Realising to myself I haven’t updated the blog in several days, which is pretty slack by recent standards, but I have been a tad busy lately… And its starting to get very cold around now, really quickly…

Picked up a ridiculous amount of video store hours this week which is almost killing my social life if I actually had one. Though there are some small drinks planned this weekend, which will no doubt feel very deserved.

Editing on Pictures of You continues and starting to take shape and form more and more. A minor set back of hard drive space happening when it was realised the external purchased by Ben was a USB and not firewire… silly, silly man.

Spit-Takes: A Mouthful of Comedy is almost done shooting! After much shooting over each other’s clashing schedules, there just remains voice overs, a cafe scene and miscellaneous montage shots to be done. It’s good considering daylight savings has kicked in and that leaves a lot less time to shoot during the day by our timing of things. Editing commencing soon too.

In negotiations for a job for the museum, but that’s at a really early process and not much can be said about so.

Oh, and I’m now a paid tutor at Uni starting Thursday. Which just gets the mega lolz from people considering I dropped out of that place years ago. It’ll be interesting to see how this situation will turn out. No doubt it’ll involve masses of students, things on fire, a small child saying “don’t drink the water” and me riding a rhino into battle… Awesome.

But not quite as awesome as blowing up super-huge sand sculptures and playing them backwards, in reverse…

There was also a really cool Stardust trailer-of-sorts up on Youtube over the weekend, but it looks like that’s been taken down. It was very loose in how it was put together and obviously not the proper final trailer (much like the first 300 one), but the film looks really good and with such an awesome cast and being based on one of my (if not the) favourite books, it’s gonna be great. I always dreamed I’d adapt or be involved in adapting it into a film, but it looks like they’ve done it right with this one and besides, I’ve still got my plans for that Tolkien rings thing book and that one about that English boy and magic school… Oh… wait…

Got back today from a rather brief visit to Auckland. Took a semi-impromptu trip up Sunday night and drank somewhat and got to finally catch up with a lot of friends I had not seen a long time (and film them spitting like crazy). There were also many I’d not managed to catch up with, but that’ll have to be for the next time, which will hopefully be not as long of a period as the last one.

Had quite a few things to mention and talk about, but its been a rather long day, and my mind is currently drawing a blank on a lot of things. Tomorrow I’ll be making the first (and with luck not the last) trip to Uni to give a helping hand and special guest tutoring a Screen and Media class. Thoughts of totally screwing with first year students are currently revolving around my head and I like it.

If I’ll have time tomorrow, I’ll be starting the capturing and editing of footage for Spit-Takes too. Gonna fast track its production and hopefully have a decent cut set and ready by next week. Of course, there is a lot of work and things like saving people from burning buildings to be done this week, so it’ll be a little small mission to get done. After defeating the Martian-Walrus-People that is.

And now… here’s a silly fun office related ad that I really liked…

A fucking short version of the Departed…

And finally, another 300 trailer, this time its extended, uncut and probably uncensored. Plus, if you pause it at the 1:52 mark, there is a flash frame of a test shot from Watchmen… Frank Miller, Alan Moore, lots of blood and nipples, what more can you ask for?

Oh yeah… Hot Fuzz coming out Thursday, I’m so freaking turned on now.

Update on Pictures of You… All 30-something hours of footage is currently being captured to Ben’s mac. Editing is slowly underway as its always a juggling act to do that and work and socialise and so on and so forth. But the footage is looking good and an idea of the pace of the film and its editing is slowly revealing itself. This weekend we plan to do some pick-up shots of around the city for various cutaways and stuff we never bothered doing during the production.

There was actually a really crazy cool sunset yesterday with dark clouds all around and through a small gap on the horizon, the sun was shining through and it golden light created this eerie spot like effect on the trees I was driving past. Upon seeing this, I stopped, spun my car the hell around and raced to Ben’s to pick up the camera to shoot this awesomeness, but by the time I was there, the clouds had moved on too fast and the lighting was lost. Real shame as it was pretty spectacular.

