bizarre email

I couldn't stop laughing when I read this! Gosh, I hope he doesn't start talking like this in real life.

From : andrew ward
Sent : Monday, 29 May 2006 6:03:41 PM
Subject : Hiya! :() Project Greenlights on again...

Allo!
high fives...
does masons handshake...

digresses...


Thought this might be of interestation if you did not know already.

The gistyness is if you have a feature script, you submit it and win cause youre, like, a misunderstood genius and stuff.
Top 4 runners up get $25000 each and winner gets a million dollar budget to shoot feature. And thats a lot of coke and prostitutes to do while the crew complain about the deferred wages.
If you have a short script, the finalists of the feature entrants get to shoot one of the winning short film scripts and you get $1000 as prize. Dodge :<.
Solo, last years winner is on at the Sydney Film Festival shortlyness.
Hope alls well with you and your famousness.
:)

www.projectgreenlightaustralia.tv

dedicated to MAP support staff

I can't believe Michelle Murch has gone! Doesn't anyone else feel a sense of melancholy when they pass by her now-empty office? Michelle was so great, cause she ALWAYS helped me even when:
*I desperately needed location permission for our noir, and I must have called or emailed Michelle ten million times.
*Numerous Avid issues.
*Getting the performance space for auditions.
*Booking an office for my F&V drama shoot.
*I couldn't get a really large table out of a room.
*I didn't know how to clapper load, and forgot about lightmeters.

... AND she was so lovely about helping me, every single time.

Not to mention Judith Cobb and Greg O'Reilly. Judith was so wonderful because I had a location issue, and she gave me a call back, and we worked through all the ways to solve it. Greg always helped us when we had issues with Avid, especially when we were at our wits end with our Place exercise last year.

The support staff we have now are fantastic too! I hope I don't bother Anna too much ("I can't find head leader!", "Where do we get stock from?","The equipment store people won't give us stock!", "My booking categories aren't open!" etc. etc.) But she's also really lovely and helpful, I don't know how these people deal with us poor, dumb kids!

Bless the MAP support staff.

parental pity and gentle encouragement

Yeah, I thought it couldn't get any worse too.

My parents are slowly letting it be known that they are concerned that I don't have a boyfriend. I believe it is supposed to be the other way round, yes? Aren't my parents supposed to not want me date until i'm 50?

Anyways, here are some key quotes:
Mum: ...it was ok (being single) when you were in high school because you had to do your HSC ... but now ... well ...
Translation: You're a bit of a loser. Pull up your socks!

Dad: (out of the blue) There are some nice Chinese boys that play golf down at the local course ...

Mum: Once you get married *sigh* I won't have to look after you anymore! I can go on a holiday, do some gardening ...
Yeah, I didn't know I was such a burden

Dad: I think you'd be a great mum!
Translation: I want grandchildren. (This one scared me a lot)

In my defence, I explain to them that it's not just happening to me! This is a phenomenon that is happening to ALL my friends, both from high school AND in uni. I don't know what's in the water, but we'll all end up spinsters/bachelors/quirkyalones with large debts we can't fob off to our children when we pass away. Sigh.

why I can never be an editor

Today, after finishing a few hours of work on my Film and Video Drama edit, and getting ready to make a digital cut, my sequence disappeared! Literally, my video and audio (V1, A1, & A2) tracks disappeared, and I was left with empty V2 and T/C tracks.

At that point I went insane. I called up production staff, no-one picked up, left a message. I tried Ctrl-Z. Nothing. Then I made the stupid mistake of getting out of Avid (it automatically saves when you quit) and trying to load it again. Again, nothing.

Met up with Keya for lunch, and she made the very valid point that we always say "I just pressed a few buttons, and I don't know what happened!"

So I went back into the labs, loaded my workspace, and tried to arrange everything again. And finished this afternoon. Yay.

I see a trend developing in these blog entries, in that this year, I've developed an intense dislike of camera department, sound department, and now editing!

Couch shoot #2

Just came home from the second Couch TV shoot, and am feeling reasonably happy. One of our panellists who we had on last time commented that 'Wow, it actually looks like a studio now!', whereas before we were considerably grungier. We're hopefully slowly getting towards getting to look more professional!

Anyways, we had great panellists on today, who all spoke really well. One of our standouts was Chilli, a poledancing instructor from Bobbi's Pole Studio, who is just so engaging, articulate, and fun to be around! I think she convinced a lot of the other panellists to try pole dancing as well. The lesson of the day? Own your pole.

the maltese falcon

Shoot done! I was stressing a little (well a lot, as I usually do) because we were a little behind schedule. But then everything turned out fine, and we actually wrapped an hour and a half earlier!

