Jolly Old London

The London shoot for The Year Without a Summer wrapped this morning, to the relief of a lot of sleepy people.  Overall it was a fantastic success…with practically no rough patches.  Arriving in London, the weather is so refreshing that it completely outweighs any negative effects sleep deprivation might have.  I’m basking in it while I can.  Our hotel is situated right next to the Thames, across from Parliament (Thanks Theresa M.) and the walk is beautiful…even when it’s raining on you.

Here’s some photos of the area around the hotel:

Rainbow over London after the rain

Parliament

The Garden History Museum across the street from the hotel

Connections

Sorry I haven’t blogged. Filming this project has required all our total concentration and focus every day and night, with little energy leftover to do anything except go to sleep immediately in our hotel at night. Today we filmed 9.5 hours. Yesterday we filmed 14 hours. You get the picture.

I make no apologies for awful transitions, so speaking of pictures… here are a few.

World Tour ’08

Wilson and I left yesterday (Thursday) for a quick 19-day trip around the globe. Here’s a photo of us leaving the Austin airport with all of our luggage. You’ll notice my suitcase is in close competition with our Pelican case, which is usually the biggest piece of equipment/luggage we take on any shoot. I’m thinking I may have overpacked a bit.

Bon Voyage

Anne Can’t Pack Light

Why are we traveling around the world, you ask? Well, we’re extremely lucky to be working with our long-time partner, the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF), on an exciting project. They invited us to help research the state/perception of cancer internationally. To accomplish this, we’ll be doing man-on-the-street interviews as well as scheduled interviews with cancer survivors, healthcare providers, and non-profit leaders in each city. Claire is joining us from the LAF.

Here’s our itinerary. My plan is to post stories, photos and video along the way. We hope you’ll  join us on this grand adventure.
– Tokyo, Japan: April 25th – 29th
– Trivandrum, India: April 29th – May 3rd
– Cape Town, South Africa: May 3rd – 7th
– Rome, Italy: May 8th – 11th

Day 1 & 2: Our flight from Austin to Dallas went without a hitch. Once we got to Dallas, our flight to Tokyo was delayed 5 hours. So, we sat in the airport and entertained ourselves with trashy magazines. We arrived in Tokyo at 8pm (instead of 3pm) after a short 13-hour flight and made it to the hotel by 11:45pm – wiped out. We’re 14 hours ahead of Austin so that was 9:45am Austin-time. I think I got about three hours of sleep on the flight. I really hope my body learns to sleep sitting up over the course of this trip. Wilson got more than I did but Claire was the clear winner coming in at eight hours of sleep. Nice one, Claire. 

Day 3: It’s Saturday and we’re having lunch with Kenichi, our host at the Japan Wellness Center. We’ll be spending Monday with them but he’s graciously offered to take us on a tour of Tokyo today. We’re really excited and will be shooting some b-roll throughout the day. I’ll try to post some photos of Tokyo when we get back to the hotel.