Wednesday, November 27, 2002

i've started doing some editting for "untouchable face". if i wasn't going out of town in about half an hour, then i definitely would finish editting by the time Thanksgiving break is over. but since i am, i can't really make a good estimate. footage is looking great though. maybe i will make some new stills for the page. until then, have a happy turkey day!

Monday, November 25, 2002

keep away from the freaks on the fringe. they only talk to you cuz you give them a good excuse to cry.

i had a great weekend. i got to hang out with robin, brock, elise, and LAYLEE! it was wonderful. on friday, brock and elise picked me up around 4(?). i think the only reason they drove all the way out to my house is because brock wanted ethiopian food. (i live next to abyssinia.) i can't remember how it came up, but we called laylee, who was HOME for once! so we went to go get her and then we got robin. by that point we were very far away from abyssinia and we were headed towards elise's house, so we decided to go there for pizza. at the last second we changed our minds and went to jersey mike's where we got sandwhiches except laylee who was practically broke so she shared mine. then we walked around walgreens and hung out outside the kroger and i pushed elise around in one of those creepy kids carts. keith appeared at some point and it was awkward, especially when i whispered to elise who he was and she couldn't stop stuttering. so he left. brock filmed people going into kroger and we got lots of Disapproving Looks. it was great. then elise and robin drove off. laylee and brock bonded beautifully and i talked to jerry (the camera). elise and robin came back eventually. they tried to make me pee in someone's yard but we ended up just coming to my house and sitting around. then we thought it would be fun if we all spent the night with elise. so while she called her mom i talked to my parents. so brock wasn't allowed to sleep at elise's house sadly, and robin couldn't stay because it was her mom's birthday the next day. so laylee and i spent the night with elise and it was wonderful. mostly we just sat around and talked and goofed off. it was great. she had to take us home before 2 so we played on the playground by Richland a little bit and then elise drove us home. it was weird, being driven home like that. not that i didn't enjoy it. i love me some lise.
so i hung out at home for a little while before we went to the screening of momo's curse at the media co-op. they had some technical problems but it turned out to be okay. wow i remember that i had lots to say about it but i can't remember anything. there were four different camera angles at all times, which was a very good idea since the play was so insane but i don't think the camera people had any instruction or anything. so there was one camera that was just a wide shot the whole time and you couldnt see a damn thing that was actually happening. one camera had no tripod and it was absolutely insane and kept closing up on random people in the audience or random bits of set. the other two were better camerapeople, even though one of them was tinted red for some reason. i dont know that anyone really understood the concept of the play. or maybe they just needed to have better planning. they mostly filmed bill. like most of the time, four cameras were on him and one (if we were lucky) was on some part of the (massive) ensemble. and as filmmakers, i think that the camera guys were very intent on detail and imagery. so you would see a really interesting image, like somebodys disembodied hands doing something, but it would be completely wrong because you had no sense of what was going on, which is fairly bad in a play. everyone in the theatre had seen the play of course, because it was just the company and friends, but it was kind of crazy. the surrealist scene looked great though. lots was missing from the chaos scene after that though. in fact lots of bits were quite disappointing, which is not to say that it isn't completely AWESOME that the co-op even did that, for free and taking time away from their own projects. thank you, co-op. we love you to death and pieces. also it was very nice getting to see OOV people again, even though not everyone came. so after visiting a bit, i went with the fam to cafe ole down the street where we had a very quick quick quick dinner before morgan and i went back to first congo to see the Lucero documentary, which was great. margaret, katherine warren, melanie, melissa, and alice were all there. it was a good time, plus i got one of those great organic sodas and morgan got those great organic jelly beans and khy shared some of his organic popcorn with us. it made up for the tiny dinner.
right now i am really regretting all the songs i never did for music log. i regret leaving but i felt like i had to and i think it's best that i did. so i guess that you guys are going to start getting little music reviews and downloadables here, if you don't mind. music log has really gone downhill though, i feel like. 11/23 post should be proof enough. as if the writing isn't bad enough, is anyone keeping up with archives? how come morgan got kicked off, if she's not even really being replaced? the only reason she was supposed to leave, originally, was because there were going to be six new people, plus brittany, and everyone would have one day. but brittany still has all her days, billy has all my days, and evan has morgan's day? it's crazy, i swear. and the music? well i have this playlist of 220 songs that have been done on music log at some point. i rate my songs with iTunes, and all the old posts have four or five stars. the new ones range from two to three stars. maybe i need to change with the times or something but i like what i like and what can i say? so i'm not impressed by these bands called McLusky and Minus the Bear and i never DID like Grandaddy or The Smiths. all these bands are so damn generic! they don't sound like anything and they don't sound unique, much less interesting. it's not that there's no good music left online. seriously, i can find tons. look at this.

