictures

and here:

Bath Pictures 2

It was an amazing day, even with all of the people I had to put up with. I made a video that shows some of the landscape and talks about why the people I was with are rough sometimes. Link is here:

Video

I'm off now to do this week's homework.

Goodnight,

Tasarion

Today was interesting. I got to work early so I could help set up the shoot that we were doing for the York Dungeons. I was given the task of setting up the lighting, which is really exciting since it was only my second day actually in the studio. It was green screen though so it just meant getting lighting that was even and bright enough until the actor showed up to stand in one place and read off a teleprompter. Easy job right? If only. When the actor showed up, he told us he couldn't read without his glasses, and didn't own contacts. The next 4 hours were spent finding a place he could get some. Once he finally was set it took him 5 hours to get through 3.5 minutes of dialogue. Read off the prompter. Standing in one place. Film and television would be so perfect if it didn't involve working with actors. Seriously, if you are an actor learn to take direction. It will make your life, and our lives so much easier. 

While he was out for 4 hours getting the contacts me and Nick spent some time playing with the camera set up. We ended up setting it up on 6 building blocks, a tripod, a c-stand, a box, a scaffolding, two "magic arms" and a strip of camera tape. This is what some of it looked like:

Once I finally was able to leave I was feeling very confident in my ability to make the most of this internship and impress the people I'm working for. 

2 hours later I got home, and when I walked in everyone gave me a very strange welcome home, so I left the room to put my stuff away. When I got back to the kitchen there was pizza for us all from Toya and it was amazingly delicious. Once everyone was sitting down again I was told that it was my belated birthday party. I got a card that was signed by everyone, and then two of the most delicious cupcakes ever (each of which with a candle). It was amazing, and I really appreciated that everyone was there and did that for me. I'm so lucky I got put in the flat with the people that I did. 

Links to updated pictures:

Field Trip

Internship

Birthday Party

Tomorrow we have a field trip, I'm not telling you where, I'll just post pictures and maybe some stories tomorrow. For now I need to go to bed. 

Goodnight,

Tasarion

I've just woken up from going to bed at 8, it's now almost midnight and I'm going to go back to bed in a couple minutes. I'm trying to get used to getting up at 5am for the next two days because I have a 7:15 call Thursday. Tonight when I woke up though the first thing I saw was my window, and outside it the city is illuminated in a way that Philadelphia just never is. It look beautiful, and being on the top floor of my building allows me to see the tops of buildings for so far. It's absolutely peaceful.

Random moments of awe make me happy. 

Goodnight, 

Tasarion

It's been days since I've properly updated, and I'm sorry for that. As a reward for putting up with me I'll go to Parliament tomorrow and take lots of pictures. Just for you. 

Back to the past few days:

Thursday was the first day of my internship and i absolutely LOVE it. Today I was briefly introduced to everyone, and told that I would be helping on a small production for the London Dungeons. It was for the Jack the Ripper segment, so it involved lots of fake blood and pig organs. Once that was done I helped to pack up fo r a premiere that everyone was going to. 

A bit of background about this:

The film was called "I, Superbiker" and was created by the person who runs The 400 Company, Mark. This was a press premiere, and it ended up being that I was the one interviewing for the 400. I'm still not sure how that came about, but it was amazing. People that I got to interview include: James Ellison, Gary Mason and Tommy Hill, all of whom the film was about, and David Vanian of The Damned and Paul Cook from The Sex Pistols. 

I did mention this was my first day right? The film was great, the people were great, and it was all around awesome. 

The next day at my internship mostly involved looking through all of the things in the office. Among what seems like hundreds of other things there's an original God Save the Queen poster, drumsticks signed by Paul Cook, and all of Pauls original copies of The Sex Pistol records because he "don't got a record player anymore". I was sent home with a copy of one of The Damned's CD's from Christian to burn. Christian is a whole nother thing of amazement. We'll talk about that some other time though. 

The weekend was fairly dull. We went to Oxford Street and back to Portobello Market. Ran into one of my internship bosses that I don't really know, which was awkward, and now we're all going to bed. 

Check out the 4 or so new pictures in 1/23 and 1/24 and come back tomorrow for better updates. 

Goodnight, 

Tasarion