Also more shooting of Spit-Takes this weekend. With some luck, the rest of the bulk of the footage will be done and I’ll start on the editing next week (once I clear out my hard drive as well), with just the odd pickup for The Montage here and there. Kinda curious if the sound is going to be a problem as audio is only being captured in camera, as after the “bus incident”, there is no connection for the shotgun mic to the camera itself. Hooray for post sound!

Long day of work tomorrow and hopefully some wake boarding and/or at least some live music. Gonna be a good one.

Here’s a flute/beat boxer and zombie jesus.

After hours of encoding after work this evening, setting up a new template and creating new sub sections for the film and photo pages, staring at the screen, listening to Tom Waits albums, I hit the upload button and find that I’m unable to make a connection. Hopefully the account hasn’t been screwed around again, cause the last time this happened, there was a week of downtime and that sucked. Hopefully one will be able to read this within a day or two after saving this post to blogger.

But yeah, at this point a new Pictures of You, Spit-Takes and Wholesale subsection has been created and a photo gallery will soon be filled up with lots of behind the scenes photos from Pictures of You once I’ve decided on an appropriate image gallery viewing system. The one at the moment is just a test and images selected are just displayed in full as they are without text or anything else and that’s just boring. Just learning some new java and CSS codes that’ll hopefully make things prettier.

I’m writing all this dull webbuilding jibberish cause I know by the time things go back to normal, this post will probably be way old and something to just skim past…

Actually… I just gave it another shot and I’m now logged in. Hooray! Would delete this post and start again, but screw it, let the uploading begin.

Just to make this not all about boring HTML and stuff, here’s an interesting article on a most interesting concept… eco-capitalism.

Got some filming of Spit-Takes done yesterday evening and photography is now about 45% complete. Tried to do a few more shots today or at least some for The Montage, but no one was available at any point for some strange reason. Stupid guerrilla film making.

But with some luck, the majority of filming will be done by the end of this week with just the montage to finish off. Editing shall be started soon, with hopefully not much disorganised footage to plough through. I’m quite happy with how its turning out so far and if done in time, it’ll be most worthy of submitting into film festivals around the place.

Here’s just how classy we are…

On another note, big congrats to Joe and Marama on their recent betrothal. I’ve had a long day of not doing much and things not all going to plan, but coming home to read this news of theirs made me warm and fuzzy inside.

And I was gonna write up some other stuff, but I just got a phone call from Director Ben and a rather big problem in the Pictures of You editing has just occurred and I must be off.

Some issues with blogger and little bits of apathy prevented any posts from happening this week. Plus there was actually a lot of working during the day and editing during the night that kept this site at bay.

We had our Pictures of You wrap party on Friday which was a nice affair to see people again, catch up, drink and look totally ridiculous. A big happy birthday to Old Friend Scott for yesterday… I spent Saturday well and truely hungover all day and sleeping and eating a lot and the recovery was just in time for me to work a graveyard shift where once again, I watched movies, read comics and abused drunk customers (orientation week man…). Just about to head out to film some more of Spit-Takes and knowing that I’m not gonna watch enough on a cheap Tuesday, thinking of going to a film tonight… Oscar season, always too many to go to.

Quickies… Proof that the universe’s karma is against me, Penn Radio which I’ve recently been listening a lot, had its last show on Friday. Which is a shame but I think its missing out on the rest of a Moon Landing conspiracy thread you can download the casts here and here. Which is facinating stuff, but we’ll probably never hear the conclusion to it.

The new trailer for Paprika is out and just simply look amazing. Satoshi Kon is one of my favourite directors and everything he makes and touches turns to edible gold. Watch any or all of his previous works and you won’t be disappointed, my personal favourite is either Perfect Blue or Millennium Actress… Actually I really love the series Paranoia Agent, which would just leave out Tokyo Godfathers, but I loved that film too… screw it, trailers here.

Started out Friday with very little sleep, worked, rested, filmed a charity auction (with beer) and then played poker (with burbon), slept for two hours and then with a hangover in hand worked for just over eleven, then hung out with more people (more burbon and then rum), but not for too long as hangover was still hovering above my tired body at that point. Eventually slept for many many hours and woke up this afternoon not feeling very filmmaker like much to my disappointment (sorry Ross). Will have to reschedule Spit-Takes for another day (not too far away). Today was also friend Zoe’s birthday, where eating and drinking wine out of a jar (classy) took place and now I sit content to not be doing much.