Electrelane - Many Peaks (Mp3)(site)
beautiful beautiful beautiful song! it starts mellow and gets really intense and goes back to mellow. it's instrumental rock but for once it's NOT BORING!! alanna thinks that most instrumental rock is shit. believe me, guys, this song is great. there's guitar and piano but there are strings, horns, and clarinets too. it makes me want to bounce around and i would if i wasn't pretending to do english homework. plus this band is on Mr. Lady which just increases their coolness by about a billion.

Thursday, November 21, 2002

drinking tea instead of gin

this week is insanely long and ungood. i even stayed home sick on monday and i feel like we should have had a Friday years ago. but farther back... this weekend was very good. i went home with elise on friday. brock gave us a tour of his crib (which is like a hotel, i swear. there are about ten staircases. there's this balcony thing that overlooks this huge ballroom kind of place, and there's just a couch there for no reason. i don't think it's ever been sat on. i'm moving into his closet. it's huge and it smells like hamster.) elise got a call from her mom that her article about Do You Know Where Your Children Are? Productions article is going to be on the front page of the school newspaper!!! she was radiating excitement all evening. brock said he felt like he'd written the article and i felt like that too. we decided that we are one being. we went to some roly poly place for dinner but i couldn't make up my mind on what to order so i didn't have anything. we took brock back to his mansion and drove around. we ended up at first congregational church, where the media co-op lives. the door to that was locked so we went in someplace else and wandered around until we found them. i felt really weird being there, like we'd intruded (which we did) even though they said that they didn't mind. they seemed so busy too even though they said they weren't doing anything. so i left elise to talk to them and i walked around outside the building. it was cold. apparently i worried elise because she thought i was in the theatre and when she found out that i wasn't she and josh went around calling my name in the parking lot. i don't know how i missed them but i did. then elise ran around cooper-young trying to find me. apparently it was pretty scary. sorry, elise. we found each other eventually and went to elise's house to watch morgan and josh's movie, which they had loaned to her. it was messing up on her dvd player for some reason. there was sound in the first scene but then it just disappeared completely. so we had to come all the way to my house to watch it on my computer. that worked, but elise had to leave (curfew) before it was over. she came back and we finished it on saturday night. then we drove to media co-op and harassed morgan [fox] some more. they let us use their microwave to pop our popcorn. they are very nice.
sunday was pretty normally crappy. the end.
uhhh. week. monday i was sick. tuesday i was loaded with work and up really late (it was my fault for seeing a movie with the pro bono club). wednesday i went home with elise and we did homework. when she brought me home we watched the "deleated" scene in three minutes. today is bad and i shouldn't be online. this week is boring and terrible. make it end.

