Anotherblog

Odd Blogger problems

I’m not sure what was going on, but it was refusing to post my last blog. In the end, I split it into two. I suppose this kind of thing is bound to happen with all the changes in blogger at the moment.

Shooting in Dulwich Hill
And it’s already time to start organising the next batch of film shooting. Scary. I’ve booked Winnie and Carey’s time for the upstairs scene with the drums and the brass instrument on Sunday morning. I’ve also booked the drums, and emailed around work begging for a tuba or similar - unfortunately, the one person who responded with a yes, responded today saying that it wasn’t quite going to be that easy. Still, he added, he has a trumpet and a french horn. Interested? Yes! So there will be more Bullet Hole filming on Sunday, but no more Hard&Easy for a wee while. It vaguely occured to me that Winnie and Carey could play the characters of Hard & Easy in Bullet Hole, thus tying the two films together fairly neatly. Now I just need a camera operator…

Shooting in Marrickville
No, not film shooting, although there were plenty of those around last night… the fatal shooting on Illawarra Rd. I heard about the Marrickville shooting from our nextdoor neighbours, who solemnly reported it as three people dead in a drive-by shooting. As it turns out, it was one dead and one wounded, and happened after an argument in a coffee shop between “friends”. Still, welcome to Marrickville, eh? Adds a certain something to the Bullet Hole script.

The last batch of filming - Dulwich Hill

My guitar tutor Chris came along to the latest batch of Bullet Hole filming to do some guitar-playing hand-double scenes. This time it was me and Jon and Chris, and since we weren’t recording any live sound, it was plenty of crew. Jon did the camerawork, Chris played his piece (which is a wonderful composition, and I wish we could feature it in more of the movie) and I helped move the dolly. Then lunch at a rather nice Vietnamese restaurant and a farewell to Chris, and continued filming. It was good. We got another two pages of script done, moving us to approximately half-way through. We got some very nice shots, and they were some of the more difficult scenes, too. Next up - booking a drumkit and Winnie’s time for next Sunday.

The last tropfest entry came first
Anna and I were going to go to the Domain for the tropfest screening, but we were too stuffed, so we apologised to Kyla (who dropped over to join us in the trip to the Domain) and watched it on the web instead. And it was kinda OK, though we were watching it using the microsoft media viewer which crashed every half-hour and reduced the picture to a frame a second for one minute in five. But at least it was broadband. I’d have much rather watched it with Quicktime, but for some reason, it wasn’t doing broadband access properly, just replaying the tropfest trailer (which was fun the first time and progressively annoying after that). The films were great in some ways, very disappointing in others. For one thing, very few of the finalists had good stories. The production values were excellent, and in some places obviously rather expensive, but it just doesn’t make any difference when the end result isn’t a very memorable film. And I’m struggling to remember them now… the winner, especially, was a bit of a surprise because I had mentally placed it in the bottom three of the sixteen entries. My favorites were “Chopper”, a very-well-done playschool adaptation of Chopper with beautifully cute interpretations of the characters, “Just not cricket”, a cricket parody showing paint drying which came second, and “Boambee Return”, a wonderfully photographed reminiscence of a train stop by a beach, by far the most evocative of the films. I’m not saying that “Greta” deserved a place in the top sixteen - it was far too amateurishly produced - but when we have our technical aspects worked out, we’re going to kick arse.

The last batch of filming - Bondi

…went well. Actually, it was a lot of fun. We all (me, Alistair, Ted, and David, a friend of Ted’s down from Townsville) showed up at about 10:00am and Al and I went swimming for the camera, while curious Bondi locals asked us what we were doing. Actually, there were a couple of film crews around and about, mostly looking a lot more professional than us. A beautiful day. Also, Ted bought me a toy robot in thanks for helping him put together a backdrop for his poetry reading on the weekend before the one in which we were filming and I left it in the car and also forgot to give him money to get out of the parking lot and wrote a great big run-on sentence that refused to die, even though I eventually killed it with a full-stop.

The last pants of the puppy - A Farewell To Feet
We off-loaded the beautiful puppy onto Greg’s sister-in-law on Sunday morning, much to our enduring sadness. However, the puppy was being obnoxious all of Saturday, which I considered when I patted it good-bye before heading off to film Bullet Hole. He was fun, but a lot of work, and I suppose we had just the good bit where it was still a puppy and was endearingly cute as it shat on the carpet and tried to swallow a shoe. Greg’s sister-in-law has a farm, so Feet (no doubt renamed by now) will certainly have a lot more fun that he would have in our back yard.

