making a studio

Darren's week 2 class really inspired me to give lighting a shot. I was scared! Pro lighting gear is expensive, and for people who know what they're doing! But then I realised, I've studied this all before, I understand it, I just have to begin experimenting and putting it into practice... otherwise what's the point. But then the issue of location dampened my excitement. I'd heard on the grapevine there's a couple of studio's on campus, one somewhere near architecture, and another somewhere else for the video art kids. Oh, and a bluescreen 'downstairs'. Before I could be bothered to put the peices together, Sharna told me how she was setting up a miniature studio in her shed. Brilliant. I have a double garage at home, no cars occupying it, because its a disaster storage zone.

Well it was time for me to do some ritualistic renovations. I needed a new workspace anyway.

The garage was littered with piles of boxes and miscellaneous junk, with a bit of space for sitting and cigarette smoking. I basically just moved it all to the left of the room, stacked everything to the roof, and threw some rubbish out. I did a lot of sweeping, eventually mopping and vaccuuming too.

I begun painting the plasterboard that covers most of two adjacent walls, and the ceiling... but then my paint ran out as had my funds. Luckily, the paint fairy visited me at RMIT and I was stocked up again. It's funny though how much pastels can appear ceiling white in a dark alleyway at four in the morning. The closest I had was something I would describe as 'institution/school white', aka grey. Maybe blue grey. But close enough to white for now. After all that hard work I realised I would need to seal the floor. Concrete dust was up my nose and I wanted an end to it. You should really apply it with spray, but while I still had my motivation on the best I could do was use the roller I'd just finished the walls with. Section by section, the opacity waned, the sealer ran low. It looks pretty bad but hopefully everyone that doesn't get me will just assume I was going for some kind of artistic aesthetic.

It was a big job. It took me several weeks, and it sometimes felt like it wasn't meant to be. The lowest point was the day I discovered the monster spiders. I'd encountered a few before this point, even a redback, but I have never seen anything like this scary mother. (Yeah, they alwasy had millions of babies along for the ride). I made my mum kill it. She had to use a shovel. It was quite possibly the scariest moment of my life since my teen ouija board days. I really have to remember to 'bomb' this place at some stage, I've now encountered three of these beasts and its not fun.

Anyway, all I really need to do now is get a ladder and finish cutting in the cornices and get some more white sheets to hide the ugly wall of junk.
Oh I'll also need some tools such as a desktop computer for my big computer desk, and some lighting and backdrop stuff would help... you know, the basics.