"Maltese Falcon" Shoot

Last week's shoot was frickin' awesome!
The day ran really smoothly, all the crew performed really well and we got all the footage we needed. I was well pleased because it was the first time for me on a shoot in which I had the dual role of Production Manager/ 1st AD.

Here's a few still frames from the 16mm film stock.
Unfortunately, the first three of these pictures have foggy, white lines running horizontally across the image. This was probably caused by light leaking onto the film during the recording process. I'm not sure how it happened exactly but the entire crew was acutely aware of the camera being unusually loud during these shots. This noise from the camera mechanism was screwing with our sound during these takes so we had to re-record the dialogue 'wild' and pray that we can sync it up during the edit. After the first couple of shots, I asked the Camera Assistant, Farnaz, to reload the camera magazine and the image was fine after that (see fourth picture.) except the camera was still fairly loud but no one on the crew could do anything about it that.

Yun, one of our highly skilled editors has tweaked this images a bit - raising the contrast to make all the shadows pure black, heightening the bold colours and adding a soft-focus 'vaseline' effect. Also, all images will be masked into a 16x9 screen ratio in the final edit.

The first one features our actors Greg Atkin (Spade) & Hélène Tardif (Effie).



This second one shows Arabella MacPherson (Miss Wanderly).



A close up of Greg.



A 2-shot of Arabella & Greg.



I'm incredibly happy with the results, especially when you consider that for about 4 days while we were waiting for the negatives to be developed and the telecine to be completed I was thinking that the light-leaked shots were going to be completely unusable and we would need to re-shoot half the production.
I'm so glad it didn't come to that!

I have to say that even though it was a long shoot (8am-7pm!) all the cast and crew were really committed, focused and professional. My lovely Maryann helped out by supplying catering for the everyone (couscous and two types of salad) and Kelly did an excellent job with make-up. Regardless of the results, I was really pleased by everyone's performance on the day.

Now I've just got to finish writing my script for my writing class and so it can be read-through on Wednesday.

I also had a chat with Jason on Thursday to get him to help with the design for Cherry Blossoms. I think he's got a damn fine sense of graphic composition so I'd like him to help with the overall style of the piece.

Steam and My New Perspective on Uni

My week of work experience at Steam Motion & Sound (a post-production house) was really enlightening. I got a good idea about what types of software is commonly used for post-production and what it’s used for. I also learned quite a bit about how creative people work within tight deadlines to deliver high-quality products. Sometimes the hours are long, but I got to see creative, professionals working efficiently and getting their various jobs done.

During the week, I watched a lot of green-screen work & compositing being performed which I hadn’t really witnessed previously. This has got me really excited because it has given me several clear ideas on how I could finish an old script idea of mine. I had an concept about three years ago for a cool animation, wrote the first draft of the script but didn’t really know what to do next. I don’t really have the patience for detailed illustrations, so I balked at the idea of drawing an animation frame by frame. Now I feel that I have a really clear plan for finishing this project. I can visualise the process involved and the software that I would use. I could get access to this expensive, industry-standard software on the computers at uni, so I think I’d like to attempt this as a side-project over the next few months.
The working title is Cherry Blossoms and I’d like to have it completed by the end of the year so watch this blog for updates…

At uni today we had another mini-film shoot, this time using 16mm cameras and sync-sound. I was being the sound recordist so for the most part I was able to concentrate on my thing, try to get good quality results and not worry too much about the other crew-members. But, in hindsight, I was a bit unhappy with the shoot because I felt that several people in the class hadn’t properly researched what was required for their specific crew roles within the group. This meant that a couple of vital members of the production crew didn’t really know what they were doing and had to rely on help from others which slowed the whole process down. I don’t really have a big problem with that because we’re all learning and we’re all doing new things in these classes – that’s what education is all about. However the attitude of one of these people bugged me a bit because he refused to listen to constructive advice from other crewmembers. I have deep misgivings about the quality of the footage we’re going to get back due to this stubborn intractibilty.

