I seem to neglect deviant art these days, though I do check in every so often to look at all the pretty new things in my inbox There's a lot to say in the past five months or so in this journal so here we go.

My first year of university is now over. I finished on Monday with my peer assessment for my first fiction film. It was a long process, involving some terribly long shoot days for multiple projects. One particular unit called scene bites involved me standing in the middle of Borne Woods, a famous filming location which has been used for films such as Gladiator and Snow White and the Huntsman, and waiting for three or so hours for half of my group with the equipment to turn up. During the first film unit, we shot for two, ten hour days. And that was only for four minutes of footage. In the age of digital recording, that seems long... extremely long. But we used actual film stock; four, 100foot reels of celluloid which is about four minutes of footage on a wind up camera called a Bolex. It was crazy times and shoots went into the early hours of the night but it all payed off in the end and we received a 2:1 for the film. And I can't take all the credit I wrote the script and played around with hot, heavy lights on set all day. Credit goes to my fabulous group, our artist and the two wonderful actors we cast.

Let's break it down. The film was about a woman from a foreign country working a dead end job at a cafe, her life has been run down through her mundane job. She works long hours and gets paid next to nothing for it so she can support herself and her family back home. He manager is a young hard ass who only really cares about maximum productivity and making money. As she clears this one table covered in a terrible mess, she begins to shift the mess of coffee and sugar into this image of a time when she was happy, back home with a small child, the sun setting on the horizon (on film, it didn't quite come out as well as we hoped). Staring at the image, she remembers the happier time before she is pulled out from it by her manager and she quickly clears it away, returning to her life of unhappiness.

It came out so well and we had to show all this WITHOUT dialogue. It's harder than you think. We couldn't even record sound as we filmed so it was all inserted in afterwards. It all came together really well. I don't have a copy so I can't post it anywhere on here but I think it's on facebook... I'll get  digital copy at some point for me to exploit I mean use.

So yay, that's that over. Over the summer, I need to start developing ideas for two units which start in September. One is independent, so I get to make whatever I want by myself which reflects something I'm interested or passionate about. And it's all about the processes of developing the idea, the filming side is just a bonus so it can look as crap as I want The second unit is a group unit called True Fiction, previously called Fact into Fiction. We have to take a real event and make a fictional film based on or with it general concept based on the real fact. So far, all I've got is an exploration of state-run media in countries like China and North Korea and how they control what gets shown to the public, but seeing it from a western journalistic side. Little sketchy on the details right now but yeah...

On another note, I got 71% on my screenwriting assignment, which is like a 1st, I think. They don't really explain it as well as I would like. It was a good final script I submitted, I'm really proud of it. I'm gonna convert it to word soon as  used this program called Celtx to write it originally so there's no formatting problems when I put it on here. It's all about insomnia!!! Though the comments for it by my tutor made me laugh so hard. My previous scripts in the class had been about people in a same-sex relationship (write about what you know and all that) and he wrote in the comments that I should have made my two male characters exes so they had an even stronger connection. It wasn't my intention to make them gay when I wrote it but I thought after I read his comment "He knows me so well!!!"

Well that was my good, happy news. So here is the bad stuff.

As some of you may have read on here before, my Dad was suffering from cancer in the lungs and kidneys. He stopped chemo last year and he went back six months later and the doctors said it was coming back and that he had to restart the therapy. He went through some lows earlier this month but he seemed to be getting better again. About a week or ago, he went in for a check up and they kept him in overnight because he was dehydrated and had low blood pressure. Overnight turned into several nights. This Monday, after my mum and aunt left, he complained of slight chest pains and the hospital staff kept an eye on him. He woke up yesterday with more chest pains. Unfortunately, he went into massive cardiac arrest and after several attempts, they couldn't revive him.

He passed away around 7.25 AM yesterday. They called us up, saying it was urgent not long after and we got there about an hour later (he wasn't at a local hospital and I luckily got my friend to drive us there). I won't lie and say I wasn't devastated to be told the news but I knew as soon as they took us into an office that he was gone. My Dad was 64. I love him so, so much, despite how much I used to complain about him. We don't have a funeral date set yet that I know of, Mum's going through everything at the moment.

Yesterday was hard, but thankfully I had such great support from friends texting me and leaving messages on facebook. I couldn't have done it without my boyfriend, Tim. Even though he's stuck in Belfast, he always made sure I was okay throughout. He was flying over this weekend and tried to change his flight to earlier in the week but the company he used to use to fly were recently bought out by British Airways. The old company would have just changed it but BA said no. I'm just glad he can come at all And also, special mention to my friend James, who drove us to the hospital and came over later after he finished work and distracted me in his usual way. And of course, who was working at the pub me and James went to but still gave me plenty of hugs and comical banter about porn Thank you times infinity!

So that's it for another while I guess, though it's summer now so I should really be on here more often.

Lots of love
Chris