2009 in review!

Here goes for the epic review of the year 2009!

January--April: I, with a mostly-highschool-aged cast and crew from C-town filmed the epic movie 'Road to Freedom'. I wrote the script in the fall of '08, but we wound up adjusting lines down to the last shoot :P
Historical costumes (Revolutionary War-era), an elaborate plot, lots of sets, and other such things made this truly a 'life-work', hehe.

Huge amounts of good times, and memories of unrestrained hoots of laughter as actors tried to remember their lines, the oar snapped, the lamp went up in a blaze of light, the camera was forgotten, the candles burned down over many-hour shoots, people forwent important engagements in order to get to the shoot, the hapless boom-rigger let the microphone droop into the actor's face, the long-suffering actors 'died' again and again as the Director grew ever pickier, the actress tried to remember which costume she ought to be wearing, the cameraman climbed on top of a podium with the $1000 camera to get the best shot, the dancers rehearsed their dances (to their own humming, sometimes), people dragged themselves to shoots whilst on the verge of death, the cast and crew battled rain, cold and hail (and irritating sun) to film the outdoor shoots, actors spilt root-beer over their costumes ("I thought it was EMPTY!"), and other pleasing little adventures occurred.

February: half the cast including myself came down with flu, we filmed the first major scenes of the movie, I 'pulled a Bethie' and added in a 24-hour fast-film competition with the local film festival, and participated in robotics competition (über-geek-out).

May 1st: we filmed the ball scene for the movie, which involved about a dozen extras in addition to most of the cast and several crew members. As the Director (me) was one of the dancers, another facet of interest was added to the few days of craziness in preparation for the epic scene.
The scene took seven or eight hours to film, although most of the cast peeled off earlier than that: the insane crew of about six people gave a standing ovation to each of the others as they left......Without aid of caffeine, in fact on the effects of adrenaline only, I managed to bounce with energy throughout the whole grueling shoot. We wound up with a group hug and (at least on my part) a profound sense of 'freedom!" hehe.

I finished up editing in May, and on June 6th about a hundred people were treated to the world premiere of Road to Freedom.

Middle of June: I became part of the blogging world!!

At the end of June we went off on our road trip to Montana and Wyoming, coinciding with my 'style change' to Western.
Various incidents on this trip have been posted about at length here on the blog, for your reading enjoyment :)


Of course we have a few ongoing things, like folk dance, 4-H, and the continuing Education Saga. In September (two days after school starting), I registered at the local high school for a few classes, to the eternal surprise of the die-hard homeschooling part of me.

At the end of the summer I embarked on yet another theatre business project: 'Two Top Hats and a Spy', as written by my compatriots. Rehearsals for that took all the fall through Nov. 21st. It was my first time being director of a theatre production rather than a film, hehe. We produced a very nice show positively imbued with 1930s atmosphere.

In November I was crazy enough to participate in National Novel Writing Month: 50,000 words in 30 days. Note: do not attempt to do NaNo in the same month that you have a show! It tends towards insanity. I got within about a thousand words of my goal: my stats page showed an exponential growth in the last few days of the month: I pulled a few all nighters (46 hours without sleep, I do believe). A snapshot of me at the end of November would feature me tapping madly at laptop as 1930s French swing music played on iTunes (a holdover from Top Hats).

In December, with my life returning to sanity, I decided to go for the gusto and add in another class at CHS: Advanced Algebra, in hopes of being able to transfer to College Algebra by the next semester. The catch being that I had missed 3/4 of the semester-long class! This resulted in some classic geek-out moments, like a few days when I was trying to work through the math book (to catch up) at the rate of four hours a day.

I also auditioned for Romeo and Juliet at C, and got a part as a dancer in the ball scene. Plans to participate in robotics in between rehearsals are still looming large for the new year.

Somewhere in the fall I decided that computer programming would be a good thing to acquire, and promptly got a few imposing volumes out from the library. Have not gotten very far with that, but programming remains one of my favorite hobbies.

The second style change came (subtly) in the fall, and Bethie now sports a rather darker image with overtones of extreme geekery. Trench coat and lots of important stuff in pockets.



Ongoing projects include trying ever harder to make people laugh, attempting to become still more geeky, mostly failing to rendezvous with buddies, and taking pride in keeping everyone guessing about what is actually going on in my head.