The Maltese Falcon is our major production for our Film and Video Production class, and we shoot it on 16mm film. I was production managing/1st AD-ing - I'm just glad for this one that i'm was out of the technical sound/camera departments!

The shoot was actually quite relaxed and fun, most of our crew were sitting down on the floor eating lollies towards the end. I can't wait to see the rushes!

Thank goodness it's OVER!

Daren's Disney Princess Partay

"What is this zoo where you get naked?" - Gwen

That was my favourite call of the night. To explain, we were having a chat about Nikki Webster, and her scary appearance in Zoo magazine, and I guess in the flurry of chatter, Gwen heard something else. So straight faced too! Love it.

We were in Dural of all places, where Daz lives, one of the most geographically difficult places to access in Sydney. Being a Southerner, it was like we were going rural.

Anyways, we had lots of fun, making pizza, salad, playing 'Scene It'. I won't go through it in detail, as Anna already blogged her calls for the night.

...and like all Disney Princesses our fun ended at midnight, lest we turn into pumpkins (i.e.: we better get out of Dural) I was also really zonked out by my Film and Video Drama shoot earlier that day, so all I wanted to do was go to sleep.

reaching breaking point with TomKat

From NineMSN :
"Tom Cruise and his pregnant fiancée Katie Holmes are due to marry in July next year, according to a bridal registry. Upmarket retailer Neiman Marcus has a list under the names Katherine Holmes and Thomas Mapother — Cruise's real name — with a wedding date set for July 7, 2006"

Dude, that's my birthday! I don't want some couch-jumping, placenta-eating, name-changing (it's Kate, not Katie), Scientologist to get married on my birthday to his child bride.

Why this fascination with manic Cruise all of a sudden? Two reasons:
The Superficial
AND
Go Fug Yourself

I would like to say that I believe myself to be above cheap unfounded celebrity bitching, but sadly i'm not.

The Grates @The Metro

Imagine a cross between an 80s school formal, and a kid's birthday party, where all the attendees are high on red cordial, and you have a Grates concert.

The lead singer Patience, ran, jumped, skipped all over stage with the energy that would boggle most schoolchildren. Surprisingly the vocals didn't suffer though, even with her grin constantly on high beam.

Balloons overhead were released during the 'Trampoline Song', which encouraged everyone to jump "higher! higher! h-h-h-h-higher!" Later, shredded glitzy confetti floated down from the ceiling, which covered the sticky beer soaked floor.

The only thing that ruined my night was tall people (who should know better), pushing IN FRONT of me, and jumping up and down. Firstly, it's not a mosh pit, you grabbing your mate and jumping up and down like idiots and knocking into the people behind you is not going to make you popular. If you're over 180cm tall, you know your place in the crowd, and it's at the BACK.

Otherwise, a lovely night out. Although it seemed to be over so quickly! I'll be seeing the Grates again at Splendour ... oooh, can't wait!

computer says no

Depressed again.

Think I am forced to edit on the Avids at UTS, seeing as though my single screen at home on Final Cut Pro is a bit too cramped, and I keep on moving windows around which is very frustrating.

Also, did not realise that when you export files out of Avid into Quicktime .mov files, they are Avid-encoded. I can't for the life of me find the codecs to play the stupid files. Even the Avid codecs on their own website didn't help!

I truly believe I am doing something wrong - or there is some higher power that does not want me to edit. Or they want me to edit at UTS.

the technology is against me

Headaches with editing. Firstly, arrrrghhh! Bloody digitising. Digitising for my non-film friends, is transferring your tape footage to the computer for editing. At every corner, the computer would find some way to mock me. I also could NOT get my first shot to digitise, because, stupid me, I forgot to run the tape for a while before I started filming.

I also have to do a 16mm film edit on the Steenbecks. The Steenbecks are these large, ancient looking film editing machines, which aren't much to look at but are really cool once you start to edit. Today I could NOT get the thingies which lock the threaded film where the light is projected onto the film to OPEN! Plus, I realised I needed to book a splicer from the equipment store, and I was tired, so I just went home. ugh.

I had many a 'screw this!' moment today. Screw my health, I'm buying hot chips from Oportos because it's frickin cold. Screw this TV show, I'm not calling any more potential panel members today because all I get is bloody-answering-machines-doesn't-anyone pick up their-phone-anymore? And tonight, screw my assignments, I am going to watch a lot of TV.

By the way, if you have these below items I need, and are willing to offer a reasonable price, contact me!

A copy of Chungking Express on DVD

Used lounge set/chairs