Capoeira Teaching Blog

Most of my posts from now on will primarily be on my other blog, which relates to my experiences in teaching capoeira. If the RSS feed works, I'll do that. If not, I'll try and copy a link to any recent posts here.

Capoeira: An Assistant Instructor's Perspective


--D

A Little Story

This will be well-edited to protect people, of course.

A group of friends and I were working on a project outside at their house, and for some reason, a couple of people started talking about names that work for boys and girls.  Then one of the people, a mother of one of my friends, just chimes in with "I give all my miscarries unisex names because I never know if they are a boy or a girl."

...

"I always like to pretend what they'd be like as a boy or a girl."

Honest to god, my only reaction was to say out loud, "Yeah, that's...um...yeah."

I was waiting for a moment for that woman to say something completely off the wall and there you go.  That kind of killed the mood for me that afternoon.  I was fine with the rain, but jesus.

--D

Even more pictures from "Boxes"

I might have been lazy and double posted some.  Call me on it, please.

-D

Beard dream

It's not easy for some people to remember all of what they dream.  Usually it's easier to remember important snippets of information or just a general description of the events, glossing over the weird shit that makes the dream ever more charming.  

I thought I'd bullet the various dream situations I've had recently.  My dreams have become more vivid and easier to remember since graduation, so the lack of stuff on my mind must be the cause of these images.

• One dream involved the actors I was in company with freshman year of college meeting up at some sort of reunion/concert that happened to be a reality show.  I don't watch those shows, so this one was fucking weird.
• Last night, before I woke up, I dreamt I had a beard that was thick from sideburn to sideburn.  It was short, not all Alan Moore long, but it was quite thick.  
• Another involved some sort of cowboy-like riding of a whale.

That's about it really.  I hope to begin lucid dreaming someday, which should be fun.  I want to explore Arcadia!

--D

More Pictures from the set of "Boxes"

"Boxes"

So here I am, slightly sore and a little bit rested after a 7 hour night shoot for the short film "Boxes." All my stuff is done, so I don't have to come in for night two, but I thought I'd blog the experience for my particular section.


"Boxes" involved five shoppers fighting over the contents of a series of boxes in a small store. There's the cashier, played by my good friend, Robert Linden.

Here he is getting some food in the break room and being a badass behind the counter in between shots.  He had to be there most of the night, from 7pm to roughly 2-3am.  Lucky bastard, all he had to do was sit around and look cool.

Shopper 1 (Stan) and Shopper 2 (Simone) were finishing up their scene together, which is the first kill. It involved a pretty gunshot to the head of Stan, who is playing a blind man.  Here's video of the shot itself (keep track of a chunk of gore).

Next came my interaction with Simone's character, who I stab in the back with a nice little knife (it's in the first picture).

Here's the awesome effects guy attaching the blade to her back.

At midnight, both Stan and Simone had to take off, and it was good that they both finished their parts right at the stroke of.  Next came the fight between Shopper Four (Jamie/James) and myself. Here's before the carnage.

We shot a few wide-angle master shots of the fight, sans blood/injuries of course.  Those came with the sub-masters we shot once we ran through the fight for the camera a couple of times.  James was really wailing on my back during the tackle, which got some worried questions from the crew, combined with a bit of "that was cool" subtext.  Here's the fight rehearsal we had on Tuesday to give you an idea of what we were up to.

Slowly, but surely, we got through the fight one section at a time.  The make-up effects were brutal-looking and this fight was pretty damn fun to film.

We finished all of my stuff (and everything for the night) an hour early, so it was time for all of us to head home.  Frankly, this was both tiring as fuck and fun as hell.  I've uploaded some other photos of the shoot to my Tumblr account, so check those out.  

Once I get a copy of the short, I'll be sure to post it here.  Time for a late breakfast.

--D

Yeah, Tumblr

That place isn't posting the entirety of my blog entries and is cutting them off early. Since this entry should be up on there soon, here's a link to this blog.


Longer entries shall come later. Gonna go do some fighting, thrice in one afternoon! I feel so chivalrous.


--D