Tommy Collison

I’ve always been a fiercely inquisitive person, which is totally something which has gotten me into trouble with people before. It seems to grate with them — something I don’t get. What’s seemingly considered cute in children becomes a ‘very annoying trait’ awfully quickly. What’s wrong with wondering?

Something, apparently.

I went to Boston in November, to visit John and Patrick. It was my first time traveling alone, although my only real periods alone were the airports. Still, it was a big leap in independence and more than one person asked me if I was nervous.

I wasn’t in the slightest. I was filled with excitement at the prospect of this new experience. I’m sure I could’ve found things to be nervous about — but what a fantastic waste of energy that would have been.

Mom briefly suggested taking a taxi to the café where I’d be meeting John and Patrick but where’s the fun in that? Taxis here are no different to taxis in Boston — I’d have gotten inside, stuck headphones in and let the journey pass in a haze of motor way signs and The Dresden Dolls. That would’ve been boring.

On a slightly related note, I’m currently working on a film. Nothing of Spielberg proportions (yet) but just something thrown together in iMovie based on that journey to Boston. It’s a composite of music, videos I shot while there and photos I took.

I love working on making things work for me.

I knew how the opening would be. First shot is a photo, zoomed in so far you can’t quite make out what it’s of. It pans out and you can see it’s the entire cast of RENT. Slowly dissolve to black and the words “Boston: November 2009″ appear. All this is accompanied by a few bars of one of my favourite songs.

Sounds easy enough, but isn’t. Drag the photo in, apply the zoom effect, easy enough. Add the title card and caption, again, not difficult. It’s the song that provides the difficulty. It’s only a 10 second segment I’m after, so we open it in QuickTime to trim it down either side until it’s just right. But, if we save it and try and drag that into iMovie, it won’t be recognized because QuickTime’s saved it in a different format. We’ve got to drag that new file into Garageband and convert it to an MP3 and then drag it into iMovie.

Doesn’t seem so simple now, does it? Still, this is the sort of thing I love. Interacting with computers and making them work for me. Think Dr. Dolittle with less fur.