But, looking on the bright side, here’s where the learning comes in.
For the next in-class film shoot I’ve been given the dual roles of Producion Manger/ 1st Assistant Director which means I should talk to each individual crew-member and make sure that they fully understand what it is their specific job entails. I don’t want to be too bossy but this is a group effort so we need everyone to be working as well as they can towards the same goal. It also means more research for me because I will have to know the duties attached to every crew-member’s role…
I’m looking forward to it, though.
It should be rad.

The New Doctor Who

I'd been avoiding watching the new Dr Who series because I liked the old series when I was younger and I was worried that I would hate the updated version.... but...

[begin rant]

...I caught half an episode last night... and I think I hate it.
Any series that has a sequence like the following in it, needs to have a new word invented to describe how bad it is.

"As the Cybermen climb the stairs, intending to escape back to the parallel Earth, they are met by a Cyberman with a female-sounding voice, that of Yvonne Hartman. She declares that they shall not pass and shoots them with an energy rifle. As she repeats that she did her duty for Queen and country, a tear of oil leaks from the duct below her left eye."

That is so bad, I feel faint.
I want to have an out-of-body experience so I can avoid reading/seeing/hearing/thinking that ever again.

I'm sorry to my various friends and family members who may like the show but, how could anyone take pantomine melodrama like that seriously?
OH MY GOD!

[end rant]

*Phew*
I feel better now that I've got that out of my system.

Nature vs. Nuture

Yesterday morning, shortly after waking up, I went to get a loaf of bread and a toilet freshener from my local supermarket. I had walked half the distance back to my house before I realised that I hadn’t actually paid for these goods. I had picked them up and then absent-mindedly walked straight out of the shop. Alex reckoned it was my natural, thieving instincts kicking in but I mustn’t have the balls for a life of crime because I went back and paid for my ill-gotten gains.

On reflection, I believe that at least one of my several convict ancestors was deported to this lovely island for stealing bread so maybe it really is in my nature to thieve and steal.
If that’s the case, hats off to my parents for neutralising these evil genes and bringing me up to believe that this behaviour isn’t helpful. I don’t think anyone has ever been deported for keeping their loo blue.

Today I went back to my kung fu class for the first time in about 4 or 5 months.
I’m not surprised to find out that I’m really unfit and when my Sifu asked me to remind him which colour belt I was training for, it took me a few seconds to remember.

I also created my first auction on ebay today.
A rare, slip-cased, first edition! (By David Eddings)
Somebody out there must be a fan of this fine fantasy author’s work!
C’mon!

Next week I’m doing some unpaid work experience with a production company named Steam Motion and Sound. The company is based in Sydney and London but unfortunately I'll only be seeing the Sydney side of the company this week. They make ads mostly but also some video clips and they specialise in green screen and 3D animation so it should be really interesting.
Looking forward to that.

I’ve been procrastinating for ages this evening by playing Age of Empires II. Yeah, I know it’s an old game but my computer is almost 5 years old and can’t take really good games.
Most of the time it’s not so bad – I can play a lot of older games designed to be played on a bone abacus – but it would be nice to be able to play Age of Mythology. I’m getting a bit tired of Age of Empires’ lack of strategy (build some towers, build some walls, build a castle, kill everybody).
What I really should be doing is working on rewriting my 1-page synopsis for a 10 minute short film for my script class at uni. I had the first draft given back to me last Wednesday, covered in red ink and question marks so I need to have another crack at it. The lecturer didn't really get the point of the film but liked the setting and general idea. It was helpful in that she pointed out what information needed to be conveyed that I either hadn't addressed or hadn't described clearly enough. Anyway, I shouldn't be surprised that the thing requires a re-write.
So that’s what I’ll do now.

Lazy

Lazy.
There's only one way to describe my recent attitude to this blog and that's 'Lazy'.

In my defence I must say that I've been working a lot over the last three months.
Sometimes I was working 3 or 4 weeks straight. Trying to earn cash to pay off my credit card debt.

Been working a second job at a market research call centre but I hate it.
It's interesting at times but cold-calling people for 7 hours in a day is a gruelling business and I would prefer not to be doing it.

Mumbai

Maryann and I got off the plane in mumbai at about 7:00pm (Indian time) last night. We called ahead from the airport to book an overpriced room at the Garden Hotel in Colaba near, the Gateway to India.

