Musings of an Idiot

Steps

The main news for the day is that our earlier short films have been released as a collection for VOD {Video On Demand} on Greencine.com The collection is called 'Steps' and is available for view HERE. It is definitely exciting news and I am thrilled because of progession towards an emerging medium for distribution.

I watched 'Elizabethtown' yesterday night and it was a sweet movie with a couple of fatal flaws - the casting of Orlando Bloom as the central character and the mendearing story towards the end. It had a fair few funny moments in it and it could have been way better than what it was.

For now,
Amit

Labels: Movies, Video on Demand

posted by Amit @ 9:53 PM 0 Comments

Veneer

My favorite artist for the moment is Jose Gonzalez and his music is enchanting. Currently listening to Veneer - his debut album and it is enchanting. Different sound and different melody. There are lots of awesome tracks on the album but my favorites for now are 'Lovestain' and 'Heartbeats'. You can listen to the music samples HERE.

It has been a couple of extremely busy days at school with planning and crewing for term-4 in progress. It really drains you out so completely that it is hard to stay awake later than 9.00 PM (or in some cases having an evening nap and then falling asleep by 10.00 PM).

I finished reading a feature script by one of my friends - it was a page turner and an absolute gem of a script to read - funny, gentle and felt complete. Now I have started reading the book 'Two Hands of God' by Alan Watts and it is proving to be a much easier read than I thought (plus it is interesting as well).

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Books, Music

posted by Amit @ 8:05 PM 1 Comments

Long Update

Over the past 4 days I have tried getting onto blogger but it has been annoying as hell not being able to access the blog to post. It almost seems that their servers are overloaded ever since they put up the option of logging in either with your blogger username or gmail username...what a silly idea - especially if the servers are not capable of handling that much load. Or does Pluto being stripped of it's planetary staus have anything to do with this whole thing? We now live in a solar system with 8 planets and not 9. So as it stands I am seriously contemplating retiring blogger as my blogging tool and move onto wordpress to do all my blogging. It is free and is not owned by a company and it runs on your own server...so every reason to shift to it - especially after the past 4 days.

Friday was a fun day at school as there was the South Seas version of Dragon's Den and the school was buzzing with nervous excitement since the panel invited for it were top industry people: John Barnett (CEO, South Pacific Pictures), Nick Ward (Top screen writer), Paul Swadel (EP,Headstrong),Stan Wolfgramme (Producer), Tim O'Brien (Development Executive, NZFC). Kathryn Burnett arranged for all of them to spare 2 hours of their time to listen to the story idea pitches from 13 student directors and decide if they liked them or not and then give additional NZ$ 500 prize money to go into the production of that short film towards the end of the year.

The event itself was a real learning curve - just watching from the sidelines but even more exciting was the whole initiative taken by the students to setup a temporary 4 camera studio setup in the lecture theatre. James Brookes was the mastermind and the geek team setup a fantastic production. Here are some of the pics from that event.


Over the past 4 days I have watched 3 good movies, 1 average one and a really bad one: 'Eight Below'; 'Inside Deep Throat' and 'Moolaade' were good. 'Darwin's Nightmare' was average while 'Bloodrayne' was bad. Eight Below was surprisingly refreshing and I really enjoyed it. And the best thing was not seeing CGI animals but real animals go through the whole story - which makes it even more compelling. The 'Behind the Scenes' was decent and gives a quick overview of how they managed to pull it off. 'Inside Deep Throat' was an interesting movie and it succeeds as it is more interested in explaining the mechanics as to why an adult movie with the title 'Deep Throat' made for US$ 25k went onto gross US$ 600 million and why it has always been surrounded by controversy {no - not that kind of controversy - more like freedom of speech; censorship; moral policing and feminism} and how it started a revolution of sorts. 'Moolaade' was a Senegal/French movie set in a small tribal African village. It was gently paced and was a bit long for it's 120 minute run length but it was a great watch - it had a warmth and genuity about it. The story was powerful and it shaped out to be harrowing and uplifting at the same time. Definitely a good watch. 'Darwin's Nightmare' was a bit long and did not really need it's full running time to make it's point. There were some bits which dragged on and on but still an awesome doco subject. 'Bloodrayne' - I won't even waste my time talking about it.