Friday, November 15, 2002

shot a little bitty bit for "untouchable face" today.... katherine says she has too much work, so "much finer" will probably be delayed a lot. everyone is really excited about Charlie Brown Christmas plans, and we can't wait for it to snow!! if anyone has advice on using actual mics with a digitial camera then uh... can they let us know?

elise submitted her DYKWYCA article (see 11/12 post) to the school newspaper and it is going to be printed on the front page!!! since nearly everyone in DYKWYCA is part of a Collective Being, our Self is very excited about making it on the front. way to go, everyone!

in other news, go rent three minutes (based upon a revolution of the sun) at black lodge video.

also brittany has dropped out of the company. she may come back some time, but no one is really sure when that will be.
i am not sorry i said it
i am sorry i did not say it all
i could have gone for hours
but she was slipping
goodbye and i still can't hold her attention
nothing hit the right way
did i miss my target
or did the target run?
i could have said
"you drained me dry"
to the point where i
couldn't find comfort in similarities
needed to find separation
i needed
something beautiful for myself
something she could not
steal/perfect
they would not have loved you three years ago

Thursday, November 14, 2002

The Fury

she helped me find courage and recognize beauty
she took it too far
she was nothing
and i was lost
she helped me understand she understood
she was lovely
she was not enough
and i was alone
she helped me become
she sees me
she is beautiful
and i am loved
that's a pretty nice haircut

elise is amazing. she is running this canned-food drive all by herself at like... three different schools. so this morning she announced it, on the tv thingie, and these people in my homeroom behind me were awful.
girl: she's weird.
guy: her hair looks like a boy.
girl: her hair looks like yours!
guy: why does she talk like that?

et cetera. it was really awful. the most awful thing was that I DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING. i couldn't think of anything to say at first and then by the time i realized that they had stopped talking, it was too late for me to say something and be relevant. i doubt that they would have held the incident in their minds for that long. so since elise is going to be making this announcement tomorrow and the rest of next week, i am going to defend her to death kind of. it was just awful because i had this two-hour conversation with her on tuesday night in which we talked about a lot, including people's reactions to her hair and everything. and plus elise is a completely amazing person. don't doubt it.

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

this week is weird. i'm still bipolar but sort of even more so? to a lesser extent? ahahhahahaha god. but yeah. reports today. DO NOT EVEN ASK. i should be doing homework but i'm really not. so uh. i'm gonna go avoid homework elsewhere.

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

From Home Movies to Music Videos

By: Elise Masur



Every Saturday, Memphis' very own Media Co-Op (1000 South Cooper) shows an assortment of short films created by locals. The directors of these films usually have no professional equipment or financial backing. However, to see a 13-year-old and her 15-year-old sister generate an astounding music video is something unusual to these already remarkable filmmakers.



So, how exactly did White Station Sophomore Alanna Stewart decide to start a "production company"? "We just did a short film called 'Romeo and Juliet Revisited' as an extra credit project, but Katherine (Dohan) entered it into the Memphis Digital Arts Film Festival over the summer. We were recognized as notable film makers, and seeing everyone else's homemade movies was really inspiring." After having always wanted to make films, witnessing the simple yet notable works of others helped Alanna and her friends realize just how easy it could be. "We never even use a tripod!"



The result, "Do You Know Where Your Children Are? Productions," is comprised of seven high schoolers and one middle schooler. Each video is filmed with a regular camcorder and edited on the Stewarts' home computer. So far, they have decided to take on eight different filming expeditions, each one chiefly directed by a different member of the production group. Even though they've only created two films, they have been well received, even by their teachers. Alanna and Katherine's ninth grade CLUE teacher Mrs. Kitts, who helped give life to "Romeo and Juliet Revisited," said, "They were brilliant…It was wonderful."



Crediting last summer's film festival as their inspiration, Alanna said, "The night it ended, my sister was coming up with visual ideas to put to this song…by a band I really love." Voila, last Saturday, 13-year-old Morgan Stewart watched on as her video to "Get Up" by Sleater-Kinney played on the silver screen.



When asked about the premiere, [Alanna] said, "I loved seeing it up there. I thought that I was going to be nervous like at Romeo and Juliet, but I just got really into seeing our work up there and knowing that these people would appreciate it for what it was and what we are…I felt like we'd accomplished so much since Romeo and Juliet…I want it to feel like that with every movie we make."

