Orange Crush: Starting anew in Chapman

"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade."
- Dwight Eisenhower (on D-day)

A fairly intense quote from Ike, but it's the only one I can pull off the top of my head at the moment. And if you think about it, making films is a lot like D-day--a lot of shouting, pointing, shooting, and a ridiculous amount of running around to save your arse, but instead of running from Nazi gatling guns, you're running to buy 10 orders of cafe from Starbucks or running to get a bloody bounce board that someone forgot to stuff into their car. If not a bounce board then a tripod, or even the camera itself.

So now I am here in Orange, CA, the home of Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts (just had to use the fou-fou formal name here). I've only been settled for about 4 days and I already feel fairly at home here. It's been great meeting all my fellow grad students. I knew the program was small, but I wasn't expecting it to be so comfortably tight-knit. It's surprisingly similar to what I had in Davis. I met some of the 2nd year students last night at a great party, and they were a lot like a big family--yes, drama happens especially on the set, but the love's still there. This is why I love filmmaking. People on the set understand you--they identify with your quirks, your adamant opinions about movies (even if they don't agree), and you all share in sleep-deprivation, coffee addiction and the penchant for eating dinner at 2am. I'm looking forward to new friendships, new experiences, new knowledge--hell, I'm just looking forward, but at the same time not forgetting the people who have my back.