Mumbai is a city in which 14 million people are doing their best to make a living. A porter snapped up our luggage while we were looking for our Taxi. After throwing our bags in the back of the cap he demanded 100 Rupees from us. "Give me one double oh" luckily I only had Rs 30 in my wallet (our Taxi was pre-booked and already paid for, which I higly recommend if you ever visit Mumbai) so I couldn't give in to his demands, even if I wanted to.

The area around Mumbai airport are all slums. It's a great introduction to this otherwise beautiful country. The hour-long taxi ride from the airport to the city was exhilarating - there are no lanes to speak of and few traffic lights at intersections so drivers cut into any available gap, beeping thir horn so that pedestrians, motorcyclists and other drivers know to get out of the way. Many roads outside of the CBD don't have footpaths so pedestrians walk along side the constant traffic. I'm sure horrible traffic accidents occur quite often because I've seen so many near misses in the last 24 hours. These guys are amazing drivers - a driver from Sydney wouldn't last 10 minutes. If they didn't get wiped out in an intersection, they'd eventually park by the side of the road and hail a Taxi because it would be far less stressful.

When we checked into the Garden Hotel, four bellboys helped us with our 2 pieces of luggage. I'd only just had one of my travellers cheques cashed so I didn't have any small denomination bills I felt that I had to give each of them each one of my smallest denominations (Rs 50) and so parted with Rs 200 (AUS$6.00) for no real reason. That got me in a bad mood.

In the morning, Maryann and I had a long walk around Colabar and the central business district. We saw the Gateway of India and the Chavrajparti Shivaji Terminus (formerly VictoriaTerminus), both grandiose ex-imperial relics.

It took us a couple of hours of exposure until we were accustomed to the life on the pavements of Mumbai here. We haven't organised train tickets to Pune yet (our next destination) but I suspect that this task will involve a very long cue. By about 3pm we were feeling more aclimatised and less ripped-off. Maryann bought a book from a street vendor and haggled him down to Rs 100 from a starting price of Rs 120. I was very proud of her for that (even when a Nepalese-born American named Dhiraj KC [pronounced 'casey' and that is seriously his legal name, I saw his drivers licence] - that I later ate a buffet dinner with explained to me that if you are going to haggle with a street vendor, you can pretty much offer them half the starting price and work from there.).

We had a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant (with all Indian staff) called Ming's Palace. We were really hungry from all our walking and ate four drinks and four dishes (3 of which were delicious, one bland) for a cost of Rs 800. That comes to AUS$24.00 but it was for two and the servings were huge so we thought that to be reasonable and reminded ourselves that we were in the most expensive city in India.

A homeless women holding a baby stopped Maryann, directed her towards a nearby shop and, in fragmented English, asked her to buy a tin of powdered milk. Maryann did so and we left feeling pretty sad about the whole situation. There is absolutely no government funded welfare system in this country. Begging and charitable NGOs are the are some of the very few avenues homeless, poor and maimed people use to subsist but this is no where near enough to support the millions (literally millions) of homeless in Mumbai alone. When we walked down the the same stretch of road a few hours later we saw the women again, and one of her other children (a girl aged about 5 or 6) followed us a whole block with her palm held upward. I eventually gave Rs 2 in coins but she still followed s holding out for more. We kept on saying "No" and "Go away" in English but she eventually desisted when we said jaaou which means "Go away!" in Hindi. First time we tried it and it worked. It doesn't make it any less disressing though. The poverty is the hardest thing to take about this city - I love everything else.
Oh... except for the intense pollution.

It's strange to see huge political billboards bearing massive photos of Bal 'The Sahib' Thackeray - a former political cartoonist and long-time leader of the Shiv Sena. Shiv Sena is a right-wing, Hindu nationalist party that was blamed for inciting much of the mob violence of Mumbai's Hindu-Muslim Riots in 1992-93. Later this politcal party used fear of further riots or bomb attacks to gain seats in the state and national parliaments. They've lost power now but are still popular and it is erie to see billboards displaying a politcal leader that openly admits to admiring both Adolf Hitler and Michael Jackson.

