So you want to know how a 24 hours slice of my life looks like ? Warning, full disclosure ahead !

An Apple a day keeps the Doctor away

We have a somewhat similar idiom in France. Poorly translated in english, it says “A glass of wine a day, keeps the Cancer away”. Notice the cultural differences. First we are alcoholics and wine producers, so we self promote our drinking habits. Secondly, we have a universal medicare plan so we can go to the doctor almost for free, nothing to be scared of. Lastly we do get Cancer too despite the healthy food.

As I don’t drink wine, I tend to stay in line with your original idom. First thing I do in the morning is grab my iPad and/or iPhone, and it works. Never been at the doctor’s office since I bought my very first iDevice.

Back on topic, I wake up too early in the morning. Not complaining, I’m doing it by design. First thing I do after shutting down my iAlarm clock, is read the news on Google News (for real news) and then on Flipboard (for even more real and you don’t even know how interesting news: Geeky stuff). While on my iPad, I remotely power on my “big” computer, so it can resume on mining those precious Bitcoins. Yeah, virtual money on my virtual wallet that costs me real money from my real wallet. After a month, I already mined 2 BTC, which grow my wealth by roughly $30, downed to 2€ with the actual convertion rate. For a $2000 hardware invest and a $60 monthly electricity bill, it’s totally worth it. Once I’m done with all this share of info, time to get up and check if every parisian monument is still in place. That’s the benefit of having a clear 180° view on Paris. I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower destroyed so many times in Hollywood flicks, it would be a shame not to see it in real life. By the way, if you’re a terrorist planning on crushing it, please, do give me a 24 hours prior notice so I can shoot it and sell the pictures to news corporations.

A Nespresso ? What else.

Speaking of power, I too need to boot in the morning. I wait for Georges to bring me a delicious cup of Nespresso branded coffee. Best coffee on earth, and best investment ever ! I make more money buying thoses expensive capsules than mining bitcoins. Want to know the secret ? Just have a look at the aluminium trade rate. Instead of piling them up, I’m copying infamous street artist Space Invaders in my living room with oldschool sprite mozaïc made from my used capsules. 16 flavors, 16 colors, it can’t just be a coïncidence. Coffee time is meant to give me enough time to browse my whole Twitter timeline.

All juiced up, I then go on a dailymotion, and I’m not talking about the french copycat of Youtube (And seriously, they are still wondering why they don’t have much audience in english speaking countries. Someone have to tell them), and take a well deserved shower. I select a geeky colored shirt (La Fraise, before it was sold), and an assorted socks pair (Archiduchesse), and I’m set.

The road ahead

Time to speed-up to get my train on schedule. 25 minutes. Perfect timing to watch a South Park or a Big Bang Theory episode on my iPad. 10 minutes walk, 1.1 kilometers according to Runkeeper, and I’m finally at the office. It’s time to do some awesome After Effects stuff until the lunch break. Lunch break is the perfect time to experiment even cooler stuff in AE or with Third Party Plugin. But sometime, we have no time. When we are nearing deadlines, lunch breaks can be exhausting: 2 hours of online playing Team Fortress 2 or trying the new trendy Kinect Game. After such exhaustion, we need to refill our batteries. That’s why we call Georges back with his delicious coffee, just after that half an hour nap in a colorfull Fatboy. Not a gay reference, that’s the actual product name. After a quick Google News / Twitter / Google+ check, back to work for an afternoon full of After Effects goodness. Time flies fast and it’s already time to get back home.

The golden hour

Walking back to the railway station. Best time of the day. My brains starts blending all the news and interesting stuff I’ve read or done during the day into a sweet smoothie full of usable data to put in, or enhance, my projects. Of course, as soon as I stumble upon an interesting news, I send myself an email on the relevent email address. Forgot to tell you: I’m a domain name collector. For every project I start, or random idea I have, I buy a domain name, and setup an email address where I can send everything related to it. No wonder my Thunderbird is taken down it’s knees when receiving and filtering mails from my 20+ accounts ! My Mail folder hierarchy has more depth than my laptop system HDD. Yup, I’m crazy. And I almost have every email sent and received since 2006. Even that naughty one.

Back in the train, I take the time to check out (once again) my Twitter feed. No more, no less. Just kidding, sometimes I manage to have a phone call and speak loudy just to piss everyone off in the train car (second one from the head if you wanna avoid me).

Back at home, I actually blend a real smoothie to welcome myself back, and to get ready for a loaded evening. When I’m not having a drink / diner with friends of course, which is a 50/50 odd.

And in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

That’s the part where I really work on my numerous projects. If my brain is still boiling because of some crazy idea, I will keep documenting myself on this subject for the rest of the day, until very early in the morning. The most info I get, the more relevent and effective my idea can be. May it be a character behavior for a movie project, or a detail in a building architecture for that chase scene I’m dreaming about, I won’t let the idea go until I’m fullfilled with enough information or references. When doing preparation work for a movie idea, it can take me several weeks to study the location (real or invented) or some character arcs to get the setup right. I try to have a clockwork precision on every important detail. Because it’s what makes the difference between good and excellent, between the Batman and The Joker.

I can also spend the evening digging deeper a news item I read in the morning. I usually do that when a political event occurs. Political scandals are so deep, that you can get sucked into them before you know it. But that’s where you get the best material when you need to write characters with power, or when you need intricate plots.

When I’m not digging, documenting or writing screenplays, I spend time inside After Effects develop ing tools, or toying with complicated stuff like 3D tracking. I also love editing, compositing and color grading. Guerilla style. I used to shoot too, but I have to make choices, Tarantino & Rodriguez are way better than me, and days can’t get any longer.

Up to here, you might think that I’m just working on movie projects, whatever production stage I can find. I even can tell you that I watch ton of movies and documentaries while doing all this. But as you can forsee, it turns out that it’s not all. I also translate and write books about After Effects, develop games project for the iOS plateform or for the 360. That’s the cool thing of being a computer science school alumni. I can code stuff myself, even if I’m not the best coder you’ll ever see, I can manage to get what I need done to be done.

Speaking of games, I also develop a real card game, and I play a lot video games. I don’t have that much games in my library, but I often go deep inside them. My games range from indie titles to big blockbuster games, but most of them have in common that they are story driven. If not, they are arcade games. And if not again, they are musical games. I raised an Altar on top of a forklift to bless Yu Suzuki for what he has done to me, and for Shenmue. I’m actually trying to build a second and a third altar, for Rockstar and Epic this time. But I need a bigger room. True story.

Until it sleeps

Then it’s time to get to bed and have a well deserved rest. Sometimes my brains just won’t let me go and will wake me up in the middle of the night forcing me to write gibberish stuff in my Moleskine. At least I can decypher most of it when I wake up.

So you see, I’m defo a weirdo in France. Instead of complaining all the time and going on strike every 2 days like I should, I’ve chosen the rebel path. I know it’s hard to believe, but being part of a secret society of geeks helps. You can find us in the darkest parisian shadows from dusk ’till down, but don’t tell the Police. And no, we are not vampires or emos. But we love Zombies.

Brains… need more braiiiinnnnns…..