Carlos stopped by to drop off some stills and video he wants to incorporate into this music video we are doing for the band Nov. 2nd. He wants to get a rough edit together for the wrap party this Saturday. We still have to shoot the band playing. But all the scenes of the narrative have been shot. All four video tapes. Well, I should point out that not every tape is a full hour. One of them I almost lost. It seems that tape number two had some bits of a possible video blog as well as some footage from an audition a month back. I'm usually assiduous in labeling my tapes. I guess I'm slipping. And then there's tape number three which has only 20 minutes of a series of scenes shot out by Mission San Juan. And for some reason I can't get my camera to play it back. I'll have to use some other device to capture onto my computer. Actually, if I had that footage on the computer, I'd gladly edit the sequence where Rosalinda (as our homicide detective) roughs up a drug-addled snitch (played by Carlos) to get a lead on the serial killer (as portrayed by Christopher Dean). But other than those scenes, everything else is on my computer … waiting.
Earlier today, I pulled out a frame and pasted it onto Rosalinda's MySpace page. It's her birthday (Feb 22nd, I believe). The image is a rather glamorous picture for a homicide detective. But the job can't be all leaning on preps and sliding open morgue drawers as next-of-kin reel back in horror. A girl's gotta let loose every so often.
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Alston alerted me to a free weekly film series happening on the UTSA downtown campus Wednesday afternoons. This week and next week they're screening a six-part PBS series on environmentally responsible architecture called “Design: e2.”
“It's in the gallery,” Alston had emailed. “The building on Durango Street.”
Normally I would walk — the campus is maybe 20 minutes away on foot — but I was running late, and also I needed to return some books to the library.
When I got to the arts building, I tracked down the gallery. There were no chairs set up. Clearly this wasn't the right gallery. I wandered around the building, looking for Alston. Over near the elevator, as I turning a corner, I heard a woman shout: “Hey, Erik Bosse.” I wouldn't expect Alston to use both my names. I turned around. It was Lisa Cortez Walden. She was getting off the elevator with a fellow grad student. She invited me out for drinks. (So that's what grad students do? I thought it was just a stale and false stereotype.) She was soon jointed by another friend. I explained that I was here to see a film. She clearly knew her way around the campus, but she couldn't think of where it might be playing. We parted. And as I wandered back toward the gallery I bumped into Alston.
“This is the wrong gallery,” she said straight up, after a quick look around.
We headed across the campus to the architecture building.
The “gallery” was a bleak shell of a room with eight panels of glass doors in the rear. We were early and no one was yet in the room. We peered into the darkness. The glass doors didn't bode well a movie-watching experience, what with the lights from the corridor shining through. But I really couldn't complain about the price.
However, I certainly could complain about the building we were in. It possessed the aesthetic appeal of a russet potato. The drab green linoleum floor had fat abbreviated salmon stripes running the longitude. The florescent tubes overhead hummed louder then the water coolers and they flickered with an urgent desperation. This hallway in which we waited could have better served the ground floor of the School of Euthanasic Science.
The three episodes we watched were quite well done. They discussed buildings one would actually enjoy entering. Brad Pitt narrated the episodes, and although I never gave his speaking voice much thought, he never struck a wrong cord — he can manage to have a strong, neutral voice.
We avoided the tourists restaurants surround the campus, and headed to Tito's Tacos for a leisurely dinner.