A Few Notes

Hello! I just wanted to check in and say yes, my day three report about the all-night shoot is coming, probably early next week. I'm still in the process of organizing all of my notes and wrapping my head around the whole experience; luckily there have been lots of other Twilight updates for all of us recently so I can't imagine you've been pining away for my news!

I wanted to answer a couple of the questions I got in the comments (I LOVE when people leave comments on the blog. It's really nice to have feedback and know that something I'm doing is exciting for someone else).

1) What do the stand-ins do? Are they acting out scenes or are they stunt doubles or what?

-stand ins exist in nearly EVERY film. They are the body doubles for the actors while the crew is setting up the shot. They are generally the same height and coloring/body structure of the actual actor, and they stay in the actors position while the lighting and sound crew set up the shot. Shots can take anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours to set up sometimes, so instead of having Kristen Stewart or Rob Pattinson spend hours just standing before they actually work the scene, the stand-ins do that to get the light right. Then the actors are brought in to make sure everything is right, and then shoot the scene.

2) Where did you get the songs for your 'playlist'?

-most of them are from Stephenie Meyer's myspace page. She has a great playlist of songs by Muse, Linkin Park, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (I'm slightly obsessed with Your Guardian Angel, listen to it and just think about Edward), My Chemical Romance, Brand New... there's a ton! I took off a few that I'm not a big fan of (Evanescence for one...) but most of them were new, and great, and now associated with Twilight and therefore I like them that much more. So after I got a few from her myspace page, I bought a bunch more songs by those artists and put them together in one big playlist. It's a great mix to run to. I start with Linkin Park's Papercut and it's an all-out power push for the rest!

3) What do you intend to do with the degrees once you graduate? I am asking because my son would love to follow in your footsteps, but he would also like to be employed

-To be honest, I don't know what I'll do with this when I'm done. What I do know, is that I will be able to do a multitude of things. I've never been one of those people who's like, "I'm doing this because I want to be _____ when I grow up." I pretty much just live for the moment, and right now, I know that a PhD can't hurt me in anyway, I'm studying what I love, and I'm pretty much blissfully happy.

The other reason why I can't say what I'll do when I'm done is that I'm learning every day what opportunities even exist for someone like me. Originally I was thinking about doing a PhD in English Literature, and I realize now how limiting that would have been for me. Not that it's a bad degree, but I'd basically be an expert in one area of literature and that wasn't enough for me- my interests are too varied; true I could teach, work in publishing, or anything involving PR or human resources, but that didn't really call to me. So far with this degree (PhD Film and New Media), I've discovered that I can work in film, game design, publishing, online companies, reviews, magazines... the list goes on, and I'm learning new options every day.

Basically it's going to be a degree that says I'm motivated, productive and I can read and write. There aren't many jobs out there where it will hurt me to have a PhD. I start teaching back in Wales in the fall, so we'll see how that goes and how I like it, but to be honest I'd quite like to have some time working in the film/media industry. I certainly like the opportunities for creativity, expression, adaptation, possible connections... and I can teach while I'm doing that, or get 'real world' experience and then teach... I don't know! Really, I'm still figuring it out. I'm not closing any doors, trying to open as many as I can, trying not to limit myself in any way, get tons of experience, and just keep working my bum off to learn as much as I can in these few short years. But I'm fairly confident that I won't be jobless in any way shape or form when I've completed the degree.



That was a long-winded answer and I'm happy to rattle on more if you ever have a question, but those are the thoughts in my head at the moment!

As a side note, my department put a link from the University's website about my time on the Twilight set. And no need to comment on how they misspelled Stephenie's last name! I've already emailed them about it and they apologized and will be changing it! :)

Thanks again for all of the comments; it's been great to share all of these experiences!

More soon, I swear :)