Funny, I can’t think of anything to post tonight, either I’ve been working too hard recently and just can’t think straight anymore, or I’ve suddenly become so delusional that all the stuff I wanted to post about while this blog was down are just downright boring. I blame our robot overlords.

So I’ll just do a recap of our 48 activity…

This year we once again entered into and competed in the V 48 Hour Filmmaking Competition where we drew horror as our genre and from what I gathered from the screening is that people generally liked it and were both disguisted, horrified and laughing at the same time, which is great, cause that was exactly our intention with the short.

Initially, I hated it upon submittal and thought we’d done a poor effort, or, I should really correct myself as everyone involved were awesome above and beyond the call of awesome duty. But at that point, I felt I had done a poor effort and not spent enough time editing the film together and getting the pacing just right and all sorts of blah, blah, blah, that was capped off with having only 25 minutes to go and our first few go’s of capturing the film back to tape were resulting in no sound (and lots of cursing from me). We only just barely made it in with roughly four minutes to the deadline and at that point, we had not watched the film in whole and only seen it in bits and pieces as there just wasn’t enough time during editing to watch it right through. So it was actually the heats screening where I got to watch it as a whole (due to a new rule of not being allowed to watch it at all by anyone after submittal) and with the bonus of having a full audience there as well, where we got the satisfaction of an audience ‘getting it’, or about as close to getting it, as it’s quite a dipolar film in its shock horror and comedy.

The thing I’m most proud of “Sum of All Parts” (films title) is the music by the good Ben Woollen and apart from caring if we make it to the city finals (just to be on the DVD, fingers crossed), is that he gets some recognition or something for the totally awesome music he contributed to the film, which truly made the bastard work. But we’ll see as there’s still five days to go till the city finalists are announced and a further nine days after that till the actual finals. Time be a bitch.

Anyway, the best part about doing the 48, apart from having done it, is that my energy and enthusiasm levels have once again come back up and I’m back in the routine of doing things to get things done. Or at least I’d like to think that’s the case. It’s part of why I’ve fasttracked this site back up and I’m back to planning a whole bunch of projects to be done which will be announced in due time. It’s good to be busy again. Thanks Chuck Norris.

Oh, one video/song I love and remembered to post… Cup of Brown Joy by Elemental. I have no idea who he is, but this video is great.

So where the hell have I been? Everytime I wake up in the morning, I ask myself that same question. Usually followed by what the hell is a traffic cone, orange wig, empty cases of import beer and one pissed off monkey doing in my room? But enough about how I cured cancer, on with the update…

The deadly life threatening flu that I contracted has all but gone and has dropped down to orange alert, annoying tickling cough. Would have been over it faster, but have been keeping myself way too busy, mostly with video store work and helping out on a wintec short film, which has been interesting to say the least. Lots of very cool gear being used and at one point, there was a 30 ft crane on set that had me changing my pants several times from pure delight. But the set is on a farm that was at first stinking to high heaven of sheep shit and now after some wonderful winter weather, reduced to a mud field of very squishy proportions. Its not so bad, but for some reason, walking around the dark at night, the constant squishing sounds of the mud just gets to me, even though no said liquids are in contact with my person. Washing machine is getting its run for its money though.

Best part about this is the fact that to both of our surprises, my friend Rob who disappeared from my life years ago to Wellington, turned up out of the blue for this film and he’s awesome and reads this blog. But yeah, its an interesting shoot and only being a helping hand on this one, it’s always still facinating to me to watch how other people’s productions run. Especially the other low budget stuff, its almost overkill how professional this shoot is, there are a couple of industry professionals here and the set ups are being rigged in a very industry professional manner and that on the level of this kind of production is making for facinating sideline viewing for me. Details another time no doubt.

At the same time, I’ve been juggling my work and pulled off the ridiculous amount of hours at the video store this weekend (28ish in 48 hours), but meh I say. Worst off is the fact I have a couple of corporate videos that need cutting and the deadline is only a few days away and the time to do so is getting tight. Oh and forgot to mention earlier, but the damn computer with Pictures of You on it is now sitting in my room waiting for me to start chopping into it as well, that’s my job on it now, but that’ll have to wait just a bit longer as I vainly attempt to clear up my workload.

