48 Hours Recap

Hey folks! Back to updates and fun stuff. =)

As promised, here is Darren's experience participating in the 48 Hour Film Contest:


Friday:
We all sat waiting patiently for the genre announcements.
The call came in for “sci-fi / monster movie”. The crowd goes wild!

We immediately began a brainstorming session. Ideas pop in ranging from the dark and sinister to the light hearted and insane. Finally, we settled on “sci-fi” and then comical. I can’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed, but it all worked out.

After the narrowing it down session, the writers disappeared and we started talking FX and music. I headed down to the HQ Basement and started writing music. This task didn’t let up until around 3:00am that morning. At which point I made numerous attempts at sleep but failed due to the extreme cold of the living room and a blind phantom attack cat that chose my head as a perch!

Saturday:
The team arrived at 6:30am and we walked through the new script, brainstorming and making changes as we went. After the shooting schedule was broken down, we started packing everything up. I built up 4 alien slugs and packed up my stuff. Off we went.

Our shooting was narrowed down to three locations:
1) St James Theatre
2) The Carted Observatory
3) Someone’s Apartment


At the St James, I began building appliance slugs and applying them to one of the leads’ neck, then assisting with gear while I waited for touchups. The shoot went well and after a few “street” pick up shots, we were off to location #2.

At the Observatory, I began building and coloring the movable slug, the severed arm and the slug tray/juice. After a bit of waiting, I built up the final slug for the “slap on” scene and the close-up shots. Also, I wetted up the severed arm. Lastly for this location, I had to wrap a secondary character in plastic wrap as “take-away” for the picnic shot.

With the sun fading we were off to location #3.

Once at the apartment, I began setting up lights, doping makeup touchups and tying up the secondary character with rope. With the final shots complete, it was back to HQ for post-production.

Once at HQ, cuts/timing and music were discussed and mapped out. With little for me to do until the timing was averaged and while they did voiceovers, I called it a night and headed home for a few hours of rest.

Sunday:
Early to wake, got ready and annoyingly had to catch a bus to HQ. As soon as I got there I jumped right into music editing, churning out 10 songs and a series of clips and sound effects.
As the day progressed, the 3 of us stayed in the basement, working out edits, FX, timing, music and sound effects for each shot/cut.

During this time, William and Jenn stayed upstairs turning out awesome graphics and Digital FX. The time flew by and after a few computer (PC of course) issues, we had a pretty good copy.

Final renders finished and the “final copy” followed the “emergency copy” just a few minutes behind for the drop off. We made it with a few minutes to spare.

We got the call that we made it and everyone cheered!

This was an amazing experience and must again thank Norman for all of his help and for bringing me onto his team.
It felt good to be back in my native environment and doing the work I love.


**Dawn here: we had a chance to see the film at a "heat" screening last week. I'll update on that shortly!

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Another Fucking Ridiculous Lawsuit

This one gets filed under “can’t take responsibility for one’s own actions”. Although to be fair, the guy who was responsible for the accident is dead, so maybe it should be filed under “stupid lawsuits by grieving deluded parents”. *sigh*

The facts:

1) Josh got drunk out of his mind and then got into his car
2) He was speeding
3) ..and talking on his mobile
4) …and not wearing a seatbelt

But somehow, it’s the restaurant’s fault that he was drunk, and also the tow truck driver’s fault for helping the guy who stalled his car. And let’s not leave out the guy who stalled his car! He is clearly negligent, unlike Josh who was drunk, not wearing seatbelt and talking on his phone. Don’t forget the pot found in the car as well. Great son you raised there, dad.

Fucking seriously?!?!

For the love of all things sane, I hope the judge throws this case out. It is so completely ludicrous.

I really have to stop reading the US news – it’s not good for my blood pressure…

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What are YOU doing this weekend?

Can you make a movie in just 48 hours? That is what Darren will be attempting to do this weekend! Not by himself, of course – he is part of a team headed by a couple of folks from Weta Digital. Darren will be head of makeup/hair/music and “anything to do with blood/splatter”. Our friend William will be heading up the art direction.

The movie project is part of the “48 Hours" annual contest. Movies are required to be longer than 2 minutes but shorter than 7 minutes, including credits. The catch? (Besides making it in only 48 hours!?) They won’t know the genre of film to be made until 7pm Friday night. There are 500 teams competing this weekend – I’m sure to see at least a few teams running around this fair city at all hours trying to film shots for their movies!

I’m counting on Darren to take notes on this, as I am not a part of the film. For some reason, they didn’t need a tax accountant for such a short movie! ;) We’ll have a full report for you guys once he catches up on his sleep and the hallucinations stop.

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Traffic Report

Every morning I listen to one of the main radio stations here in New Zealand – The Rock – as I get ready for work. While the station is broadcast to the whole country, traffic is reported on a local level. The traffic report usually sounds like this:

“Ok, everyone, nothing to report really on State Highway 1 or State Highway 2, or in the City. No accidents or breakdowns, and traffic is flowing easily until you get to the tunnel –there is a four minute wait at the back of the queue.”

Now, don’t you wish you lived here? =)

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Irony...

psssssttt: Kiwis are flightless birds!

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Some introductions

A while ago, I added links to other Kiwi bloggers from America, but have not introduced the people behind them! So, some virtual introductions:

AmeriNZ: This blog is written by Arthur, who emigrated to NZ (Auckland region) several years ago be with his Kiwi partner. He writes at least once every day about several different topics in depth, and records two blogcasts each week (they are available on iTunes or his website for free). I highly recommend reading his blog especially if I haven't updated in a while and you are looking for something to read. =) Arthur's blog also offers a great perspective of gay life here in NZ as compared to the US.

Aotearoa Dreaming: This blog is written by our friends William and Stacey, whom we met through the immigration forum Move2NZ shortly after moving here. They are from Atlanta and moved here just about a year ago. Although William updates about as frequently as I do, he takes much better pictures and they have been quite a few more places around the North Island than we have.

Island in the Pacific: This blog is written by Jessica and Darryl; I found their blog from AmeriNZ's blog. They live on the Kapiti coast, which is just an hour or so North of Wellington. The views are stunning!

Triumph Over Madness: This blog is written by our friend Reed, who is from Tennessee. We met Reed through the Meetin group here in Wellington. He's here only temporarily right now, but we highly suspect he will collect his wife back in Tennessee and move here permenantly by the end of the year. We hope, anyway! =)

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Just ridiculous

Judge’s missing pants lead to big suit.

This is the most ridiculous law suit, and doubly embarrassing as it was brought by a judge. The short story? He bought an expensive suit, and brought it to the dry cleaners to be altered along with other suits. They returned all the other suits, but lost the pants – pants only folks – of the suit in question. He was understandably angry, and demanded the full cost of the suit. Fine. A week later, though, the dry cleaner found the pants and returned them.

So why the suit? He is an asshole. They have offered to settle (even though the man has his DAMN pants back!) for $3,000 and then for $4,500 and finally for $12,000. All to no avail. The dry cleaning ticket matches his receipt, and yet he claims the pants are not his. He is now suing for $65 million.

He is a disgrace, and the system that allows him to sue these poor small business owners is a joke. I hope at the very least, his suit is thrown out and he is ordered to pay the defendants legal costs. He should be taken off the bench.

And yep, I must now compare this to NZ. It just wouldn’t happen here. This would be handled by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, under the Consumer Guarantees Act. They first recommend talking to the trader, then writing a letter. If all else fails, you can bring the matter to the association that the trader might belong to, or request a Disputes Tribunal.

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