What a Weekend
The title says it all.
I’ve got two problems. First, I am by nature a lazy person. Second, after working all week I REALLY don’t want to do anything on the weekend. Left to my own devices I would spend all my time sitting around, playing video games, reading comics, watching movies, and eating pizza until I died of laziness. The only reason I do anything is because I have an unexplainable interest in martial arts and I feel bad when I sit around and don’t do anything. Because of this I usually manage to force myself to do something on the weekend. And this past weekend I did a lot.
Photo by 仁义咏春
It started right away. I normally give myself Friday evening to do nothing but last Friday was wing chun test day. So I went to class Friday instead of Wednesday (my normal wing chun day) for testing. Test day isn’t too strenuous because a lot of it is spent sitting and watching the other students test. But it still meant I wasn’t on the couch watching TV.
Rey Mafan and I don’t get along too well
Then we rolled right into Saturday. Lewis was in Shenzhen on Saturday and SJ was free to film which meant we would film our second fight fight video (check out the first one here). I would normally sleep in Saturday but I was up earlier for the fight. We spent a couple of hours at the park filming that. I always hope to get filming done fast but I’m not particularly good at explaining the shots I want so it always takes longer than expected. Then after getting all the footage from SJ Lewis had other matters to attend to and SJ and I went for late lunch. After eating and filming one last scene for the first fight Lewis and I did we decided to go see Godzilla vs Kong. Neither lunch or going to the movies is particularly difficult but I had to wear pants and go outside for both. All of that took up pretty much the entire day.
I look super pro in this shot by @ok_klymenko
Then was Sunday. After trying to catch up on some sleep I had lunch then Max and I went for some coffee and then it was off to Shekou to film another video. This one was a step up from what I’m used to doing though. I’m no videographer so my equipment is limited to a camera and a mic and I make the (not great) storyboard and the (also not great) script. But at the New Hope Short Film Festival back in 2019 I met Anton, who is a videographer, and we had toyed with the idea of doing an action short. We didn’t manage to get it off the ground until earlier this year and Sunday we shot it. He knows what he’s doing. A camera mount, lights, a mic on a big stick, a crew. It was an absolute blast to film and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Unfortunately Shekou is pretty far from where I live and I still had to get home and get dinner after we finished up at like 11:30. That, combined with how busy the rest of the weekend was and having to work the next morning has made the beginning of this week VERY difficult. I had 5 coffees on Monday…
So this week is going to be a drag, and this weekend I’ll probably take some extra time to myself (plus it’s a long weekend) but do I regret having such a busy weekend? Not at all. Getting to film so much was a blessing that I’m trying not to take for granted.
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