Joel.Simone

Last night, after finishing my last post, my fever escalated, and I started to have memories of the last time I pushed my self to hard. It was close to this time last year; except the sickness was much stronger, i.e., not just the flu, but pneumonia (I ran a high pace three miles with the onset of the flu, didn’t see it coming). Last night I was rendered helpless enough to where I couldn’t concentrate, so I stared at the wall and just felt everything, very similar to the pneumonia incident. During this demobilized time I had a realization. It was last year, when I was very sick, that I had the initial inspiration for The Doorway. I was sitting in my room, starring at the wall, struggling to breath in addition to battling the intense aches, pains, and chills of the flu. I wasn’t able to watch TV or listen to music; I was only capable of going inward. I stared at the wall, and it became like a movie screen reflecting memories and thoughts before my lucid and struggling eyes and aching mind. It was the next day, in the morning after one of these episodes, I had the thought to integrate The Doorway with Freedom, a previous movie idea of mine. Since then, the The Doorway became a center piece honors project at Las Positas College. It was an interesting trip I took last night.

The fever subsided over night, and I’m doing a lot better today; most importantly, I’m doing my best to pace myself back up to speed. I still haven’t viewed all the footage from the test shoot, but I took some pictures from the camera accident as described in an earlier post, Contrasting Accident. Here is a picture of the parts effected by the camera:

Here is the camera lens, notice the camera hood is no longer mounted; it’s attachments broke from the fall:

And here is a picture of the 35mm lens. Notice the crushed focus ring; the focus ring no longer turns:

Since then, I’ve ordered a new lens on Ebay, set to arrive on Thursday. More good news, I found a solution through Redrock Micro for the vibrating issue with the M2 lens adapter (the black box with the attached lens). Redrock’s customer service is amazing, and they are shipping a new motor today. I am required to do some soldering, totally new to me, but I think I will be fine. Several months ago I upgraded the hard drive to my ibook, and this included the handling of countless screws while totally disassembling my laptop; so I can’t imagine the replacement of the M2 motor to be much more difficult. As for the camcorder lens hood and focus ring, I can keep it together when the entire system is mounted to rods. Otherwise, my camcorder can not be used for independent hand held shots. I was tempted to purchase a used camcorder, but I’m holding off for now. I’m looking forward to putting this behind me, so I can focus on the content of the project.