Hi! Been awhile. Miss me? I recently returned from a shoot in Vegas. It went terrifically well, but it took me away from my family for five of the longest days of my life. I had a good time, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know if, up til now, I had spent that much time away from Avery in total.
Our little family managed to connect for some FaceTime twice, which was like water in the desert for me. But usually I would try to peek in on my bunny right before my own bedtime. Success was rare though. Avery and Mum were enjoying the luxury of a whole queen size bed to themselves, so a monitor in Avery’s room wasn’t good for much. I got lucky a couple times:
Yep, like water in the desert.
I’m not a stranger to dealing with separation, but this is a whole new deal. I love my job, and I know it will take me away from time to time, but some of the shine has been stripped off. You know?
So much to miss.
It was a good shoot though. We were the videographers for L’Oréal Professionnel Foundations 2013, a high-end brand reaching out to evangelists throughout the industry. Lots of learning, lots of inspiration, lots of plans for the year ahead. The hours are long but it’s neat to be surrounded by that kind of distilled creative energy. Our mandate was to capture the sense of transformation as people buy in to the vision. They made it pretty easy.
So the rush leading up to the event paid off, with all the product and supporting video very well received. Awesome. And the two videos we built and edited while there also brought us some high fives and kudos. It was really (really) nice to be appreciated. That doesn’t always happen. The plan is to get the Big Finale video up online where it belongs. If that happens, I will point you in the right direction with a certain amount of pride.
I had promised myself I would take more pics on the job, but it’s not a practical project when there’s so much going on. I took these though:
The first is a fair approximation of how the days look to us in the middle of it all. The second is from just after wrapping the Grand Opening, and just before a well deserved beer.
The Grand Opening, well, there was a spectacle. Dancers, opera, sequins, models, clouds of hairspray. Oh yes, it was a glamoursplosion. People wanted to buy copies of the video as soon as the dancers froze in final position. We hope to be offered the budget to produce said video. Here are some screencaps. You should click on them for maximum glamfectiousness.
Nice work. High fives and low bows for Christian [I’ve lost his last name] for his superlative stage production.
And in the trenches through the whole week, deep appreciation for J Thor (Hi JT!), Brian, Wayne and Jose for their capital technical production.
And I daresay Lee and I did a decent job of making it last forever. The boss boss previewed our Big Finish video (the transformation one) on the laptop and she liked it, but we didn’t get the wow we wanted. We put the headphones on her and oh there it is! So I will take that as a feather in my cap. Audio is half the movie, and don’t you dare believe otherwise.
So, exhausted and drained, we walked out of there feeling like we’d planted that touchdown. Mission accomplished. Checkered flag and winner’s circle. It felt good to come home though. Best hug yet.
Avery is 5 months now. She can hold her own bottle. She laughs if she thinks you’re funny and she smiles politely if she doesn’t quite get it. She still loves her swing but she loves sitting between Mum and Dad more. She’s chatty but sometimes she just watches. She’s commandingly confident grabbing things even if she isn’t quite sure what to do with them next. She still yells at Mr Octopus because she can’t get more than one tentacle in her mouth at once. And she’s wobbly, but she can just about stand on her own. With both hands on the couch. I wonder if she’ll walk before she crawls. At this point that’s where it looks like we’re going.
It’s good to be Home.