The next batch of filming

Getting everything ready for the next batch of filming - we’ve got a brief bit of work to do at Bondi beach with me and Al, and then on Sunday I’m hoping to do a bit of Bullet Hole filming, subject to Jon’s availability and getting the sheet music required for the next bunch of scenes. I hope it will be fun, because I’m pretty tired at the moment. Got a bit to organise, too - I’ll need a disposable suit for the scenes in Bondi. And then, on Sunday evening, I’m debating going to the tropfest screenings in Centenial Park - I reckon we’ll get together a bunch o’ people and give it a whirl.

Abandoned puppy
We both came to the conclusion that we can’t keep the puppy, and were very sad. Anna has had more contact with him, and started to realise how much work he was going to be - and given that she’s starting up a small business soon, she just won’t be able to spare the time. So we started looking for someone to take care of him… anyone? Internet?

Hard & Easy

I still haven’t looked at the footage from the weekend - truth is, I’m too tired to. I also forgot to mention one of the funnier aspects of filming on Sunday - one of Jon’s stories about amateur film-making is one of his friends who made a film in which an actor suddenly decides to go back into a zombie-infested house to retrieve his jumper. Why? Because they’d already filmed the next shots, and he had his jumper on for those ones.
Well, two shots into Sunday’s schedule, and we realised that I didn’t have my suit jacket on, which was on in all the rest of the subsequent shots. I toyed briefly with writing this into the script somehow, but sense prevailed and we just reshot the two shots. It was very lucky Bud spotted the error - we could have filmed all day without realising, otherwise…

Fridge & Washing Machine
Anna’s dad wanted to buy us something. We suggested outdoor furniture, something we could actually use, but he seemed keen on getting us a fridge and a washing machine, and that’s just what he did. I mean, sure, the fridge is OK, my other fridge is pretty small and (just) fits in the laundry as a beer fridge. But a washing machine? Why? I have a perfectly good one! It turns out that he heard the spin-cycle one day. If you have a front-loader, you’ll know that sometimes, if the load is unbalanced, the washing machine will make some thumping noises when it starts the spin cycle. This alarmed George, and he decided that we needed a new washing machine. And so he bought us a top-loader. I was perfectly happy with my front loader. The drier could fit on top of it. It was a decent size. It was economical in water and powder. Now we have a front loader that is so large that it doesn’t fit into the space next to the sink, so it is camped out in front of the shower. This, combined with the beer fridge, makes the laundry a slightly tighter place to visit.

Massage business
Anna managed a fantastic deal yesterday. She was looking around town for a place to rent or buy, from which to run a massage therapy business. She found a great location, right next to the Hilton hotel, a large space, but with one restriction - a short lease. She managed to bargain down the rent by an enormous margin by observing that the location would definitely not be picking up tenants quickly due to it’s time restriction. However, four months or so is just right for her - enough time to set up and run the massage business well and possibly pick up some of the Hilton guests (who only have access to in-house shiatsu massage at the moment). In other words - a great chance to see how things go.

Sense & Sensibility
I bought a bunch of DV tapes and minidiscs yesterday afternoon in anticipation of the next batch of short films to be made, and went home. When I arrived, Anna had a rather unusual birthday present.

A puppy.

Yep, a rather gorgeous little puppy, with one problem - it’s a Blue Heeler. The definitive active outdoors dog. And we don’t have a big back yard. As it happens, Anna didn’t actually plan getting the puppy - it was pushed onto her by a (pushy, obviously) nearby neighbour, who then scooted as fast as she could move. We spent most of the afternoon trying to work out how we could fit a puppy into our lives. Gosh, tricky. I mean, a small dog, fine, but a blue heeler? I’m still in two minds. We’ve tentatively named him “Feet”, after my Grandma’s old dog “Hans”, but I’m really not sure that we can handle him. This is not the kind of dog you take for a walk. This is the kind of dog you take for a run or a bike ride, several times a day. This is not a self-entertaining dog or a lazy dog. This is an active, intelligent, demanding dog. Anyway, we went out for a birthday dinner (which was lovely, a fish restaurant in Coogee), came back, watched Buffy, and continued to talk it through (and I’m not using euphimisms here). We decided that Anna will take him to the vet tomorrow and ask advice there. Then we had a very restless night as he whined and barked and howled until Anna let him sleep on the bed. I mean, kinda fair enough, he’s used to the company of his siblings and mother, but… ah well. We’ll see.

