Beginning to lose track of days. Had to check up on previous posts to make sure I’ve got the right numbered day to post about.

Today, although it was a relatively short day and we started at 2 o’clock, was so far the day that took the most effort to do for me. Nothing tricky in terms of work or camera work required, just mentally and physically I felt quite drained. Strange to say, but I think if we had started at our ‘usual’ seven in the morning, despite having shot for 16 hours the night before, I would have been more prepared to shoot for the day as opposed to having plenty of rest and going off to set in the afternoon.

Ah well, tomorrow we move location, three locations actually and start at nine in the morning.

Also a reminder to anyone that this weekend is a get together reunion piss up for us Waikato Screen and Media bums. Sam Brown’s pad, Saturday night.

Oh and we’ll be needing extras this weekend at Frazer Tech grounds to play as a crowd watching a High School rugby game. More details to come in the following days.

Holy baJebus! A sixteen hour day, the equivilant of twenty-something cups of coffee, half a bottle of vodka, one fall from a tree, one pair of broken glasses and one press photo op…

It’s been a helluva day, but totally worth it. Once again, the shots just keep getting prettier and prettier and a big eeeeh! to Daisy for providing us with 50 fandangly totally awesome sets of gels to make the lighting even prettier. It’s totally all about the pretty.

Other than that, not much else to report. I’m so freakin tired now, it’s such a relief we’ve only got a 2 o’clock start tomorrow afternoon.

And to deviate from the usual film production post, here are some photos from a really cool, but surreally creepy art sculpture exhibition where mythical giants have been posed and frozen for your freaky amusement here.

Afternoon/Night shoot went slightly overtime and involved a scene where the lighting changed so dramatically by the end of the last setup I felt absolutely depressed and a failure as a DOP, operator and lighting director. Though there is the optimistic thought it can be fixed in post, the shadows were just so dramatically harsher, I don’t think it can be salvaged. My votes on a reshoot when we view the rushes.

In some good news, we got some really great shots for the other scenes. I’m really beginning to feel the Christopher Doyle inspirado coming on with each set up.

Tomorrow is a day off from filming and I’ll just be reviewing footage with director Ben to make sure we’re on track with the look of what we’ve got so far and where we’re going next. Hopefully a trailer and the first video blog will be posted soon.

Till then, I’m gonna crash out real soon, even though I got more than enough sleep last night.

In my opinion, a very good day today.

After six hours of sleep (enough, but could have done with more), we shot today at a new location, with a different set of actors and to my personal excitement, a smoke machine.

Seriously… lighting a fogged up location gets such the prettiest shots, I soiled my pants with mondo delight on nearly every take. Will have to try and get some copy of the footage or at least some screen caps.

After today, I’m just getting more and more confident doing nearly everything under camera/lighting department. And even better yet… we don’t have to start until 2 in the afternoon tomorrow. I’m gonna be getting my sleep on tonight.

Started filming at 7. Finished filming after 11 hours. Packed down stuff, moved stuff to other location, set up stuff for tomorrow at 7.

Finished Heroes last night. Ended on a cliffhanger. Haven’t slept much. Video blog being put together. Screen kinda funky. Sleep needed.

Shooting began at 7 this morning. I was a few minutes late to set because I spent the whole night before watching the series Heroes. Comes out to NZ soon, definitely worth a watch, although I dunno how endurable it would be to watch only on a weekly basis. After saying to myself I’ll just watch the first episode and go to bed, I ended up watching six episodes back to back and only got a couple of hours sleep because of it. Worth it? I’ll let you know after I finish the last five episodes tonight.

But as for the shoot… it went surprisingly well for a production’s first day. Very few hiccups, almost all scenes bar one went by incredibly smoothly and fast and everyone is just so enthusiastic about the project it’s a nice enviroment to be around. And it better stay that way… we’ve got about 4-5 more hard pressed weeks to work together and the last time I spent that much time together with a whole bunch of people working our arses off… we created a robot monkey ninja to take over Iceland, which ended really badly… I swore never to either work my arse off with a whole bunch of people or to create robot monkey ninjas to take over Iceland ever again. Today, I shall be breaking one of those rules and tomorrow, I’ll be creating a new rule to swear to never break… Licking strangely colored rocks.

First video blog is almost ready to be put together and posted. ETA this weekend.

Oh and two video links curtosey of mein brother…

Shoe Tying Trick Which is pretty damn cool

Masochistic Tickle-Me-Elmo Which is just disturbing

The brain and the body have finally recovered from last night… only took a whole day to do it. And so we’re now into 2007. The earth has circled the sun one more time. Man… I was so sure it wouldn’t, I’ve lost a ten dollar bet to a friend.

Anyway, to encapsulate the year, here is a very limited list of films I have enjoyed throughout the year… The Aristocrats, Brick, Children of Men, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, The Departed, Elizabethtown, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, An Inconvenient Truth, Last Life In the Universe, Mind Game, Mirrormask, The Places Promised In Our Early Years, A Scanner Darkly, The Science of Sleep, Silent Hill, Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, Thank You For Smoking, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Weatherman.

Still a lot more films that haven’t been seen yet, haven’t been released yet or were just too poor to afford to go see at the time and now its possible I won’t be seeing it for a long time because it was a really limited release and it won’t be available to watch for a while yet.

Plans for this year? Drink more water and hunt Chupacabras.