Hello all,
Thanks so much for all the personal messages and emails. Sorry I've been slow to respond and not around much lately but the place I've landed only has dial-up (until next Thursday - heh heh).
Last hurricane season we were indeed stranded. We drive a non-highway rated scooter and usually within a couple of hours after a suggested evacuation, all rental cars are claimed, so last year we evacuated locally to a high floor in a high-rise hotel and fortunately nothing happened – gusty winds, very little rain.
This year when we became fully aware of the situation on Saturday morning and when officials were suggesting evacuation, I went to a rental car place and physically waited for a return.
Long story short, we evacuated at 1:00 AM Saturday night / Sunday morning, stayed in Baton Rouge for the night, then decided we needed to drive the next 14 hours to my parents’ farm in Texas (near Denton and Dallas), as there were no hotel rooms until Dallas. We didn’t want to stay in Baton Rouge because while we would likely be safe from physical danger there, I felt 90% sure that Baton Rogue would lose power and we would then be stuck there indefinitely with no electricity while roads were repaired, etc. That’s exactly what happened, so glad we got out of there as well.
Evacuated:
One Me
One GF
One Beagle
Two Cats
One DVX
One Anamorphic Adaptor
One Century 7x wide angle
Wireless and Boom mics
Various filters
Fig Rig and accessories
Bogen tripod
Laptop
External Hard drive
Midi keyboard
DVX User Zombie Film Footage
DVX book and DVD
Hunting Camp DVD
Broken DVD
Sleepover Nightmare DVD
A couple of changes of clothes
We also have 20K of renters insurance and not to many valuables to lose. Items left of sentimental interest include girlfriend’s great-grandmother’s sewing machine, quilts that her various family members made, my posters from various theatrical productions that I either directed, wrote, or produced / directed, along with press clippings from those shows.
Items left behind of DVX user interest include poor man’s lighting kit, Final Cut Studio manuals (have software discs), mic boom pole, extensive library on story theory and screen writing. (Maybe Rush will hook me up -- hint hint)
We were lucky. We don’t have a lot of money because we both have careers in the arts (hence the scooter as only vehicle) but we have access to resources. Others in New Orleans who had equal or lesser resources just couldn’t get out because they were poor and couldn’t get rental cars, or get rapidly dwindling seats on public transit.
We are in the highest part of the highest neighborhood (north end of the French Quarter), and flooding and wind damage will likely be minimal. I cannot imagine that we have not been severely looted at this point however as the French Quarter borders one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans, the Treme. Looters had to have hit our place because: A) most of the people in the French Quarter evacuated; B) we presumably have better stuff than them; C) looting the Quarter is one more way to stick it to whitey (rightfully) for maintaining the status quo and ignoring the disparity of class socio-economics in New Orleans that set them up for this predicament.
The thing that sucks most about this on a personal loss level, is we had a pretty sweet life in NOLA. Cool place in the Quarter, good work, etc.
Home movie link:
http://live-theater.org/la_vie_web.mov
(right click / save as)
I worked 10 – 20 hours a week doing any or all of the following: teaching college, writing narrative content for a software company, acting in television commercials, coaching acting, and directing and sound designing for theatre. The rest of the time I wrote, edited, and produced theatre or film. Now I’m going to strap on a 40 hour a week gig at a Dallas area school for 20K - less money than I made working about 15 hours a week in NOLA. Also in NOLA, I had access to free crew (former/current university students) and an extensive (free) pool of actors due to my theatre background – some of whom had big screen credits. But I know, I know – could be much, much worse, it’s just hard to go back to a 9-5 lifestyle, though I know I am very lucky indeed. I’m in a garage apt, on my parent’s farm (100 plus acres, two dogs, seven donkeys, three painted horses, and two ponds). I even got a grip truck out of the deal. University of North Texas was auctioning some old vehicles and I got an old white van for $1,000 because you gotta drive in the Dallas area, and it’s cheaper than renting a UHaul to haul stuff back to New Orleans when we eventually get to go back. (Too bad I don’t have much to put in the grip truck since my lighting equipment was left in NOLA.)
I heard from the zombie actor in my zombie film via email and he evacuated to Atlanta – after the hurricane however, via “an angel from the German press” as he put it. We shot all of his scenes in New Orleans the week before the hurricane and I hope to finish my zombie project here in Texas as it involves mainly a primary “A” sequence (shot in NOLA with aforementioned actor) and a shorter “B” sequence. We shoot the “B” sequence stuff tomorrow. I hate the fact that I’m working with actors I don’t know at all for the scenes shot in Texas, but c’est la vie.
I should also say, that I know being concerned over finishing a zombie film is very trivial in light of what so many have lost and have to rebuild. But I can't even think about the suffering those people went through ... not yet. Our financial resources are significantly diminished but we have given a little money to relief efforts. Other than that I could sit around and dwell on the fact that my apartment is probably flooded and looted and even if that's not the case, I still can't go back to it until there is power, water, and safe roads ... or I can claim this bit of normalcy as something that is important to me in and of itself and in defiance of the disaster and the upheaval it wrought.