We had only paid for one night's accomodation at the Garden Hotel which was fortunate because it was overpriced and the guy at the desk conned an extra Rs 100 out of us when we were settling the bill. So we ended up paying Rs 3000 for a room which we originally thought would cost Rs 2750. That's only about AUS$7.50 difference but after the crap with the bellboys the night before, it got us both pretty annoyed. We both got a pretty bad vibe from the place too. Too many porters, doormen and bellboys hovering around like vultures and looking for a handout for not really doing anything. Also several reasonably dressed people hanging about outside the hotel asked us (well... me, really) for money "Mister... Sir... one dollar... two dollars". I found this behaviour completely bemusing because these weren't poor people - they were just trying it on with a 'rich' westener. I found t even funnier when I saw one of these guys going into the kitchen of the hotel's restaurant. He was probably the head chef! Anyway...
The one good thing the staff at the Garden Hotel did was to give us directions to a quiet little internet cafe which was off a main road. This place offered email, surfing, "chating", and telephone access for a quite a reasonable fee (less than a AUS$1.00 per hour).

I usd the numbers in my Rough Guide to ring around a few other hotels in the area and, after two "sorry, no vacancies" I got onto the 'Reservations Manager' at the YWCA (The name suggests otherwise but men are also allowed to stay there.) He asked me where I was and when I said Colaba he said that he had a double available for me if I could get there within 15mins. I said 'done' and hussled Maryann away from the computer where she was checking her email and out of the cafe. Maryann asked if had left my name with the Reservations Manager - of course, I hadn't. So we went back into the internet cafe and I paid Rs 6 to make another phone call. Someone picked up the phone and I said that I was enquiring about a double and he said that they were booked out. I said, "Oh but I was just talking to someone else about it and he said that one was available" I was promptly put back through to the Reservations Manager who said, "you are calling from Colaba. Come down here, I have a room for you!" I said, "Great! I'll be there, I just wanted to let you know my name was Stephens." "Fine, hurry!"
So again we rushed from the cafe and scrambled through five blocks of pavements crowded with street vendors and darted across roads lacking pedestrian crossings. Referring to the map in our guide book, we eventually found it. The building looked a bit creepy from the outside but inside it looked very clean, well-kept and recently painted and renovated. We found the Reservations Manager and I said that I had called and said that my name was Stephens. "From Colaba?" he asked.
So we got a room for the night at the Young Womens Christian Association.
We agreed on a price of $1750 ($AUS52.50) which also included buffet dinner and breakfast.
(The jerks at the Garden Hotel only gave us breakfast!).

The room is awesome. It's a corner room on the third floor and has a balcony which overlooks a sportfield, childrens' playground and many trees. I was so pleased with this result that I took several photos of the view. Tomorrow (when the Reservations Manager is back at his desk) I'm going to try to book a room for the day before we fly out (25th Feb). This place is suburb. If your ever in Mumbai, go to the YWCA. Good value for both sexes and all ages but you should try to book ahead.

Over dinner here I learned that the hotels of Mumbai don't rely on foreign tourism as 70% of their customers are from other arts of this huge country.

I heard that there were several bomb blasts in Assam, North Eastern India - don't worry - definitely no plans to go there.

Anyway my hour on this computer is up and I'm going to bed.
It's only 10:00pm here but I think that's about 2:00am sydney time so I'm a bit sleepy.

24 hours down and no problems with my digestive system yet!

Rest In Peace, Beryl McInnes

As you can gather from the title of this post, my grandmother Beryl passed away at 7:30am, Thursday 12th of January, 2006. Astrid, Matthew and I spent a few hours with her the day before but we all had to come back to Sydney on that night.

Saying that it was very sad seems to be a shallow understatement.
My siblings and I consider ourselves very lucky to have visited in time - if we had arrived half a day later, we would not have had the chance to say good-bye.

Despite the sadness of the situation, it was good to spend a few hours with my extended family in Ballarat. It's great to hear my aunts Mandy and Sue and uncle Andrew reminicing about growing up in Ballarat. It was also glad to see my cousins Gab, Brooke, Matt, Simon & Leah - even though the reasons meant that I wasn't at my most talkative. I'd like to go back down to visit after I come back from India.