Workload has crept up on me out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere, I could have avoided such a pile up, but… meh… I’m still lethargic from the weekend. But in the next day or two I’ve got a stack of unmarked assignments to finish off, an article for the university’s magazine to write, video to edit and just general paperworks to sort out. Pity I used my recent day off to watch a whole season of the Sopranos instead.

Ah well, I’ll finish my shift tomorrow, mark the assignments, get annoyed and channel that energy towards the article (cheekily titled “I Hate It Here”) and by then, be so tired, I’ll hit a creative high in cutting together this video.

Meanwhile, just got off msn with Eric Zhang if those who read this know who that is. Bitch came back to New Zealand and is living in Dunedin at the moment doing doco research work, which is both cool and surprising. He’s also got a doco idea in the pipeline which sounds pretty damn interesting to say the least. But yeah, just thought I’d mention it, cause I’ve got to pad these posts a bit if there’s to be any regular updating.

Work, work, work. Right in the middle of my third weekend of overnight video store work, which means I’ve depressingly been having little of a social life, but I tell myself I’m doing these shifts so I’ll have ridiculous amounts of money to whore myself out to the Film Festival in Auckland. Next weekend will have me up there for a few days, scheduled the hell out to watch a lot of movies in a row. Plus drinking. Can’t forget that.

Anyway, with a new semester of uni just started up and plenty of fresh new students to pass down my knowledge and wisdom and to corrupt at the same time, I’ve also been right into the planning stages of another short film from wintec. This time with the more prestigious role of DOP and I’m gonna go all out to make this one both pretty and very fleshed out in its thinking of how the shots are composed, which means lots of storyboarding, shotlists, colour palettes and general filming dogmas to adhere to. Which is just gonna be fun.

Actually, I’ve been a little too focused on such things, I’ve slightly miscalculated my schedule and have to go to another shoot in five hours to also DP on. Better get some sleep from now till then, so here are some fun links…

Article on a man robbing a bank disguised as a tree can be read here.

And one on giant badgers terrorising an Iraqi port city to be read here.

Hilarity all around.

The week still keeps churning on. 12 hour day today of teach and work and not working and working again. Tomorrow morning is more work with not enough sleep to be had, and then up to Auckland for a few hours to watch Dylan Moran (yayness) and then back down again as there is more work to be had on the Saturday morning. Which, hopefully afterwards, reserves the weekend for some 48 hour planning, drinking and more planning.

Not much else, except for this awesome article curtsey of Robbie which I will just requote here…

ORLANDO, FL (AP) — A man dressed like a ninja broke into an Orlando home, smashed furniture, attacked two people and then vanished without a trace.

Three people were inside the home watching a movie Sunday afternoon when the ninja ran in, punched one man in the mouth and then kicked another man.

The victims — who did not want to be identified — reported that the costumed man slammed the DVD player and VCR into a dresser. Then he pulled out a knife and started waiving it around. The victims say the intruder didn’t steal anything from the house but took several pictures with his cell phone camera.

When it was time for the ninja to make his escape, he didn’t disappear in a cloud of smoke. The victims say the man ran down the street to a black BMW and drove off.

Which is just great, cause as I’ve said in the past, it’s scientifically proven that anything with a ninja in it is 150% cooler.

This also reminds me of an earlier article I read a couple of years ago and have lauded many times ever since. I can’t find the direct link for it anymore as it has probably been taken down from the CNN site, but thanks to the bloggers is available to be reposted here…

A 6-foot-tall, 275-pound bearded man crashed a children’s birthday party in Oak Forest, identified himself as “vengeance,” then helped himself to a piece of cake, police said.

The incident occurred earlier this month at a home in the 14800 block of South Landings Lane in the south suburb, Deputy Police Chief Nick Sparacino said.

When the owner of the home asked the man who he was, the intruder replied, “I am vengeance. I am the knight. I am Batman.” Then the man went into the kitchen, cut a piece of birthday cake, took it into the living room and ate it.

After continued questioning by the homeowner, the man left the house and drove off in a red 1988 Cadillac.

Hooray for such oddness and fun to be discovered in the world.

Bit of a good day today… Yesterday was just an absolute shit of a day were I was working at the video store and like some magical spark plug, just the right combination of customers put me in a really dark mood for the rest of the day. And it was only midday at that point. But today… today was absolute sunshine in comparison, and pretty sunny too. Actually, speaking of which, I meant to go see Sunshine on that Wednesday night, but it turns out the damn thing has already done its Hamilton run, that was a real downer for the rest of that crappy day, but yeah. Today. Good.

New rotation of students in VP1 and this time they were actually enthusiastic about film making, engaged in learning about some editing and responsive to discussions, which is just great and actually gave me a little hope for the future.

There were also some surreal moments seeing old friends around uni again. Craziest was (and Tanya you’ll dig this) seeing Kelly Williams at the grind cafe. She took off into the blue somewhere down south and wasn’t actually gone for long and came back. She’s just started managing the grind, so mucho coffee drinking shall be had there now.

And then talking to a friend in the carpark, I get a phone call from a Marie where, at first I thought it was a Marie that was giving me instructions on my filming job for next week, but instead talked about clients and deals and what nots to be done in Dunedin and Christchurch and stuff and it took me ages to click that this Marie has got the wrong number. And after much awkward silences and uh-huhs just trying to figure out how to break this to her, its like, we both just stop and go ‘hang on… who is this?’. Turns out it was a different Marie, but one I knew and she’d gotten mixed up and stuff, but we had a lovely catch up and all and it turns out she may have some video work for me soon. Which I’m just a whore for at the moment and loving it.