I went to the Takapuna library on Saturday after a couple of years and it felt great. I almost forgot the joy of searching for books and the surprises that lead you into a different train of thought while searching for them. So now I have 4 books on my desk, out of which I have already finished one of them {'Greek & Roman Mythology'}. The tramp which was scheduled for sunday has been postponed till next weekend because of unavoidable reasons, so hoping that the weather holds up next weekend. Another cast member has been added to 'Five'. The cast would have been complete but there is an outside possibility that we might have to recast one of the roles because of time commitments. But it is still an exciting development and leads us closer to the goal.

I will take leave for now.
Till later,
Amit

Labels: Books, Five, Movies, Pre-production, Random

posted by Amit @ 5:59 PM 0 Comments

Bitter Sweet

It is so easy to get disillusioned or bitter about something and the more I think about it the more I realize that it is easier to follow through with that instinct of giving up on something. This post is more a reminder to myself to stay positive and to understand that I am lucky to be alive - lucky to still have access to 3 meals a day, to have a roof under which to live in. Sometimes you just have to put your head down and do what you gotta do - life can be that simple.

I edited a 30 second promo for South Seas and it has been screening on Alt TV. If you are from 2003 or 2004 batch of South Seas - you will recognize a lot of the clips from the various end of the year productions. I have uploaded it onto Youtube and if you think that the version is too pixelated then you can download a quicktime file HERE.



I have also forgotten to wish some of my old friends on their birthdays - not because I don't want to but more because I have been extremely lazy as far as emails go. It is bad and all I can do is make a public apology for it.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Introspection

posted by Amit @ 7:00 PM 0 Comments

Match Point

Today was supposed to be a really long day for me as there was supposed to be a guest workshop in the evening but it got postponed because of unavoidable circumstances and that meant I came back from work early. I decided to do some shopping for groceries, so that I could cook some Chicken Quorma and I was really surprised to see the number of school kids hanging out at the mall after their school. I felt sad for them - it is almost like they don't have anywhere else to hang out or go to after their school was done.

I am proud of myself because I managed to do a parallel park with my first attempt today. Usually I avoid parallel parking and drive till I find an easy parking spot. This is because of my irrational fear that I might damage the other cars which are already parked but today I found a free spot in front of the house which asked for a parallel park and I decided to give it a go (especially after the clear instructions from Benji on Sunday about how to do it). And yeah...did it the first time, so am pretty happy about it.

Since I was feeling so happy - I decided to take a walk across the neighbouring reserve {which is right next to our house}. I was a bit uneasy when we first moved into this new place because the photograph I took at night of the reserve looked kind of spooky, so taking advantage of my good mood I went to have a look at what was there and it turned out to be a nice and pleasent walk. So that's another fear that I managed to overcome today.


So I came back after the walk and cooked some Chicken Quorma and as soon as I finished it, I got distracted by the beautiful colours in the sky and off I went for a walk again. Here are some of the pics from that trip.

So yeah - it turned out to be a really pleasent evening. Ate the Chicken Quorma, which turned out to be really delicious - not hot but not completely bland either- just right. Watched 'Match Point' afterwards. It was a slow burn movie but in the end strangely satisfying. It had such a leisurely pace to it that you are kept wondering as to where they would take the movie but then half way through the movie it changes genres and turns into a thriller of sorts. My only complaint is that they should have made the main guy {played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers} more likeable, so that the audience could atleast be rooting for his character but nothing that he does or says really does that and you are left with a sense of bitterness about life really.

And I just had a massive deja vu - I always get thrown haywire when that feeling is so strong.
Anyway thats me for tonight.

Cya,
Amit

Labels: Food, Movies, Random

posted by Amit @ 9:25 PM 0 Comments

Free Market!!!!

