Getting into it

This post is a combination of yesterday and today. I don’t have much to say because I’m pretty much in classes all day right now, which isn’t very exciting to read about. We started talking about video yesterday. I’m kind of intimidated because we watched examples of videos (all Dan’s, our professor,) and critiqued them. The major elements that were off I could pick up, but the more subtle ones were a LOT harder for me to spot. Cassidy basically told me that once you start editing video for yourself, you pick up on more of other peoples’ mistakes, so that’s a little reassuring. Victoria and I are kind of in the same semi-clueless boat. We had a long lunch break and went to Caffé del Corso for a “lunch meeting.” I don’t think we really got anything done, but the food was great! Following afternoon classes we had a meeting with Gale, our mentor, to talk about our story ideas again and start trying to pin point some things. I think we made progress and just got a little more focus, which is good. Last night for dinner we had a cooking class with John Caputo, which was delicious! It was penne pasta with a ricotta cheese, butter, basil, and garlic “sauce”. Mmmm! Victoria and I stopped by Caffé d’Italia after dinner to ask Romano for an interview, which he readily agreed to. We went to Casa Lapis to find Charlotte after that and just hung out for a while. I had thought about shooting some pictures, but was too tired. I experimented a little with the digital SLRs and Kevin helped me a lot to understand everything with f-stops, shutter speed, aperture, types of focus, etc. Today was…you guessed it…more class. For our afternoon Italian class we got to go outside, though, which was cool! We walked around to some organizations around town that might be good sources for our stories. This afternoon we had an interview with Romano about his garden that went pretty well. I think we got some good information and Victoria seemed happy about it, so that’s good. After the interview we stopped at Caffé di Teatro for a cappuccino and then went to dinner at La Laterna on MU. Woot! Although, Cassidy pointed out that we did pay for these dinners… Anywho, I had spaghetti carbonara, which was kind of salty, but pretty delicious. We also had a surprise dessert of nutella pizza! Yum! After dinner we need to do a film assignment based on the prompt “Mmm…gelato”. Each group member did three shots and we’ll edit them…later this week? I’m not sure. I kinda feel like we have a start on this stuff now, so I’m a little less nervous than I was. It’s really stressful trying to set up interviews when you don’t know whom to interview and you don’t speak the language! Luckily, we knew Romano and he also speaks French, so that was easy to set up. The others are a bit more of a hassle. We’re supposed to have all of the writing drafted by Friday…scary! I think we’re going to try to get more interviews tomorrow and go from there. I am so full right now of pasta, vino, nutella pizza, and gelato! All delicious, but making me sleepy. Bedtime is early tonight so I am ready to go for the rest of this busy week! Ciao!