Woke up this morning with absolutely nothing to do. No filming. No work. Nothing. Just me, bored. Coffee, Green Wing and a lot of nothing much else.

So been trying to keep the energy levels up for tomorrow. More crowd coverage to prepare for and a little mischief on top of that. Stole some footage from Director Ben this afternoon and have been picking out certain shots and setups that I still like as screen caps.

Unfortunately, quite a bit of them are a tad plot spoilers, while others, though pretty, work better as moving shots as opposed to static stills, so I’ve had to restrain myself a bit in picking images, but here are some of the best of the rest of what I hove shot thats quite, quite satisfying. Some have been subjected to a little photoshop, just to enhance certain colours that didn’t initally come through, but overall, I’m quite happy with these in terms of composition and lighting and pretty.

I think my eyes are watering again and I need some rest. So here are pretty images. Let me know what you think, there’s still an arseload more that want to be uploaded and beg to be uploaded, but the powers of effort and criticism still hold them back.

Short day today. Had only one scene to shoot, cause an actor for the other planned scene went off to the Big Day Out. No grudges or anything, actually quite glad for the little break. Even better, tomorrow is a day off and shall be spent mostly editing and hopefully some drinking. Bring on Dead Chris Day number 2!

Good day. Exterior morning, interior afternoon. Once again, the happy gods of filming weather smile down on us and we were blessed with fandangly overcast weather and the interiors were most favourable towards flouro lighting and stuff. Shots looked like they were from a digital Michael Mann film or something.

Also, got bored and did this video in our down time…

The monkey holding the piece of paper is supposed to be holding up a sign that says “Chris Tan, Director of Photography” as a cheap subtitling gimick. The second piece was supposed to say “Pictures of You, Coming Soon”… but the damn exposure on that camera… tsk tsk…

And at the less-than-zero Pictures of You film website there are links to the photos that are supposed to be up on the less-than-zero website, but are instead hosted on a completely seperate server. But the photos that are recently up now are some stills taken from a hastily put together showreel we played back on Sunday you can view here. Unfortunately, the images are in the wrong aspect ratio, but at least for the most of them, being raw footage, they look pretty good.

Here are a couple of my favourites of the bunch, scaled properly and not color corrected in anyway. There are a lot more that I liked that haven’t been screen capped yet, but hopefully will soon… real soon.

Good day.

Reshot a scene from yesterday we had to abandon due to sound issues and losing light and just blitzed through it this time. Weather was absolutely perfect this morning to have that overcast winter look. And while we had that light, we shot at another location down the road for another scene. Shot another in the middle of town with lots of nice coverage. Shot another scene in a bar on the other end of town. And then shot one more setup for an earlier scene, because an actress was unavailable at the time we were there… but did we match the lighting? You betcha.

But with all these external shoots going on, next time I look at someones script, it’s gonna be counted up the ratio of interior to exterior shoots… actually, I just realised that interiors can drive me insane figuring out how to light… to hell with it. Next script, one room, two people, talking heads the whole film.

This is just a hast post as my computer which has been suffering a few upgrades recently, has decided to spit something out and not start up again. Very annoying as I want to get somemore editing done after today’s shoot.

Good start in the morning. Everything, actors, camera work and so on where all good and ready to go. Every blocked and rehearsed shot went without a hitch… Except for the bloody weather that had us standing around half the time, staring at the sun, wondering whether ‘that next cloud’ is going to actually go over or not. I swear, there was this one cloud that actually stopped and reversed backwards, just to piss us off.

Afternoon and finally, we’re eating something not bloody sandwiches for lunch… pasta! Stuffed, full and onto more filming, which being in a public place, got regularly interrupted by public foot traffic, ambient noises, children, cars backfiring, airplanes, helicopters, speedboats and rowers.

Now, I love the whole indie, low budget approach to filmmaking. It’s just more fun that way. But sometimes, like today, I really would like to be on one with a much bigger, more anti-anything-that-can-concievabley-come-in-and-screw-up-this-production budget.

Great weather today. Gets a happy lighting director’s score of zero. Shooting an exterior for winter, during the summer. Waiting for overcast clouds to diffuse out the sun and get this really nice cold look on screen, instead we had to force ourselves to shoot it more stark and with the hard shadows that stupid Mr Sunbeam makes.

Also got burnt some more, sweated like a pony, started getting dizzy, drank water till I felt like puking and all around felt like crap. But we’re hopeful we got some nice shots. Unfortunately, not enough people turned up as extras today, so it’ll be interesting to see how few fit that all in.

Afterwards we eventually stumbled our waywards home to writer Scott’s house. Drank. And eventually started making silly little short films just to entertain ourselves. Will upload tomorrow. Just realising that there won’t be any space for them here yet.

In other interesting stuff, Harlan Ellison does a reading of a short story here and under Prince Myshkin and does a helluva reading indeed.

Got to the location on time, just not the right part of the location. And stood around wondering where the hell everyone was. Got a little of that on tape. Still yet to finish capturing all of the footage.

But I totally did it, running around, up and down a rugby field, shooting a game and getting totally owned by the sun. Still got some very nice shots, though I left off the color grading for today, so that there are maximum possibilities to tweak them in post. Meanwhile, I’m sunburnt, depressed and totally tired. But that can mostly be resolved with a venture down to the S&M reunion shindig. Going on now as I type, I’ll make my way round there later on party and drink it up some. Also, Sohl bar closes down tonight and us faithful patrons are sending it off with a bang with drinks, drinks and more drinks.

I’d type and elaborate more, but I’m tired and need booze. Early start tomorrow as well.

Weather looks to be wet tomorrow… really wet…

Actually, have to be on set in just over four hours. Been out having some drinks with old friends form high school and playing Risk (came second, oh noes). Now I”m pretty tired and really, I’m amped. I’m psyched. Ready to run around in the rain filming a rugby game scene for ten hours. Bring it on.

Meanwhile… here are some great images taken at just the right angle to be pure greatness.

Here be a video demonstrating car drawing awesomeness can be achieved through paint, as opposed to photoshop.

And here is a nice retro video for South Seas students.

Now sleep. And hopefully I’ll wake up and not be late to the set.

Filming was a little intense yesterday. Lots of getting great shots in a really small room with 2000ks of lights heating the whole room up to a sauna level. But once again, got some nicely composed shots and some sexcellent lighting going on.

To celebrate, some of us got properly drunk afterwards. I crashed out on the couch. Woke up this morning with a +3 lvl hangover and proceeded to go to the hospital to drop something off to my mum and ended up lost and confused in the car park and just felt like absolute crap.

Now home and rested. I’m about to head out into the rain and recce the rugby fields for this weekends shoot. After that, hopefully I can get a relaxation going on and just blob out. Been a fun ride so far making this film, but today is a day of much needed rest.

Will post later tonight with the first video blog and hopefully some newspaper scans.

Shot in three locations today… Continuation of yesterdays shoot on the street, exterior shoot at the polytech grounds and finally a night shoot at Victoria Cinemas.

The continuation shoot drove me nuts in hoping the lighting was consistent with yesterdays whilst shooting crouched down in the front seat of a car, staring up at an upsidedown LCD screen also while operation sound equipment to shoot a bit of dialogue in the back.

The exterior shoot drove me equally mad with one particular camera set up that just refused to work, constantly changing lighting and weather that couldn’t figure out if it wanted to be sunny or a watering down whore.

So then after all that was done, I got myself properly drunk at the bar down the road from the next location and when it came to shooting… bang, bang, shots were down, just like that. Fantastic colours, minimal camera screw ups and lots of pretty coverage.

What a bitch.