Money seems to be an illusion that is only real for the lucky. I recently had a discussion about free market or not, and as anyone who knows me can tell you - I am not really good at arguments and tend to go quite after the initial attempts at explaining my point of view because I fail to see the point in trying to convince the other person that one's view point is the right one when infact every person has their own reality and beliefs to deal with. So yeah it didn't particulary go well for me in that discussion but today I saw 'Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room' and it pretty much sums up the argument against a totally free capitalistic market {when seen as a companion piece to 'The Corporation' }. How could a company like 'Enron' defraud and cheat so many people without any remorse or regrets? And how can people have such a short attention span when it comes to issues like that and look at things in isolated glass structures instead of piecing together the various events and structures as a whole? We live in a society where money is ingrained into our psyche as the only thing worth striving for - when in fact there is a lot more to life than that. Money is a driving factor in anyone's life but it should never be allowed to become THE over-riding factor. If you want to read more about the Enron aftermath - here is the Wikipedia entry.

Talking of money - I finally decided to get an accountant for myself and for Unkreative Artists, since I need to be filing returns from next year after getting out of the current job. Plus this year - I asked for a couple of favours to get the returns for Unkreative Artists filed but I am afraid that it won't be possible doing that again and again. It means I will be spending some money to get the stuff done but it is better to be on the safe side as far as taxation and accounting is concerned.

We had a fantastic meeting/brainstorming session yesterday evening regarding 'Five' with all the actors involved and David Mamea - who is writing the script for it. And the outcome is that all of us are now waiting to see the magic translate onto page in a week or so. What we are doing with this is pretty insane but I guess that is the fun and the challenge of making this project happen. I will be going tramping with David this sunday to do location reccee if the weather holds up.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Five, Introspection

posted by Amit @ 9:20 PM 0 Comments

The Hills Need Legs

Sunday turned out to be a cleaning day for me - cleaning my car, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning my room, cleaning the bathroom. My car has now gone from off white to white after the cleaning/washing session - which I am really happy about as my car registration says that it is a white mazda {not an off-white mazda}.

Yesterday evening I tried getting a new membership at Blockbuster in Birkenhead, as it is closer to our home and I don't need to drive for 15 minutes each way to get a DVD out; and it was a mildly irritating experience for sure. They just made it so hard to get the membership which made me wonder if they really want any customers. A round trip to home again to pick up proof of address {they don't count credit card as a proof of address for some strange reason}, did the trick.

So later in the evening we watched 'The Hills Have Eyes' and it was an average movie. The worst thing about it was the music score - I don't know how that person got the job in the first place as the music literally drives the movie into a downwards spiral. The first 30 minutes were really boring and the setup was really contrived and predictable but once the movie kicks off with the attack on the family - it becomes gripping in parts and definitely keeps you on the hooks. In the end it wasn't too bad of a movie I guess.

This morning, I decided to bike to Blockbuster to return the DVD we got out last night. It was a huge system shock - my legs gave way just 30 meters away from the store. The reason is that our house is kind of at the bottom of the hill while the Birkenhead shopping complex is about 2.5 KM uphill and it sure was a tough bike ride, especially biking against the wind. So I think I need to start doing it more often to start building up that kind of stamina.

The past 2 days I have been in a weirdly philosophical mood, which doesn't make any sense to me either as the thought process is not comprehensive enough to put down on paper. I feel lucky and privileged to be in the place where I am now but I just feel like I need to be doing more to make my existence meaningful.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Movies

posted by Amit @ 9:07 PM 0 Comments

Gone

It has almost been a week since the last update and it feels weird because it just feels like yesterday.

I sat my theory exam for my driving license and I scored a 100% on that - which was a relief as I had been relgiously studying for it everyday of the week leading upto it. Now I have been booked for a practical driving exam on the 31st of August. So one more step closer to getting a NZ license and however much annoying it is that they keep charging money for each stage - it is still definitely exciting.

'Five' has been quietly occuping a lot of my thought process and time. The things are piecing togther nicely and we are only 2 months away from production - which is exciting and scary at the same time. I also need to think of a design for the movie website and build it sometime soon.