Thanks again,
Jack
Thanks so much for all the personal messages and emails. Sorry I've been slow to respond and not around much lately but the place I've landed only has dial-up (until next Thursday - heh heh).
Last hurricane season we were indeed stranded. We drive a non-highway rated scooter and usually within a couple of hours after a suggested evacuation, all rental cars are claimed, so last year we evacuated locally to a high floor in a high-rise hotel and fortunately nothing happened – gusty winds, very little rain.
This year when we became fully aware of the situation on Saturday morning and when officials were suggesting evacuation, I went to a rental car place and physically waited for a return.
Long story short, we evacuated at 1:00 AM Saturday night / Sunday morning, stayed in Baton Rouge for the night, then decided we needed to drive the next 14 hours to my parents’ farm in Texas (near Denton and Dallas), as there were no hotel rooms until Dallas. We didn’t want to stay in Baton Rouge because while we would likely be safe from physical danger there, I felt 90% sure that Baton Rogue would lose power and we would then be stuck there indefinitely with no electricity while roads were repaired, etc. That’s exactly what happened, so glad we got out of there as well.
Evacuated:
One Me
One GF
One Beagle
Two Cats
One DVX
One Anamorphic Adaptor
One Century 7x wide angle
Wireless and Boom mics
Various filters
Fig Rig and accessories
Bogen tripod
Laptop
External Hard drive
Midi keyboard
DVX User Zombie Film Footage
DVX book and DVD
Hunting Camp DVD
Broken DVD
Sleepover Nightmare DVD
A couple of changes of clothes
We also have 20K of renters insurance and not to many valuables to lose. Items left of sentimental interest include girlfriend’s great-grandmother’s sewing machine, quilts that her various family members made, my posters from various theatrical productions that I either directed, wrote, or produced / directed, along with press clippings from those shows.
Items left behind of DVX user interest include poor man’s lighting kit, Final Cut Studio manuals (have software discs), mic boom pole, extensive library on story theory and screen writing. (Maybe Rush will hook me up -- hint hint)
We were lucky. We don’t have a lot of money because we both have careers in the arts (hence the scooter as only vehicle) but we have access to resources. Others in New Orleans who had equal or lesser resources just couldn’t get out because they were poor and couldn’t get rental cars, or get rapidly dwindling seats on public transit.
We are in the highest part of the highest neighborhood (north end of the French Quarter), and flooding and wind damage will likely be minimal. I cannot imagine that we have not been severely looted at this point however as the French Quarter borders one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans, the Treme. Looters had to have hit our place because: A) most of the people in the French Quarter evacuated; B) we presumably have better stuff than them; C) looting the Quarter is one more way to stick it to whitey (rightfully) for maintaining the status quo and ignoring the disparity of class socio-economics in New Orleans that set them up for this predicament.
The thing that sucks most about this on a personal loss level, is we had a pretty sweet life in NOLA. Cool place in the Quarter, good work, etc.
Home movie link:
http://live-theater.org/la_vie_web.mov
(right click / save as)
I worked 10 – 20 hours a week doing any or all of the following: teaching college, writing narrative content for a software company, acting in television commercials, coaching acting, and directing and sound designing for theatre. The rest of the time I wrote, edited, and produced theatre or film. Now I’m going to strap on a 40 hour a week gig at a Dallas area school for 20K - less money than I made working about 15 hours a week in NOLA. Also in NOLA, I had access to free crew (former/current university students) and an extensive (free) pool of actors due to my theatre background – some of whom had big screen credits. But I know, I know – could be much, much worse, it’s just hard to go back to a 9-5 lifestyle, though I know I am very lucky indeed. I’m in a garage apt, on my parent’s farm (100 plus acres, two dogs, seven donkeys, three painted horses, and two ponds). I even got a grip truck out of the deal. University of North Texas was auctioning some old vehicles and I got an old white van for $1,000 because you gotta drive in the Dallas area, and it’s cheaper than renting a UHaul to haul stuff back to New Orleans when we eventually get to go back. (Too bad I don’t have much to put in the grip truck since my lighting equipment was left in NOLA.)
I heard from the zombie actor in my zombie film via email and he evacuated to Atlanta – after the hurricane however, via “an angel from the German press” as he put it. We shot all of his scenes in New Orleans the week before the hurricane and I hope to finish my zombie project here in Texas as it involves mainly a primary “A” sequence (shot in NOLA with aforementioned actor) and a shorter “B” sequence. We shoot the “B” sequence stuff tomorrow. I hate the fact that I’m working with actors I don’t know at all for the scenes shot in Texas, but c’est la vie.
I should also say, that I know being concerned over finishing a zombie film is very trivial in light of what so many have lost and have to rebuild. But I can't even think about the suffering those people went through ... not yet. Our financial resources are significantly diminished but we have given a little money to relief efforts. Other than that I could sit around and dwell on the fact that my apartment is probably flooded and looted and even if that's not the case, I still can't go back to it until there is power, water, and safe roads ... or I can claim this bit of normalcy as something that is important to me in and of itself and in defiance of the disaster and the upheaval it wrought.
Thanks again,
Jack