Also to mention, I finally got myself a copy of Auckland’s international film festival booklet and as thought, the list is sweet. Already planned several times to just go up and watch as much cool stuff as possible. One particular weekend has about nine films pencilled in as “yeah, I’d really like to go to this one and that one and oh, this one will be cool” blah, blah, blah. Fact that I’m working this year will probably mean I’ll be seening more festival films in Auckland than I did last year when I was living there. Go figure.

Oh yeah, and the national winner of the 48 Hour competition was announced tonight. Hamilton’s entry didn’t win and to my disappointment, Lemonade Coup didn’t get Cinematography (though they still get a nice panasonic dvx102… dastards), but it was a very interesting line-up of finalists. Auckland’s finalist was a surprising winner and it’ll be interesting to see how it actually compares to their finalists. My bet was on the Christchurch entry that come in second and was just great, but in the end, Lease, one of Peter Jackon’s wild card entries took the top spot.

Now its off to some much needed sleep, been getting so little in the past week, and that’s not gonna let up for a few more days, so here is two highly amusing videos of street magic and stuff.

I’m typing this on my own computer now, which is such a welcomed change as I find it really hard to type on particular keyboards. One of my anal retentive issues I’ve got with have that particular clicking noise that I’ve got to have.

But yeah, this is really still a kind of temporary thing. The computer is only hooked up through a really long cord across the house as we’re still waiting on the landlord to get back to us on drilling a hole in the corner to feed the cables under the house. Another problem from that is that despite this house being totally awesome old and pretty, is it’s ridiculously cold at almost all times of the day. The heater I bought (as my old and much bigger and better one was lost in my absent moving period) isn’t heating up as big of a room as I’d hope it would and I’m only getting mildly not cold temperatures going on. The rest of the house, like the hallway for example are like giant, pretty looking meat rooms with steamy breaths and everything going on wherever you are. I can’t wait for winter to end as this house will be great in the summer, but so far a deathtrap in the winter.

Oh and finally got results back today on our 48 hour film and how its done as a possible wild card selectee… nada! I never thought I’d be selected and once again, I’m right. So the big win is now I finally get to post it out online to the world for all of you to see. So without further ado, here is our entry into the 2007 V 48 Hour Furious Filmmaking Competition… Flash Sanders: Funk Detective.

Flash Sanders: Funk Detective recieved the following wins: Best Costume, Best Editing and City Runner Up Award. It also received nominations for Best Art Direction, Best Score, Best Actor and V Most Manic Performance.

I was so sure that either I’ll Die Before I Go Back or Shiseido and Jerry were going to win best and runner up for the region, but it was instead taken by The Playground which was alright, but yeah… what a surprise.

But this now means we’re not completely out of the competition and our film will now be sent down to Peter Jackson to check out and be screened with all the other tops and runner ups to be possibly selected as a wild card and added in with the national competitors. Not bagging on that happening, but I am just stoked enough with how we did last night. Only thing, I really wish Sash got something for his performance, he was great as Flash. Overall it was a good night (drinking and hangover now) and I’m slowly getting into the grove of wanting to do it again next year.

Oh yeah, it also means I still can’t post the short up on youtube until I get word back on how we do as a wildcard selectee. But we’ll get there. Eventually.

So the top 12 list has been announced and it looks like our short Flash Sanders: Funk Detective is among them, which I’m totally stoked about as it means we’re on the DVD and that’s all I need really. This Thursday will be the finals and I’ve got my bet on at least two films that are pretty top marked contenders to take away the region’s best award. Actually, one in particular I think is pretty damn awesome in everything it did, from the story structure to the acting to the very excellent intergration of the three required elements of a rope, the line “what do you call that” and a character named Jerry/Geri Reed/Reid, hypochondriac.

Still in the slow process of moving house… it’s slow.

And meanwhile Terry Gilliam is going to direct an Opera Andrea Chénier and has made the best casting choice ever for his new film The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus… bad ass mother Tom Waits.

And here’s a trailer for John Dahl’s new movie called You Kill Me, which stars Ben Kingsley as an alcoholic hit man and the trailer looks alright, but I’ve got a feeling it’s hiding stuff that’s cooler. Download it here.

Holy crap, been both busy and lazy in a wonderful combination.

