thursday

min, tim, and merlijn working in the salle d'animation on their sequence. editing footage down to manageable soundbytes and then coming up with a graphic look to interpret the audio...

reviewing the interviews and watching our daily interactions, it feels like the best moments occur when we're working together or otherwise not focused on presenting ourselves. stores close at inconvenient hours and we get frustrated, french village streets resemble untrained snake trails, you have to weigh your vegetables yourself and put a price sticker on them (if you bring them to the cash register without having done this, you have to go back and do it, often)...

at what point should you kiss someone on the cheeks? after shaking hands and meeting for the first time? should you address them with the formal "vous" or the familiar "tu"? I met high school teachers yesterday. emmanuelle is a friend of claire's, and so because of the friend connection, "tu" seemed a natural thing. pascal, another instructor at Lycée Charles Coulomb, squeaked in a "tu" while I was talking to him, which permitted a reciprocal "tu" during the course of the conversation, even though there was no intermediary to help justify this familiarity. the last instructor was a bit more intimidating for me - the colleague of the colleague of the friend - I decided to opt for "vous" while interviewing her. the fact of the distance in terms of her knowledge of and participation in our project, combined with a personal energy that encouraged respect, kept things on a formal level.

tim expostulating at lunch, merlijn listening. it's interesting watching everyone interact. james and tim are verbally unafraid, and very eager to engage. merlijn speaks english very well, but is still at a bit of a disadvantage, faced with native speakers.

 2012 workshop alum nicolas savoye came in for a surprise visit - he and classmate (and fellow '12 workshop alum Audrey Seh) are finishing up their final projects, just about to graduate from EESI. Nicolas is working on a graphic novel, Audrey on an interactive piece made in Dreamweaver.

seeing a student two years on, without any time in between, you see a change that's not possible to capture if you see them regularly. nicolas seemed more self-assured, more confident than before (although he did pull a face at the end anyway, just for old times' sake, I imagine. his project looks polished, and he spoke about needing to create a blog in order to have a professional online space to present his artwork, which currently just resides on facebook.