It is the day after Midnight Madness and the post fest blues are setting in. Being in the film festival world is a crazy and surreal world. For ten days I get to embrace my obsession and meet many others who share the same obsession in film.

How to survive ten days averaging four hours sleep.

This was my schedule for Sept 4th to the 13th.

Nine pm. Make sure video camera was charged. DV Tape was labeled and in video camera. Still camera was charged. The pictures from the previous day were uploaded to computer and the memory card was empty. Voice recorder was packed. Pens and paper packed.

9 30 leave for Ryerson. Having freedom to cover Midnight Madness from my perspective it was on my walk to the theater I would come up with my angle for that night. Sometimes I would decide to walk the line and talk to people about the film that screened on the previous night or make sure I had questions for the director that was going to be there.

Midnight see the film.

Two thirty, three o'clock (if nothing was going on) head home and blog until six or seven in the morning. Which often consisted of transcribing audio recordings and waiting a really long time for photos to upload. The computer had to be free by eleven when Sheleigh would arrive and begin to edit footage.

Editing footage all day long. We listened to the Q&A for hours on end.
For those keeping score that is a Shaw Brothers movie siting by the mac Five Element Ninjas

Waiting for footage to upload.

Blogging by the numbers.

Ten Films
Ten Nights
Avg Four to Five Hours Sleep
15 Mini DV Tapes
20 Hours of Footage
Avg of Three Coffees A Day
30 odd coffees during the festival
Some four hundred odd photos taken. Many not included because some people feel blurry, out of focused and over exposed photos do not merit an artistic sensibility.

Three cameras
One Sony DCR-HC52
One Canon D60
One Fuji Film A 400

Blogging Midnight Madness was one kick ass experience. I was fortunate to meet many great people from the directors to the last guy in the line. I now know many of my fellow audience members by name. I have made some great friends the kind that you have for a lifetime yes even you Sanjay.

I have to thank Colin for asking me to blog MM08 and Sally Muul from Interactive Services for responding to frantic e-mails and helping to upload my photos and move them to the proper folder, it seems there is no room in the reel to reel folder for pictures of giant monsters and or zombies.

It's just after ten pm and it feels weird that I'm not doing a last minute check to insure all my gear is ready and head down to Ryerson Theater. However there is still footage to import to the computer.

Sincerely,

See ya all next year!

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