Just recently I’ve had piles of tapes to review, CDs to listen to, assignments to mark and just DVDs to watch and in my current tiny room it’s all be piling up in a rather impressive mess. My windows desktop is also pretty cluttered and there are windows, each filled with tabs of stuff I’ve been meaning to post, including a blog entry from a couple of days ago which was half finished and totally scrapped in the end. But its almost all gone now. Almost…

So to recap recent events… the 48 Hour Competition film screenings have been going on this week. Monday was a horrible start, but since then the quality of the films have been phenomenal. Tonight is the last screening and the finalists get announced on Monday, I’m not too fussed how ours will fare, but it sure as hell has been fun.

Moving into a new empty and totally awesome house. Slowly bit by bit I’m moving more and more stuff into my large, but still empty room. Next week will see a bed and shelves and drawers making their way in, but there are still some bits of furniture and stuff that I’ve got to track down somewhere in this country.

And we shall be having a flat warming on the 16th this month, hopefully once we have stuff and furniture and everything else sorted and in there. Cause at the moment its really bare and empty, but totally awesome, cause its like something should be filmed in there.

And to be able to close some tabs, here are some stuff from the web…

Trailers for Michael Moore’s new film Sicko viewable here and a sneak peak here.

And just the coolest thing ever, if anyone is familar with Boston Legal and there was that really irritating newsreporter woman. Well, that’s Nancy Grace and what her producer does to her on her show in this clip is pure awesome. You could cut glass with just how awesome she is.

Plus friend Sean’s entry into the Auckland 48 Hour film competition. Goddamnit they were 30 seconds late in, but this is one damn good short.

Spent the good portion of today catching up on some really awesome sleep. In fact the shower I eventually had last night was quite possibly one of the best showers I’ve had. Filming and editing like crazy the whole weekend can really take it out of you. Next week the heats are being screened at uni, mine is during the second heat on Wednesday night, and I’m looking forward to it along with a whole lot of others. Would love to go to all four of them, but I think I might be missing out on one.

After the competition, I’d vowed to stay away from filmmaking and films in general for a while. And then this evening was reminded I was to attend a student shoot to supervise and took off not long after checking that all was well to watch a movie. Now I’ve got a copy of Tideland sitting in front of me, that I’ve been meaning to watch and return to its rightful owner for sometime now. Zodiac tomorrow night and some teaching at the end of the week. There is also an upcoming short film at wintec I should get onto helping prep for, editing on Pictures of You which I should get back into and a footage for a musician’s promo I should really start cutting together. I’m not complaining, I just wanted at least a week or so to break away from it all.

Also it’s been pointed out to me that this website and this blog is coming up on one year since being created. Checking in on the first post, I started blogging this site just after last year’s 48 Hour film competition where I was taken advantage of while drunk and forced into a polar bear costume for a friend that morning and eventually got more drunk by the end of the day to most recieve a most amusing of injuries… happy birthday website.

And so the 48 Hour Film Competition has ended and this weekend, has made it onto one of the top spots in my ever so hard to remember list of really perceptively long periods of time. And thus, I will hold off a much needed shower to post a blog to try to recap the events…

7pm Friday, I’m at the museum a few beers down and pulling out the Genre… Grindhouse. Although I was personally hoping for Unnecessary Sequel or Based On True Story, we had a very fun idea for Grindhouse and got to writing it.

By about 11pm, we’d gotten pretty much a decent script, made with the attitude of Blaxploitation films entitled “Flash Sanders: Funk Detective”.

At around midnight or just after, we were at our first location, which was the Chartwell mall’s new carpark, which I have always made a note that it’s lights were always on. So we go to filming and very pretty filming it was, but with about two more shots left to shoot for the opening, we got an overzealous janitor or employee of some kind kicking us out and vowing for revenge.

New location and we shoot the next scene somewhere else on the streets instead. Nice and brief and then its off to another location: an underpass in Hillcrest which probably holds the title of most overused location in a low budget student level production. But the shots look good and by the time we were done it was 5 in the morning.

Got back to Sash’s house which fronted as our base of operations and I got onto capturing our footage and cutting some of it. Sleep eventually came after that.