Even work was good and had some really nice customers and even the more annoying ones just didn’t seem to get to me. I have no idea why this was happening the whole day, but it was like nothing was really getting me down and I’m all about being down. And awesome.

Anyway, finished work late tonight and have picked up a class to take in the morning so sleep I must soon. Also realised a distinct lack of links and videos being posted recently, but that can wait til the next one.

I’m sitting here at six in the morning, bored and broken after a long haul of a graveyard shift. There is still an hour to go and it feel like an eternity away. So to whittle away the minutes and to make myself feel better, I’m putting a perspective on the week for this post…

Monday was a good start where I had coffee with a lady named Michelle who is interested in getting me on board as DP for her Wintec masters short film, yet to be titled. Very much enjoyed our discussion and I’ll probably take up her offer as we seem to get along well, which seems to be my deciding factor in a lot of things, don’t matter what quality the production is or will be, if the people are cool and fun enough, I’m in.

Tuesday was mad rush day as we prepped footage from Pictures of you to be taken by Paul the Producer down to Wellington. Almost all color correction I did to enhance the images was pretty nef and took too long to tinker with and render at that point, so I just left the colors as they are on the raw footage and they looked fine enough as they were.

Wednesday was just lots of running around and getting shit sorted for Auckland, where I met and chatted with a super cool lady who worked in many high ranking jobs for various companies and produced serveral albums, artists and music videos. I was there to discuss a small filming job coming up in a few weeks, but the cool factor came in when she saw some previous film stuff of mine and totally dug it, much to my suprise. She’ll be going to Australia in a couple of weeks to meet up with some pretty cool unnamable directors looking for young talent to work with and help launch and she wants to push for me to be one of them… awesome.

Also got word that day that Peter Jackson was now interested in seeing some footage from Pictures of You in a couple of weeks.

Thursday, Paul heads down to Wellington and I rush back to Hamilton to make it to the VP1 class and then work and then some editing. Very tired that day.

Friday was pretty much a Dead Chris Day filled with drinking and sleeping, until having to work a graveyard shift, which wasn’t so bad compared to tonight as Saturday was spent doing much more drinking and parties and hooray, engagement party of Joe and Marama where there was lots of happy in the air and pretty half arsed speeches were given. Well… from Joe anyway. But many people not seen for a while were seen again and that was cool. Plus word finally coming in from Paul the Producer in Wellington that people are digging the Pictures of You footage and the biggest compliment I’ve gotten yet of the fact that it was filmed on digital and not film as that’s what it looks like to many. Which is just too cool.

But now… now I’m at work, totally not wanting to be here and started the shift with one really nasty waking hangover… but then again, this particular shift pays really well and on nights like this where there are no customers all night, there is much lazing and relaxing to be done. I just finished watching Art School Confidential which I quite liked, but its so not as good as Bad Santa or the greatness that is Ghost World.

Sigh… One thing I noted at Joe and Marama’s was that constantly writing stuff to this blog for people to read is cool, but quite often now when I talk to friends and try to tell them stuff and news, they’ve already read about it and I’m left with not much else to say, which is sad when you think about it. My internet life is getting to be far more interesting than my real life.

Holy crap this is one long post and looking at the clock, I think I just got paid $10 sitting here and writing it. Life ain’t so bad sometimes.

Te he, got called into an emergency relief tutoring of VP2 this morning. Ended up rushing to the class and warping their fragile little minds with lots of mindless theoretical mumbo jumbo and crazy hand gestures, all to hide the fact that I was a little confused with the notes I was given and was pretty much improvising a great deal of the workshop.

But in the end I think (I hope) they got the general idea of what the point of the lesson is supposed to be… The camera being the audience’s eye and the world and verisimilitude created with the frame, along with the world outside of the frame to visually convey plot, character and emotion… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

At least, that’s what I think I meant. There were a few blank faces and I think one guy evaporated into dust, but that could have been from the heat too. Or he was a vampire. All the best to Marama in teaching them for the rest of the semester.

Also got another message at midnight from a friend about Jon, who has finally gotten his lung transplant operation approved and is probably undergoing surgery as of writing this. Its been a long wait and I’ve always hoped that this day would come and I hope he pulls through and in true Jon fashion. I know all us guys from high school are rooting for him and it’ll be an anxious wait for the results.

Now off to sleep for a bit, start a ten hour shift in less than five hours. Fun times.

So today was my first day as a tutor, which I still find hilariously ironic considering my past transgressions as a former student.

A little nervous at first with mild clouds of self doubt, but by the end of the class it was overcast with disappointment at only half the class turning up and blown away by the lacking empathy and response of students toward the wonderful medium of media.

But the chuckles are still there from being a tutor. I even prepared lots of stuff for viewing from really awesome music videos, to mock trailers, to really smart advertisements. Plus I finally get to utilise my Criterion copy of Brazil, all to show how the magical world of editing can be used to enhance, enrich, or totally screw up the intended meaning of a scene/film.

On other fronts, not a helluva lot going on. Been a little apathetic on things that I should really be doing and mixed in with working the mega-uber-dumb number of hours at the video whore, achievement points are at an all time low for the first time in a while.

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…