What I did this weekend

Photographer: Francesco Marino

This weekend was very busy for me and a bit tiring. I’ve been taking an online course with Gary Goldstein titled Scaling the Wall of Hollywood. There are about 2 dozen or so people in our group. So on Thursday, when Gary asked those of us living in Los Angeles if we were interested in taking a workshop at the Writers Guild on how to make a short film, most of us dropped everything we had planned earlier and jumped at the opportunity. I know what you’re thinking…That I’m a novelist; why would I be taking a course in film. But it’s all tied in. Many authors want to promote their books to Hollywood and so the more we all learn about the industry the better. So, here I was, the only person in the group who had never written a script or had ever made a short film.

But I’m glad I did it because I learned a lot. Basically, Gary’s course which I will be part of for the next 7 weeks and the workshop I took were all teaching the mistakes many make when they write a script or direct a short film. So, Saturday was an information overload day for me and I was really exhausted, especially since I have no film background and I really needed to focus in order to grasp all the great information. By the time I got home, all I wanted to do was to have dinner, watch a little TV and sleep.

My day on Sunday was more relaxing. It was my friend’s birthday and I had invited her to have brunch at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, about a 45-minute ride from Los Angeles. Afterwords, we went to the Aquarium in downtown Long Beach and later walked around for an hour. It was late by the time we got back. Here are a few pictures I took with my iPhone while there. I hope you’ll enjoy them.