My Summer

After a hiatus in the US my summer is returning to its usual path. Since 2009 I have spent my summer holidays working at university for Clearing. Although I enjoy working for Clearing at the university, A-Level Day can be a very intense time with understandably stressed callers and last year I found myself looking forward to the start of the term for a change of pace.

I had a lovely holiday; I spent two weeks in Orlando and one in New York, being as touristy as possible in both locations. I particularly enjoyed The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios and also Hollywood Studios in Disney World. The shops at Downtown Disney are very impressive, including a Lego shop with a life size Loch Ness monster in the river outside (not that the size of the Loch Ness monster has been definitively decided)!

New York was also impressive and in just four days we covered the Statue of liberty, Ellis Island, The Rockefeller Centre, The Empire State building, Fifth Avenue, New York Library, Times Square, a Sex and the City tour and a showing of The Lion King. Not to forget the fantastic Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Met and the Harry Potter prop exhibition at Discovery: Times Square. A very enjoyable part was the Whole Food market at the bottom of the Time Warner building.

By my exploits on holiday you may have picked up that I quite like Harry Potter. I did go and see the last film last Friday. I am terrible and trying to critique Harry Potter films because I am a fan of the books, a film is never as good if you have read the book. Let us just say it was good and leave it at that. In terms of cinema I am looking forward to Cars 2 because I revel in anything Pixar and Captain America, because I saw Thor and it was much better than I expected.

Other than getting back into the swing of Clearing my other current occupation is taking in my reading list for next year. All of the books are interesting but some such as The Art of the Incredibles are particularly a pleasure with lots of concept art and a fold out colour script. I hope I will have enough information in my head by September to make the most of my last year at uni!

Holiday?

My second year of university is finally and completely over. Big sigh. So naturally I have bought a reading list book for my first essay next year and started thinking about how best to prepare. I will also spend my summer working for the university in Clearing. It will be my third summer spent doing this but at the moment university entry changes so much that it has never been boring. It is a chance to get really good work experience dealing with people in stressed situations and an environment where information is rapidly changing.

I am looking forward to having a holiday. However I am concerned that my wonderful plans will be scuppered by the ash cloud like so many flights were a few months ago. Big kid that I am, I am extremely excited about doing the theme park thing in Orlando then the sightseeing thing in New York. I have been to the USA once before but only on a jaunt around the Mid-West, the biggest stop being Chicago.

While I am out in Orlando I will probably see a NBA finals game. Both the two playoff rounds and the conference championships have taken place. The Dallas Mavericks won the Western conference and the Miami Heat won the Eastern conference so they will now go head to head for the NBA Championship.

The Marathon I have mentioned a few times is now over. Ouch. There are lovely views on the course in Edinburgh and lots of friendly people. I had never been to Edinburgh before (Aberdeen being my Scottish city of choice) and can confirm like so many others before me that it is very lovely. There is still time to support the British Heart Foundation at www.justgiving.com/Emily-Luff. I promise that’s the last time I will write that. Many thanks for the great generosity and help I have received from all of those who have supported me.

End of Term

Term is winding down now; I have just come out of the other side of two crazy coursework weeks. By that I mean nights with no sleep, computers having technical faults and too much running around. In my previous blog I mentioned the NBA playoffs; the second round has started now, so there are only four teams left in each conference. Recently Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls (the same team as Michael Jordan) won Most Valuable Player and their coach Tom Thibadeou got Coach of the Year.

I don’t know so much about comics but my sister and boyfriend do, so he was very excited when my sister bought us all preview tickets to see Thor. If you haven’t heard of him apart from that he has a movie out, Thor is the Norse God of thunder that is friends with characters like the incredible Hulk, Iron Man and Captain America. This film introduces him, his hammer, the home of the Nordic gods Asgard and his naughty brother Loki who it looks like might feature in more super hero marvel movies to come. It’s a nicely put together film by director Kenneth Brannagh and its good fun with some funny moments; you don’t have to know things about the stories to appreciate it. However if you do have a penchant for a comic books you might not notice the billboard or know that Jeremy Renner’s character with a bow and arrow is Hawkeye a member of the upcoming Avengers movie.

At this time of the year I like looking forward to the summer and also making sure I am ready and prepared for what next year will bring. But at the moment I am still thinking about immediate pressures as it is not all over, I still have the marathon to come. So for the last time I will say, pretty please, every little helps at www.justgiving.com/Emily-Luff. Also, many thanks to Bryony who helped me with my fundraising, by organising a cake sale at the Bocking Mayday fair.