Hard & Easy

I’m still tired. We did all the location filming on Saturday and Sunday morning, and got it all just done in time. It was hard work. The script wasn’t really ready, and we did some last-minute changes based on the location - my memories of how it worked weren’t quite correct. However, I’m a lot happier with what we filmed than the scripted version. It was one of those nice cases where we improvised and it came out well - it’s just a pity that we didn’t have enough people to get the lighting and sound done well. We were well short of people. On Saturday, we had Jon, George, Ben, Bud, Alistair and me. Jon and George left before lunch, so we had just the four of us until we finished at 6:00pm. And since there were several scenes involving three actors, this left Ben to do all the camerawork. But we got through the majority of the stuff we had to do, all of Alistair’s stuff, so we could come back on Sunday with just me, Ben and Bud, and finish it off, which we did with a certain amount of style.

Biggest problems?
Sound. There was quite a lot of background noise and we only got on-camera sound. We’ll probably have to dub. There were also a lot of reflective surfaces, which made filming angles quite difficult. No doubt there will be a few shots with the camera visible somewhere. The lighting was pretty poor and we didn’t set the f-stop as low as we should have, so everyone looks pretty dark. This isn’t quite as bad though. In fact, the poor lighting will make the job of dubbing easier.

The continuing saga of the spare room
We decided that we wouldn’t pull all the plaster off the walls, mostly because replastering properly would have ruined the brand new floorboards (the plaster requires a lot of water as it’s setting, otherwise it will crack). So we replastered just the bits that had been pulled off, and we’ll be ready to paint later in the week. Finally, sanding and polishing should be doable by early next week - yay! Extra room at last!

Birthday
Happy birthday to me! I’m 31. I think I’ll buy myself a G4 powerbook. Hm, if this is a midlife crisis thing, does that mean I’ll live to be 62?

Posting from work

Yes, but it’s a Friday. And I normally post from work. The cable modem has abruptly shifted the balance of power for my computers - my work computer is far more powerful, but now the home access is much faster.

More Hard & Easy
I got up especially late this morning after helping Ted out with a video last night… wow, the time really flew by and it was 2:00am before I knew it. I decided that I might as well blow away another hour of the morning and be *really* late, so I went to Chatswood and grabbed the “Equinox Security Corporation” polo-shirts for tomorrow’s shoot. They were far too expensive, but I’d already promised them to everyone so there was no backing out. And the result was rather pleasing. I also took the opportunity to do some more work on the shooting script. I’m finally beginning to feel more confident about directing it - as I suspected, Jon won’t be able to appear until later in the afternoon, but now that we have Rich Adamson on-site as well, we’ll have enough people so that I can just concentrate on directing and acting. Looks like it’s actually going to happen - I’m always amazed when I get to this stage…

The Wog Story
I went to see Wog Story with Anna and some of her Greek and Lebanese friends. There were some funny bits, but it seemed a bit lazy… the group are obviously well loved, because there was some fairly lame material that got big responses. I kinda got the feeling that everyone was on cruise control.

Cable Internet Connection…

I just got cable internet connection at home… so I don’t think you’ll be hearing much from me for a wee while.

Or maybe you will. But anyway, I’ve just tested out atomfilms.com, and it runs rather sweetly. Now I can show short films directly off the internet at home! Full screen! Yes, that is drool.

Hard & Easy

We’re all go for the Hard & Easy shoot. Filming this Saturday, got the “Equinox Security Corporation” polo-shirts ordered, and I’m working on the shooting script. Jon might not be able to make it, but at least we’ll have the cool security bits out of the way, and then we can film the rest of it at leasure.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Was very, very funny. Go and see it.

Tropfest: we didn’t get in.

We got the notification today - neither of our films made the finals of tropfest. There were over 500 entries this year, so it isn’t really surprising - however, what it *does* mean is that I can start showing “Greta” and “Reach Out And Touch Someone” now. I had a look at the website and the 16 finalists. They look pretty interesting, and they certainly have good still photographs. I’ll be watching with interest - though I might just get the video instead of watching on the night, as I suspect I’ll be filming on the weekend-after-next.

Worse news.
Jon Blum has been seconded to Canberra for three months for work (again). This is a problem. They’ve yet to find out when he has to go, but it is certainly going to throw a spanner in the Bullet Hole schedule. And then he’s in Canberra for most of this week as well. Need time. Need time!

Plastered.
Friday night, went to Alistair’s place in North Sydney. He shares with two other guys in a flat with an astonishingly large balcony, on which we had a BBQ. It was good. Beer is bad at the moment - some kind of stomach reaction causing cramping - so I’ve been getting into the universally regarded girly-drink, stolli. It is good, easy to drink and lethally powerful. Anna and Kathy (Carlos my evil next-desk worker’s girlfriend) got together and talked politics while I talked movies with Alistair.

