Behold!

Tue, 13 Feb 2007

A slightly new and hardly noticeable update of this site’s design…

Added a slightly different layout to most other pages around and changed some of the fonts, as I discovered the one I used previously isn’t usual part of most windows or mac font packs and this one is as close to how I originally had it. Also note there now a total of about 50 header images up for your viewing/refreshing pleasure.

Film subsections are going to be the next upload and hopefully, finally, new artworks after that.

Currently reading Neil Gaiman’s collection of short stories Fragile Things which is really, really good and should be read by anyone and everyone.

Also, one must check out the latest Hot Fuzz trailer, cut alongside Robert Roderiguez, it’s great and can be viewed here or just download it here.

And links from Robbie, this is the coolest greatest music video to have come out for a long time, if not ever. Download it!

And awesome midi music remixes to be heard here.

Pictures of You – Day 28 blog

Sun, 11 Feb 2007

Just a tad overdue this brief post… but almost all the scenes for Pictures of You have been shot. Just one hospital scene to get out of the way next weekend, some pickups of cutaways and computer screens and a few aerial shots to do and my job should hopefully be done really soon.

To pick up some quick, much needed money, I’ve also started up my old job at the video store again. And the awesome part of it is I’ll be on my old rate again, which was pretty damn good for a video store.

For the most of today, I’ve been slogging away behind the desk, updating and revising the website oh so slightly. You probably won’t be seeing any changes til tomorrow or Tuesday as there are still a lot of things to be tested and such before uploading, but at least there will be 30 new header images up in the morning… yay.

Pictures of You – Day 27 blog

Sat, 10 Feb 2007

After nearly a one week break, we shot two more scenes today, including one scene we had shot earlier in the schedule, but had to abandon halfway through due to changing lighting conditions. After several attempts to reschedule that scene in somewhere for the rest of the shoot, several times actually… it’s finally been shot.

Also another scene at magic hour done and tomorrow will be our second to last day! It would have been our last, but there was a fall through on one location, which leaves it to be shot next weekend once its available again.

Meanwhile, I finally got to catch Couch Soup last night as part of a rather packed audience. Which I will remind anyone in the area, their final Hamilton performance tomorrow night, 8pm Meteor Theatre. Go. Funny. Greatness.

And also started shooting on Spit Takes: A Mouthful of Comedy last night and shot the most complicated scene first (involving 13 people in one take). The rest should be a cakewalk and hopefully all photography will be done by the end of the month and it’ll be cut together relatively easy by the end of March.

Tomorrow will be a long day/evening, but should be a good one oh… I forgot to mention earlier, but a congrats to Nigel and Shirow on their engagement and I look forward to drinking in celebration with them tomorrow night… after drinking from wrapping… flipper yay.

Now I’m gonna get a drink of water, arm wrestle a panda and go to sleep. Cause I can and pandas got nothing on me.

And no play tonight…

Wed, 7 Feb 2007

Got to the place a few minutes late and the doors were locked and no lights were on in the lobby. Figuring I got the wrong location, I drove like mad to the New Place Theatre at the uni, figuring maybe its there instead. As luck would have it, there was absolutely no one around and so it was a mad rush to a poster I remember seeing outside of Chi Chi Delux. By this time I knew I was probably too late to make it to even half the show, but at least I could have figured out where it was exactly for tomorrow night… I was right. It is at the meteor and it definitely is at 8pm… not something like 8.05pm.

So… all in all. Got lost, got confused, got locked out, got annoyed and got drunk instead… awesome.

Couch Soup

Going to see Couch Soup tonight. Got more details, it’s on at 8pm every night til Saturday. Tickets are $12/14 each and you’ll laugh. Or else.

Also discovered this youtube series called Chad Vader. Most amusing stuff. First episode of several…

Plus, as a big fan of Back of the Y, I encourage you to download and watch the trailer for The Devil Dared Me To and laugh and look very much forward to seeing it. Awesomely obtainable here.

Oh man…

Tue, 6 Feb 2007

Days off…

When I moved back down to Hamilton, I simply pilled as much junk into a whole bunch of boxes and drove like crazy back down. Weeks down the track, and those boxes took up half the very little floorspace that I was sleeping in.

Room is now clean, gardens have been done, lawns mowed, cars washed, my car tidied… I’m either compensating for the lack of filming getting done or just avoiding some proper work that I haven’t done yet.

But filming is nearly over and I crave money. Talked to the old boss at the video store and it looks like I’ll be picking up a few shifts there, at least to get me a little income again.

Been going back over Slice of Life stuff again, and proposals are being drafted up for TVNZ so fingers crossed it’ll at least be a nice proposal.

Oh and if you’re not doing anything on any nights from tomorrow til Saturday night, go watch this year’s run of the Couch Soup play. Gets more funny and amusing every year and I highly recommend any and all to go watch. It’s at the meteor theatre um… I think… and… um… I’ll get back to you on that actually.

