Our first full day at the Sundance Film Festival! I'm here with my friend Jimmy, a cameraperson and partner in production at Synchronicity Films.
We're staying in a studio apartment at The Canyons, a Park City resort. The bed folds out from the wall and it feels hopelessly literary. The bathroom is sweet—a walk-in shower, washer and dryer, classy architecture. The whole studio (all 3-rooms-in-one of it) radiates balance and wellbeing. We got into town yesterday night, met with friends for dinner, and crashed in the room.
Waking up to rain, Jimmy and I tried to go to the Sundance Headquarters for an early lunch. We pulled up and saw twenty to thirty cars—including two cop cars—lined up to enter the facilities. When cars started turning around, we got the scoop that there had been mudslides. The facilities were closed off for the next hour or two until the roads were clear.
Since we were out, we played around in Orem for a few hours, shopping and getting lunch at a Brazilian BBQ joint. At our first shopping locale, we mostly got necessities: Shaving cream, contact solution, etc. Our second shopping local quickly degenerated into a hot mess. We got buckets of stuff, which we justified by calling "props". To make our justification feel legit, we decided to cap off our afternoon with a sunset photoshoot.
Jimmy knew a fantastic spot to drive up and take some shots—mountains, lake, and setting sun behind us. There was a strip of yellow light partway up the clouds. I was skeptical when Jimmy said if we waited twenty minutes the sky would explode in reds, blues, purples, beaming off the lake, making fog rainbows, and setting the hazy sky on fire. He said it might even be the best sunset he'd seen yet. As a cameraperson, he films a lot of sunsets.
I wasn't sure about waiting twenty minutes. The expression in my photos was getting progressively more menacing because my feet were freezing cold and my lips were getting chapped. The sunset of our lives did happen though. It was the best I'd ever seen, too, with fire behind us and blue and purple looming on the other side, daunting blobs of shining clouds and fog and mountains and rainbows surrounding us, pushing down on us and lifting up to a sky that was cobalt blue. We got pics of it all.
I forgot that I was freezing and that Jimmy was making me stand barefoot in the snow. Last night I confided in him my fear of losing my fingers and toes to frostbite. At the time he said he would tape them back if they fell off. I found it a bad omen that he had purchased three rolls of scotch tape on our necessities run.
On our way back, the mudslide had been cleared so we made a second attempt at Sundance HQ. We sailed right in, and went to The Foundry Grill, the celeb-hotspot we had intended to go to for lunch. The festival being a full four days away, the restaurant was relatively quiet. Lots of children and families—overall a nice, chill vibe. The food was spectacular, service to match. Skiiers and boarders poured down the mountain.
Everything was lit by the full moon, and we walked out the restaurant to watch people disappear up the lifts and appear again at the bottom of the moonlit slope. How we got a sunset like we did and a shining, sparkling moon pouring light over the mountaintops, I have no idea. We definitely did not engender enough Karma to bring it on. 100% appreciated nonetheless.
We're staying in a studio apartment at The Canyons, a Park City resort. The bed folds out from the wall and it feels hopelessly literary. The bathroom is sweet—a walk-in shower, washer and dryer, classy architecture. The whole studio (all 3-rooms-in-one of it) radiates balance and wellbeing. We got into town yesterday night, met with friends for dinner, and crashed in the room.
Waking up to rain, Jimmy and I tried to go to the Sundance Headquarters for an early lunch. We pulled up and saw twenty to thirty cars—including two cop cars—lined up to enter the facilities. When cars started turning around, we got the scoop that there had been mudslides. The facilities were closed off for the next hour or two until the roads were clear.
Since we were out, we played around in Orem for a few hours, shopping and getting lunch at a Brazilian BBQ joint. At our first shopping locale, we mostly got necessities: Shaving cream, contact solution, etc. Our second shopping local quickly degenerated into a hot mess. We got buckets of stuff, which we justified by calling "props". To make our justification feel legit, we decided to cap off our afternoon with a sunset photoshoot.
Jimmy knew a fantastic spot to drive up and take some shots—mountains, lake, and setting sun behind us. There was a strip of yellow light partway up the clouds. I was skeptical when Jimmy said if we waited twenty minutes the sky would explode in reds, blues, purples, beaming off the lake, making fog rainbows, and setting the hazy sky on fire. He said it might even be the best sunset he'd seen yet. As a cameraperson, he films a lot of sunsets.
I wasn't sure about waiting twenty minutes. The expression in my photos was getting progressively more menacing because my feet were freezing cold and my lips were getting chapped. The sunset of our lives did happen though. It was the best I'd ever seen, too, with fire behind us and blue and purple looming on the other side, daunting blobs of shining clouds and fog and mountains and rainbows surrounding us, pushing down on us and lifting up to a sky that was cobalt blue. We got pics of it all.
I forgot that I was freezing and that Jimmy was making me stand barefoot in the snow. Last night I confided in him my fear of losing my fingers and toes to frostbite. At the time he said he would tape them back if they fell off. I found it a bad omen that he had purchased three rolls of scotch tape on our necessities run.
On our way back, the mudslide had been cleared so we made a second attempt at Sundance HQ. We sailed right in, and went to The Foundry Grill, the celeb-hotspot we had intended to go to for lunch. The festival being a full four days away, the restaurant was relatively quiet. Lots of children and families—overall a nice, chill vibe. The food was spectacular, service to match. Skiiers and boarders poured down the mountain.
Everything was lit by the full moon, and we walked out the restaurant to watch people disappear up the lifts and appear again at the bottom of the moonlit slope. How we got a sunset like we did and a shining, sparkling moon pouring light over the mountaintops, I have no idea. We definitely did not engender enough Karma to bring it on. 100% appreciated nonetheless.
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