About 10 in the morning, I’m awake and editing again. Midday we discover that our very cool and very pretty opening we shot, we couldn’t get permission to use as a location. Trying not to think about it, we started shooting at the Academy at 3pm, which took a bit longer than expected and by the time we were outside and shooting the ending, we were losing light fast and with some rapid filming, got it done and cut together, the scene amusingly goes from day to night rather fast. But it still worked and that’s okay.

Shot a few more bits in the night and the back to base for more editing for me and food mostly for others. At this point we’d not really assessed the situation of our unusable opening, but problem solving eventually came in the end, I’ll associate the idea coming mostly with the music we eventually got and listening to it over and over again I just couldn’t shake the idea of a tv movie like opening, and so off to uni at about midnight to film some crazy shots of all sorts, including a dummy being thrown off a building, which looked great.

Back again to base at 3 in the morning for some more inspired filming and then more editing for me. A little sleep and its onto more editing in the morning.

At this point, I’m hating editing.

The rest of Sunday was spent editing and waiting for stress and editing some more and waiting for more stress. But I got the edit together by 3pm and very tightly cut too. Spent the rest of the time fixing audio an adding foley and wishing I had more time to colour correct, which I didn’t even get to do to one frame of the film unfortunately. But the raw footage still looks good.

Our tape got handed in with ten minutes to go, but man… there were some really close entries going on. One guy made it with a few seconds to go, but he had no tape as the laptop and camera he was running and printing with at the same time had stopped printing. And another team turned up no more than twenty seconds after the deadline had closed. Total madness and there were actually quite a few teams that didn’t make it on time and a lot more horror stories of things being told.

Overall it was a helluva lot of fun. I pretty much hit a magic high of tiredness at some point on Saturday evening and have been riding it out all the way up til now (its almost two in the morning).

It was kinda dumb of me to be doing all the directing, filming, audio and editing of the film… Prior to the competition, I’d been prepping people and making sure I’d have lots and lots of people on hand all over the city for whatever situation and genre we’d get. In the end, I used none of the contacts and starting here, I must apologise to many and all for kinda losing contact with, not keeping up to date or just zoning out of reality during the competition. It was pretty insane and once caught up in it, really hard to focus on anything else in the world. But it worked itself out in the end and to most satisfying and amusing results. We’ve watched the film a couple of times since handing it in to put our minds to rest, but crazily enough we still found it funny even after the million time of watching it… probably cause we were so tired and strung out at that point. Or at least that’s how I see it.

This post is just phenominally huge. And its probably full of crazy jibber jabber and if you’ve actually read down this far, holy crap, congrats to you. Here are good looking images for you trouble.

*temporarily gone*

We’ve got our genre (Grindhouse) tonight and we’re happy. It’s at least not the genre we didn’t want.

On the road right now, we’ve just finished our script entitled Flash Sanders, Funk Detective and we’re about to head out to our first shoot.

Gonna try and keep updating this as we go, but can’t garuantee its consistency. Couldn’t get the TXT to blog thing to work on time, so whatever.

Off we go.

The weekend turned out to be a bit of madness for me. Madness in the sense that I went to bed on the Saturday night (technically Sunday morning, but time is irrelevant in my world) and almost like a drunken bender came out of it on the Monday afternoon wondering where my day had gone. I must have been in and out of slumber over a twenty something period, catching up on all the late nights and little sleep I’d been getting for the past couple of weeks. It was very weird and disorientating and really, it wasn’t until the Tuesday morning that I felt more proper and right for the world.

Since then, there has been some more prepping for the 48. Turns out that our team is in the same heat as some other friendly competition (yeah, you know who you are) and last years winner of the cinematography prize. I myself am quite conflicted in which I want to compete for. By far, the best cinematography win will come out with a much better prize and something I’d totally laud over and rub all over my body with (a camera just to clear up), but winning overall for the region is just as good. Secretly I want to win something, but overall I just want to have a lot of fun doing this. As its been a crazy amount of work recently, but after this it’ll be some down time with just the editing of Pictures of You to concentrate on and to do the 48 hour competition and just have fun with it will be a great transition between the two.

Other than that, the only other thing that’s been really making me feel all so sexily giddy inside is the growing coverage of Wong Kar Wai’s new film My Blueberry Nights, which features the always hot Norah Jones and in WKW’s hands, super-hot. Witness the Cannes poster of awesome here, the stills of sexy here, here and here and the first trailer of pure p0wnage here.