Sunday, November 10, 2002

we don't have to get along

i'm having a great weekend. friday was a half day, so we did aboslutely NOTHING in school. we had two and a half classes and a basketball game which i chose not to go to. in geometry, we played with calculators and didn't get in trouble. in etymology, we read the school newspaper and i took notes on movie ideas for elise. in biology, i filmed things. then we watched part of tarzan and i tried to read a farewell to arms. don't let anyone try to tell you that that book is not about sex, drugs, and rock n roll. then we were dismissed at 11:10. kevin and his sister emily drove behind elise and i on the way to oak court mall for luncheon. robin and a huge group of people were walking, and at some red light we stopped and waved at them. doug godwin RAN ACROSS POPLAR and got into elise's car, which was beginning to move, and was thereby thrown across the entire backseat as we turned into the parking lot. i swear, the entire population of white station was there. i didn't have any money so i just filmed people eating. elise drove robin home and then we had very meaningful conversation on all levels. we went to elise's house and drove around. she changed out of her uniform and we went and stole morgan from lindenwood, and went straight back to elise's house (next to borders) so that she wouldn't be late for her doctor's appointment, where she got an evil flu shot and almost lost her voice. morgan and i sat around the Masur house and watched labyrinth. when elise got home, we picked up robin and went back to elise's house where, after conference, we called kevin and told him he had to be the star of elise's music video and we needed him at that very second. (oh yeah. elise and kevin are broken up but they don't act like it. hence, elise deciding to do "untouchable face" for her music video.) so we walked to the park and waited. then we filmed some things and it went really well, i think. i forgot to use the cool effect the whole time but i think it will be ok. i'm sad that i can't make that effect happen once i get the footage onto the computer. then elise, morgan, and robin drove to burger king and kevin and i followed. there, kevin paid for me to have dinner, which was fries. i also ordered a small water so that elise could throw it all over kevin. it was a really great shot. poor thing was cold for the rest of the night though. then elise drove robin, morgan, and i around for a while trying to lose kevin. we were actually going to try to go to laylee's house but we got really turned around and suddenly we were going the opposite direction on yates. so we didn't lose him and we went towards black lodge. the whole way we had the sun roof and a couple windows rolled down, singing at the top of our lungs. the best moment of course was when we got to listen to "Debaser" by the pixies and sing to kevin behind us. he also had his sun roof down and was singing at the top of his lungs. he told us later that elise had nearly hit about 2935070239 different things while trying to dance and drive. at black lodge, elise rented morgan fox and josh laurenzi's movie three minutes (based upon the revolution of the sun) but as far as i know, she hasn't had a chance to watch it yet. so we hung out there for a little while and walked around cooper-young and attempted to stalk josh and morgan fox but it didnt work. so we said goodbye to kevin and elise drove robin home. then we went home with elise just to get my backpack and my camera stuff because i had left it there thinking we would come back like. right after the park. so i'm sorry for wasting all of elise's gas but i love love loved getting to talk to her and be in the car for the extra time. it's the first time that i haven't been the first one to get dropped off. i'm so glad i don't have a curfew of any kind ahhahaha. so elise drove morgan and i back home. i got online and stayed on way too late, but (thank god) i sent my alarm for 11am which is when i woke up. voiceless elise came and picked me up at 12 and we went to perkins for lunch. we got to sit in a big roomy booth even though there were only two of us because all the other seats were taken. i loved being able to be there with elise. i can tell her anything. she said that this week would have been a shitfest without me and robin there, and i'm not sure exactly what i did but i really tried to be there for her and let her rant at me whenever she needed. elise and i shared these cheese and chicken quesadilla things that were really good. i didn't think i'd like them but i diddddd and elise paid for them and i felt bad. then she drove me home and as soon as i got there, morgan fox called and talked to morgan my sister about getting the "get up" video to the co-op before 7:30. morgan and i worked on a logo, which would not have been hard but practically none of our tapes are labelled and we had to go through everything trying to find clips for stuff. watch the finished product here and cry because the best part is too dark. oh yeah, our production company is now here. so we took the video to them and we came back and eat dinner and hung out for a while. then we went to go see our video with nine other short films at the first congo theatre. this woman from youth-xpress talked to morgan and i and said she wanted us to write an article about our filmmaking. so we said we'd think about it and she gave us her CARD. it was amazing. morgan bought some organic jelly beans and mom bought some organic soda and they were both very good. some of the movies were very good and some were boring even though they were short. i loved brian siler's two and this one called "rock star" featuring the yeah yeah yeahs, who are my heroes. i can't really remember all of them. margaret, meg, and christie got to come for part of the time (long enough to see our movie) but had to leave, because of their curfew. elise brought robin and brock and i love all of them more than anything. sarah rushakoff came just in time to see ours; dad missed ours because he was at his boss's 60th birthday party down the street. mom nearly fell asleep because it was a "late night out" for her and morgan wore her costume from the video. i loved being there and i loved sitting next to my sister, in front of my parents, and when elise was pimpin with her arm around my shoulder and me nearly falling asleep on her because of this movie that was the shortened version of the last man on earth or whatever it's called. when it was over, elise and robin and brock praised the video and the new logo, and we talked to morgan and josh, who are two of my favorite people on the planet and make me want to live in memphis forever. elise and i got organic sodas, and morgan showed us the trailer for his and josh's next movie, blue citrus hearts. big parts of it were filmed at white station. we were all very upset that we didn't get to be in it, even though morgan my sister is going to be in one scene and apparently morgan fox told elise that we could be in the last scene, so that's cool. we came home eventually and i got online and stuff. here i am. ta-da! good night all. i hope that tomorrow is as wonderful as the rest of the weekend.
we are, at this moment, in the process of shooting our followup music video to "get up" which is "untouchable face" directed by elise masur. we're also shooting katherine dohan's "much finer" music video, and we're about to edit her detention short. hopefully we'll have some stills up soon, and you'll be able to see them on the projects page.

