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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Meanwhile… the hit counter is currently at 1002. If no one claims being 1000, closest winner will be going to Joe, although the prize still remains unknown as of yet. Although, this would be pretty neat-o.

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.

Currently at 984 hits on the main page. Send proof your number 1000 (alt+print screen) and you’ll recieve an as of yet, unnamed prize.

Finally!

Wed, 31 Jan 2007

Returns!

To clarify, I forgot a payment for the webspace and the hosting server was getting an upgrade. Lo and behold, bad luck and all that, website was down for a bit longer than it should have. But I’m back now AND with a new password that wasn’t not sent to me, taunting me that website was on, but updatable.

While down, I’ve still been creating posts to blogger, but they just haven’t been going anywhere. So your not missing anything.

Plus it turn out that there seems to be quite the amount of readers of this blog now, which is cool, and from the webstats, this site is going to hit 1000 visitors really soon… awesomeness.

Pictures of You – Day 23 blog

Long freakin’ day today.

Started at 9, shooting a scene at the museum which was fun, although we went a little overtime, which would have been okay, but I had an appointment to run off to, which didn’t go overtime, but by the time I was done, I had to run off to the next location to set up for a bar/band scene, which looked great, but at this point, I was running on no food, heat exhaustion and a headache the size of a walnut… made of cyanide.

Managed to finish just at midnight, though we had to scrap a couple of shots planned for magic hour cause we didn’t want to lose the small amount of extras we had at the time. Why is it so hard to find extras sometimes? Ah well.

Also got to finally do a cameo in the film… playing a drunk patron, dragged out on his arse by security. Even got to fire off a string of profane one liners for the role. Described as Will Farrel and Kevin Smith gone wrong, I shot off lines along the lines of “aw… hairy sweaty balls on your chin” and “goddamn shit in your cereal”… awesome.

Also got some interesting good news regarding the film commission, though I probably can’t say much about it and I won’t. Though it does bear potentialness for awesomeness.

But by the end of the day, ie now, I’m feeling like crap and not really looking forward to tomorrow. So not feeling it this week I think.

Still not fully connected to blog yet, though website is back online, I can’t connect to it due to a password change malfunction and you probably won’t be reading this anytime until some time since posting like so many previous posts as well. But heres a funny music video classic none-the-less…

Dead Chris Day 3

Tue, 30 Jan 2007

Only the third day? That can’t be right.

Anyway, today was much sleeping and forgetting it was my birthday. And then I remembered it was my birthday and more sleeping ensued.

Tomorrow is a big long day of filming from eight at the museum to just past midnight at the University again… so more sleep is needed.

Discovered this which made me smile…

And now off to sleep.

Pictures of You – Day 22 blog

Sun, 28 Jan 2007

Still no website? Ah well… A good day, shot another interior scene and got to use more lights and gels. Pretty lights and gels. Rooms heat up really quickly under the lights we’re using, so once a take is done, its usually a mad scramble out of the room in an attempt to breathe some air thats not filled with hideous ammounts of sweat.

We then broke for a bit and took off to Cambridge to shoot a road scene. And I had quite a bit of fun on that one as you’ll see here.

Tomorrow we get a day off. It’ll be my birthday and I’ll be doing absolutely nothing! Awesome.

Pictures of You – Day 21 blog

Sat, 27 Jan 2007

Looks out window… snif… still no website.

But shot a hospital corridor scene at… (drum roll)… the University of Waikato! Dressed up the English department to look like a hospital corridor with extras and pot plants. Hopefully it’ll look like a hospital corridor to others, to me, looking at the footage, it looks like the University of Waikato’s English department, but to the uneducated eye, it may look different.

But got two more dialogue heavy scenes off. Still about a weeks shoot left to go. Hooray and aww for the end.

Hopefully tomorrows blog will actually be on a website. Else this post is just going to nowhere… how strange would that be?

Pictures of You – Day 19/20 blog

The internet hates me and I have a bad tendency of forgetting to pay my internet space bill. But filming chugs along as usual and I write this post knowing it wont be seen til at least another day or twos time.

It’s like I’m talking to the future!

Anyway, tonight the show reel is finally approved and posted to youtube. Viewable either here or just…