Today in Seb-land

…when you get up to go to work, stumble bleary-eyed downstairs to the bathroom, and next thing you’re looking down to see a hairbrush in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other, wondering what the FECK you’d planned on doing next….

Very busy and intensive but brilliant weekend with a friend from up north, Jeff - a digital media professional; who came down primarily to help me with some technical pointers and constructive opinion for the production showreel I’m putting together currently. I’ve been certain for quite a while now that creative digital media is the career path I want on, and ASAP.  Technology’s very interesting and often very cool, but I’ve come recently to a realisation that my personal interest in it is as a creative tool even moreso than in and of itself.  The showreel’s proving to be a lot of work but I have a renewed energy for it after the weekend; which says something, given the creative-drive-sapping qualities of my ‘daytime’ job, as I might call it.

Final Cut’s a fantastic piece of software; gotten aquainted with it very nicely now over the past couple of months, 10 million keyboard shortcuts ‘n’ all. Sorted out a lot of minor technical issues and workflow questions with Jeff, along with a lot of other things more related to production value and technique.  Had a lot of ideas beforehand that I didnt quite know how to implement though I knew it must be possible. All in all, probably the most productive weekend in a long while.

Had some really interesting conversations covering everything from photography/videography to media, production, politics, market potential, opportunities, trends, priorities; and swapped a lot of creative ideas (approaching from the audio end of the game for my own part, at least in a formal sense). Also went for an evening spin up the Wicklow mountains on Saturday evening; the lighting was superb; of the clear-sky warm autumn evening glow variety. Sunday morning was pretty relaxed - slept later than I intended to, went up to Bels for the Cafe de rigeur. Parents made a short surprise visit mid-afternoon. Finished the day with a rather good “Top 50 Documenaries Ever”..um.. documentary.. on C4 - which touched on, if tangentially, a lot of things we’d been talking about earlier on the day.

All in all, an excellent weekend. Makes the week a lot easier to face into, and the future a little less hard-disk-coloured.