Hard. No, wait, Easy.
I finished off the “Hard & Easy” first draft on Friday morning on the train to work (ah, laptops, lovely laptops) so I had stuff to show him. Quite happy with the draft, it’s got some fun bits. Unfortunately, we probably won’t be able to do much filming this week ’cause Jon is away in Canberra for work, and then at a Dr Who convention on the weekend. This makes our shooting schedule for Hard & Easy very, very tight indeed. I may have to cut back the scenes there. Still, I’m optomistic - if I get together the proper shooting schedule and trim it as tight as possible, we might even be able to get it all done in one long night.

More filming. How long must I endure this torture?
That was a good weekend o’ filming. Actually, Jon and I just did filming on Sunday, and for a laugh we decided to reshoot everything done before, but this time, with continuity! Yay! We did really well, too, we got through the stuff that I had laboriously done over the past week by myself, and then powered through and did about twice as much again, knocking over five pages of script. Now we must await my music teacher’s composition in order to continue - we need a copy of the sheet music on the music stand throughout the next set of shots, and we also need him to do a body-double for some other bits. Also coming up, we need a drumkit and a tuba for next weekend or the weekend after. I was going to use the upstairs-neighbours drumkit, but he moved and I lost his phone number, dammit. But the important thing is: yesterday’s filming was really good, it felt excellent and I wasn’t even completely embarassed by my acting.

The Perfect Vampire
My lack of self-loathing regarding my acting ability may have been partially bolstered by watching “The Perfect Vampire” last night at Jon & Kate’s place. Never heard of it? It’s an amateur project by a couple of Jon & Kate’s friends, and is by no means their best one. In fact, it is notoriously their worst. Huge fun to watch. Educational. The camera operator was particularly fond of zooming to extreme close-up, and did it on almost every single shot. The script was riotously bad, with jaw-dropping dialogue - vampire to dying vampire friend: “No, dark brother! Do not go into the twilight!” - and the acting and direction were wonderfully incomprehensible. There were huge sections of the film that were obviously placed in because the crew spent a whole day driving out to the airport to get a shot of an airplane taking off, dammit, and we’re going to show the whole thing, all three minutes of it. There’s nothing like a really bad film like that to cheer you up.

What Andrew Wants
We saw “What Women Want” on Saturday night - a supremely inconsequential film. Basically another attempt to get the success of “Groundhog Day” but without the intelligent script. Still, Mel Gibson shows a bit of life and energy, so it whiles away the time. Waitaminit. I don’t *need* to watch films to while away the time! I was gypped! Oh, wait, no I wasn’t. There was the trailer for “The Fellowship of the Ring” showing beforehand, so that definitely made it worthwhile. I think I’ll see another film tonight. I would like to see “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, “Traffic”, “Almost Famous”, “Quills”, “Requiem for a Dream”, “Castaway”, “Shadow of the Vampire”, “Croupier”, “Best In Show” and maybe “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” again.

Zombie Films
Actually, now I think about it, I did a fair bit of movie watching on the weekend, because I also watched “Dawn Of The Dead”. I bought the living-dead trilogy just before Christmas, and have only just started watching them. “Night of the Living Dead” is actually pretty good. The acting is pretty solid, the script is fine, and the lighting and camerawork are (at times) excellent. I was rather surprised. “Dawn Of The Dead” isn’t quite so good - it is quite similar to sections of the book “Day of the Triffids”, but it is still interesting. They were much less schlocky than I though they would be, though there are some fairly gross scenes of zombie carnage (nothing compared with “Brain Dead”).

They have television everywhere, there’s no escape.
I decided that I can now justify buying a television. I want to show the premiere of “Greta” at the housewarming (exact date for housewarming: undecided. It *was* going to be after we finished fixing up the spare room, but I’m not so sure about that now…) so I’ll need something fairly large… I’ve ordered a 80cm flat-screen 100Hz jobbie. Should arrive some time during the week.

Plastered.
The spare room saga continues. Anna was removing paint and some big chunks of plaster started coming out as well - turns out the cement between the bricks on the outer wall isn’t waterproof, so there was moisture getting through. We’re getting someone to rip the remaining plaster off that wall, redo the bricks with waterproof cement, and reapply plaster. Then Anna will paint, then we’re getting someone to sand and polish the floor. Estimated time, probably a month or so. Sigh. We’ve already bought the filing cabinets that go into the room, and they’re waiting in the living room. Not to mention, we bought a cd cabinet, a hall stand, and two extra chairs for the dining table. Estimated cost? I’ve no idea, and I don’t want to find out.