Have started using tags for this website and have been attempting to tag previous posts, but there have now been over 100 made and that makes for a lot of clicking and tagging… ah well.

For coolness, here are a series of photos taken at just the right angle with just the right object, creating some of the coolest illusions around. Click on the sample photo for more.

And on my recent occasional visit to the Mountain Goats site where I wait with bated breath for their next New Zealand tour, I’ve noticed their website has had a new design. Do I mention how much I love the Mountain Goats enough here? Do you love the Mountain Goats? If you don’t, that makes you a communist. Forever I’ll have Rob to thank for introducing me to them on a fateful drive to Wellington, thus allowing me to pass the Mountain Goats love to a good portion of Hamilton. I wonder if he still reads this site… if you do… sup.

Here’s “No Children” live…

Found myself constantly thirsty and drinking large quantities of liquids today. And it wasn’t really the heat or anything, I just felt the need to drink rehydrate myself all the time and one after the other it wouldn’t stop. Totally strange and I blame the mustache for it. This bastard has got to go sometime, but at the same time I am drawn to its magical healing abilities and wonder if I should keep it or not. Then again, it would also make it easier on the totally-not-imaginary girls that keep throwing themselves at me. I rule.

But shot off a bit more of Spit-Takes today and have Sunday penciled in to shoot some of the actual more important scenes of the film. Total progress on Spit-Takes so far… about 6% filmed. Estimated after Sunday… 80%

Also filming a benefit function tomorrow evening and is currently in brainstorming mode over making some TV ads for the local Auter House video store… Which, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned here or not, but if you live in Hamilton and you like good decent films, go there for all your good shit rental needs. Their selection is awesome and they even rent Criterion copies and everyone knows Criterions make me wet my pants in orgasmic delight.

Plus, from Tanya’s site, is a really awesome write up on her thats on the New Zealand Herald site that you will read here. I’m not sure if it was in the papers as well (most likely) but its totally awesome, even if its about myspace the Tanya factor negates the -3 effect of myspace… which reminds me I have to check my profile again… Right after I gather more offerings for the magical healing Jebus mustache.

I’ve just come to the realisation that since starting ‘work’ up again, I’ve become a tad complacent. I’ve not shot anything more of spit-takes and haven’t aspired to doing any else much either. A tad worrying, but at least this issue has been noted early.

Tomorrow is also pay day for me and its going to be the most awesome feeling in the whole world. After over a year of poverty, I’m now gonna have an income and be able to buy stuff. Of course, I’m saving it all (70% of all) for whatever the hell I do next in the not too distant future.

Also today, I’ve been having the incredible hankering to go on a road trip, or to just get the hell out of the city and chase the country-side for a while. I’ve been driving around a bit at night and find myself just stopping on the outskirts of town to hang out under the stars which is totally awesome and it’s not a normal feeling for me, but I’m feeling a tad nomadic at the moment and feel like travelling a bit. Ah well.

In other, more interesting news, big congrats to Marama and Joe and Brad and all at Down by the Riverside as their IMDb page has recently gone up (I think today), which coincides with the whole site itself getting a new look (like as of a couple of hours ago)… Shiny. I remember when I first discovered IMDb in 1999 (whoa) and how its awesomeness blew me away as it still does so today. I think the film I was first looking up stuff on what Big Trouble in Little China which is also still awesome today.

New, third Simpsons film trailer is out and formats viewable here, or hi res quicktime downloadable straight from here.

Also been finding myself listening to lots and lots of podcasts of Penn Radio, which is a great listen to and I’d recommend checking out one or two if you’ve got the spare time.

Also just realised I missed out on cheap Tuesday at the movies today. Though I’ve been watching a lot of a films from the store (a lot), there are still so many I want to see at the cinemas now. Thank Jebus I’m working though, it may make going on any other day a tad more bearable.

Finally, some Morphine music video awesomeness…

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.