And a repost of DJ Shadow’s Six Days music video by Wong Kar Wai, only because I’ve had this damn song and video stuck in my head for the last few days and no matter what, I can’t seem to get it out… hot.

Dead Chris Weekend

Sun, 4 Feb 2007

Spent the most of Saturday lying in bed, trying not to think about wanting to film stuff and just trying to enjoy the fact that its a day off. Then I realised that I’ve actually got nearly a week off and that started to get to me.

So finally, I’m back in contact with Sash and got Ross to come around too and it’s decided we’ll be starting on a new short film, yet to be titled, but it’ll be an action short and hopefully… funny.

Sash is actually going away for the next week and Ross will be away for the week after that. But we wanna do it, we like it and it’ll be done, just a matter of how, considering our different schedules and my personal conflict of what I’m really gonna be doing after Pictures of You is properly wrapped, which will be very soon actually.

In the meantime, I’ve been also planning on finishing up ‘Spit Takes‘ which did start filming last year, but due to a severe lack of people available at the time, never got completed. But there are more people available down here at the moment, so that’ll also probably get done whilst Ross and Sash are away.

Didn’t get any ‘2nd unit’ shoot stuff done, nor have I bothered to get any more screen caps made. But that’ll be done sometime later in the next few days. Waking up today, I actually got into the groove of enjoying a weekend off and really, properly stayed in bed for the most of the day watching the rest of Green Wing and such. Great stuff. I’m in love with Sue White.

Pictures of You – Day 26 blog

Fri, 2 Feb 2007

Raglan day today.

Spent today shooting in and around Raglan. Plot heavy stuff, but it was awesome to finally use a tripod for the first time this shoot in a totally wrong way, hanging out of the back of a car again to shoot moving car shots and filming an entire scene during magic hour on a cliff edge area with a fantastic sunset/cloud setting.

Taken off with the tapes again to get some screen captures for this blog, but they probably won’t be up till tomorrow evening as I’m actually pretty tired from today’s activities and much sleeping and hopefully, sleeping in is needed.

Today is actually one of the last days of shoot. I’ll be spending some of this weekend alone to shoot some cutaway shots we’ve missed or left till later to shoot. And our next proper day isn’t till Friday evening for some pick-ups and a couple of other scenes to be shot next weekend. So pretty soon, principal photography is going to end for this film. And I’ll be having nothing to do.

Contemplating writing a short film to possibly make this week. Playing with the idea of making something to put at the start of the film, kinda like those cartoons they’d have at the start of old movies. Normally I’d be too lazy to do such a thing, but the energy from this film being so independant, and the ammount of tweaking I’ve worked and have control over our camera and lights now, I just can’t stop and I won’t be stopped. It’s awesome.

Pictures of You – Day 25 blog

Long day and post today.

Got up early to go to uni (which is still appropriately strange) and sat in on ITS to do an interview for the summer school students and for Big TV, which was fun to sit in on and watch students running around.

But then it was a break till 2pm and then onto shooting an interior, Boys High around 5 and then an exterior party scene at night.

I love shooting interior scenes, you can have so much control over the look and the lighting, its awesome. Even with just three lights, you can make some shots just look uber pretty. Same thing goes for night shoots, you can really play around with the lighting on them and make use of the darkness around the edges and such.

In fact, I’d say that today was my happiest day of shooting in terms of getting great looking shots. Seriously, at least 80% of the setups we used had at least some certain element in it that made me whimper with delight… especially the night/party scenes… there was this one setup… dear god, I’ll be posting a screen cap of it real soon.

We were also lucky as hell at the end of the night. Got the very last shot done and just a few minutes later… boom, lights go out, whole grid has a blackout. Had to pack up by flashlight at 1 in the morning, but we got the shots and thank god we weren’t that overtime.

Oh and I finally color bar’d to exactly –:30:00 tonight… finally after 27 tapes, it was the 28th one I’d finally done it… bloody hell.

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Pictures of You – Day 24

Thu, 1 Feb 2007

Bad day today.

Shot off one exterior scene which was no problem and then moved onto shooting another scene on a bus, which was done really quickly and within five minutes. Awesome, until we broke for lunch and realised near the end of it, that we’d left a camera bag full of leads, tapes and discs… thankfully no camera, but the rest of the day was spent stressing, chasing buses and making phone calls all over town. So far the bag is still at large and if you see a blue camera bag full of stuff, please report it as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, I personally had a downer of a day. Spent most of the morning to try and muster up the balls to contact someone and when I did, got no reply, which made me really wonder how things had gotten so bad between us when I’m still not even sure if it is. How is it possible for one to simply cut off someone seemingly right out of their lives? And how does that justify what was previously good? Well it put me in a weird place this evening after everything and I ended up randomly drinking and eating with a guy and his parents I ran into in town. Of course, the liquor didn’t help my mood, but at least the strangeness of the situation put me off from some proper thinking.

Anyway, here’s a trailer for an upcoming kick arse movie I know many will appreciate.

And here’s Bill Gates on the fantastic Daily Show.

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