The Prelude to May Madness

I am sure that I have never had so much to be doing in my life before. A weekend with no plans seems like strange and rare treat these days. I am looking forward to the summer holidays! The significant factors in my life at the moment are probably finishing all my end of term coursework, running Edinburgh Marathon and the start of the NBA playoffs. Why NBA? Because my boyfriend talks about it a fair amount of the time.
For those who are not versed in the language of basketball (I only learnt this recently). The regular season has just finished so all 30 teams in the National Basketball Association (29 in the US and 1 in Canada) have just finished playing 82 games each. How many they have won out of 82 dictates how good their record is. The teams are split into the eastern and western conferences. So the teams with the top eight records in the east and the top eight records in the west go through to the playoffs. This is where each team versus another playoff team in their conference, and plays a series where they have to get the best of seven games to go through to the next round. This happens until we have an eastern and a western conference champion, who go against each other to make the world champion. At the moment we are supporting the Chicago Bulls, go Derrick Rose! MVP (Most valuable player)! MVP!

More importantly, I have been to the cinema since my last blog, but I saw ‘Your Highness’. It’s silly, and not good hearted silly like a Will Ferrell film. Some parts are quite disgusting, although it had some good and funny elements my main feeling on leaving the cinema was slight nausea. So I will not be seeing that one again but I am looking forward to Rio, when I get spare couple of hours.

Another year...

I cannot believe that it is nearly the end of the academic year again. Three years sounds like a long time when you start a degree but you are so busy that it just flies by. I have nearly finished my second year now. Only one more year of university and I will then have to face the big bad world all by myself. This is something that will be wonderful if I find employment but not so much fun if I don’t and just wish my degree was one year longer.

My latest 3D cinema expedition was to see Rango. It is one of those films that you are not sure whether you like it or not because it is so different. As with most 3D animations you expect it to be a child friendly morality tale of some sort. In fact Rango is just a western but done in beautiful 3D animation with animals as characters. So if you like a western it is very much recommended but if you want something to take your young child to, not so much.

The line-up for v festival has been announced, which is very exciting. I have never been to a big music festival before. The only festival I have been to was the Hop Farm Festival last year which I was working at. Many people have told me discouraging facts about horrible toilets, large queues and bottles of urine. However I will be reassured that my parent’s house is within walking distance so I can have a shower and a sleep there if it all gets too much.

We had an Open Day at the university this Saturday just gone; I always know this means a busy day for me. At the Greenwich campus was the best turn out I have seen so far in my experience of the university open days. I had a very large tour group all to myself and got to speak to lots of different people about the best way to make their way around the open day. I hope everybody who came got the information they wanted and saw what they wanted to see!

Extra Curricular Activities

I hope you have had a nice week or two. I have been to see the band Lifehouse, most people I mention them to don’t seem to have heard of them. They have songs on the Shrek soundtrack and their song ‘You and Me’ was the most popular wedding song of 2008. So give them a go and you might be surprised. I had never been to The Roundhouse in Camden before, it is a very nice venue with a very similar layout to the Indigo O2 except slightly larger.

I started a course in Autodesk’s Maya last week. I study Autodesk 3DS Max in university, but although that gives us the concepts common to all 3D software Maya is much more commonly used for film and TV whereas 3DS Max more for games. They don’t have time to teach you everything at university, if you have the time management skills to fit it in, it can be good to do a short course alongside. It is just a way to add extra strings to your bow and make you more employable whilst still focussing on your area of interest.

I must have a little 3D geek out, I saw Gnomeo and Juliet, which had some very nice textures that almost made it look stop motion for a couple of short moments. I particularly liked the small Montague bunnies who clicked their ears together. It is a production that went through quite a lot being shut down twice before finally being made.

Time for a mini boast, I had a bit of a coursework breakdown at the end of last year and the beginning of this one. I also said that it was very important to keep ahead of yourself and try to be ready to hand in early. For the first time it is not just do as I say, it is also do as I do. I have nearly finished my coursework a week early (and I have backed it up as well).

BAFTAs and Feeling the Burn

I have been writing a lot on the topic of cinema recently, and here I go again. I cannot help I am a animation and cinematography student on top of visiting the cinema being one of my favourite things to do. So I have finally seen the Kings Speech and it is very good, as I am sure many people are aware. I found it to be surprisingly funny, the air of light heartedness meaning that this film was not a heavy watch like it’s fellow nominee Black Swan.
I watched the whole of the BAFTA coverage the other day. I know they said The Kings Speech would win everything but it really did win every single thing it was nominated for. My special interest area was of course the animation; Toy Story 3 pipped the wonderful How to Train Your Dragon and my newest DVD Despicable Me to the post. I was pleased to see that The Eagleman Stag won the short animation prize as I had seen it as a finalist at the Canterbury Animation Festival in October (where it did not actually win anything, but it’s fellow BAFTA nominees did).

Off the topic of film I had a marathon training day last Saturday. As I have previously mentioned I am going to be running the Edinburgh Marathon on May 22nd for the British Heart Foundation. I spent the whole of Saturday, running, stretching and getting many pieces of good advice on everything from fundraising to injury prevention to marathon etiquette. I now have a laid out plan to organise what has been my adhoc collection of four mile jogs, cross training and badminton sessions that I have been calling my training. Finally, last but not least do not forget www.justgiving.com/Emily-Luff for some support, anything is appreciated.