Saturday, November 09, 2002

testing the new Blogger updating system.

come see our "Get Up" music video tonight at 7:30pm at the First Congo Theatre in the First Congregational Church on 1000 Cooper. see a map.

Friday, November 08, 2002

Tuesday, November 05, 2002


See what Rugrat you are.

See what Rugrat you are.

both of these popped up after i took the quiz so i think that i tied.

what a beautiful face

today was crazy and i was bipolar.
i am very very very excited about Do You Know Where Your Children Are? Productions. we have about 20 projects in the works. it's incredibly exciting. we're looking at different kinds of external harddrives (for imac g4 thingie) so if you have any recommendations or suggestions, please send them my way. we're working on getting a web site up (BRITTANY) so hopefully that will be coming at you shortly.
and then i was pissed off at other things all day long and i'm annoyed that no one seems to be able to tell me things. except elise and kevin, who i am in love with. it's crazy because it's just elise. and kevin. now and not EliseAndKevin entity, as of monday november 4. it's really sad. please send them your condolences, but don't really because they would probably get annoyed at me. katherine dohan already says i'm a gossip.
listen to the new tori amos album. it's bloody brill. and be sure to buy the special edition one with the dvd and stuff. the whole thing is a lot of fun. there's stickers and a charm and a map depicting the journey of the character that the album is based on.

Monday, November 04, 2002

whatever happened to my dear diary?

this weekend was great. today was euphoric, especially for like... 45 minutes there. starting about with when katherine and i started talking to zak, through curtian call, until the time that laylee and becca left theatreworks. god. brilliant. the rest of the day was really good too.

Saturday November 9 - 7:30pm @ First Congregational Church
series of short films featuring the "get up" video directed by morgan stewart, editted by alanna stewart
YAYYYYY COMEEEEE PLEEEASSESEEEE
SUPPORT THE MeDiA CO-OP AND DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE? PRODUCTIONS!! BE THERE!


also be there at 4pm on november 23 to see the screening of the momo's curse that was filmed by the wonderful members of the media co-op. thanks, guys!!!!