I think I am not really in a mood to write a long update, so will leave you with a link to a music video which was directed by Luke Sharpe, one of my classmates at South Seas and good friend.

Till later,
Amit

[P.S: Here is the link to another interesting article - it might possibly change the world.]

Labels: Five

posted by Amit @ 5:59 PM 0 Comments

The King

The whole of saturday went into rebuilding my laptop as I didn't have any anti-virus software installed and it got infected by a Trojan which I couldn't remove. {Note to self - install an anti-virus software this time around}.

In the evening went and saw a movie called 'The King' and it was a pretty harrowing movie. It had awesome acting from everyone involved. It was really well shot but it was a bit too long and missed a fair few dramatic beats. It was an interesting experiment which definitely falters because of the story.

The house is finally in shape - I mean the drawing room is now clean and so can share what the place actually looks like. So here are some pics....

Labels: Computers, Five, Movies, TV Series

posted by Amit @ 7:44 PM 2 Comments

Miami Vice

Another week gone and the feeling of loss of time sometimes racks me up but on the positive side it has been eventful. Today had a long meeting with Richard over the script direction of 'Nowhere' and after that had a one on one catch up session with Tom Strudwick before he flew back to UK. Again - the session was extremely beneficial and it gave us more food for thought. It is always great to have an outsiders perspective to a project as one does get too attached to a project and can't tell the different trees in the woods but the trick is to find someone who knows what they are doing.

Watched 'Miami Vice' yesterday evening and it was an interesting experience. On one hand you have brilliant cinematography and on the other hand you have some dodgy edit decisions combined with an unlikeable lead in Colin Farrell - the result was a mildly satisfying movie. Technically the movie rocks and again uses the strength of the Viper HD camera to look straight out into the night and capture some really cool images. Colin Farrell just took himself too seriously in that character and that meant that there was no point of sympathy for his character and badly enough the decision to focus on his story doesn't pay off satisfactorily. The violence is brutal and definitely shakes you up every single time there is some of it on-screen. Overall as a movie I would say that it was a mixed bag and compared to Michael Mann's previous movie, Collateral - it feels a little bland. It is still a really interesting watch because of it's cinematography.

I will be sitting my driving license exam next weekend -to get my Indian license converted to a NZ driving license. It was a long time due and I think I really had to do something about it since my international license which was supposed to come from India never got into the system as the agent we were dealing with jumped ships without any notice. So I am happy that LTSA has agreed to accept my current Indian license for conversion and I have been quitely chugging away at the Road Code book, which is essential to pass the theory exam.

Anyway - it should be a quite weekend and I am looking forward to it.
For now,
Amit

Labels: Movies, Nowhere to Love

posted by Amit @ 11:00 PM 0 Comments

Commercial Art

Sunday shaped up to be a dreary day - it was pouring down the whole day and I caught a cold (possibly from yesterday's running around in rain doing lighting tweaks) and was sneezing the whole day. I did get most of the stuff cleaned up in my room as well as in the drawing room - I am currently testing and keeping/discarding the innumberable CDs/DVDs that I seem to have accumulated.

I did find an Indian takeaway place which has some really nice indian dishes. On Sunday, I tried Chicken Saagwala - which is Chicken cooked with spinach and onions and it was really yummy...and yesterday evening I tried Butter Chicken, which turned out to be one of the better butter chicken i have eaten in NZ. So I was thinking of trying a few more dishes over this week to authenticate that it truly is a good indian eating joint.(:-)

I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the points from the workshop I attended, incase it helps anyone in their moviemaking endeavors. I misplaced the notes I made on that day and I am basically writing this off my memory - so please feel free to ignore bits and pieces that don't seem right to you and yeah it also means I am putting in my interpretation of the workshop, so don't start taking it as a word of law.

The basic things which were covered during the day (besides the one on one workshops with the scripts) were - Working with story/treatments: how long and short documents can help analyse your story and how to use treatments as part of a structured approach to building or rebuilding a script.

Development Strategy: How producers work best with writers and script editors during the development process? When to listen and when to demand. The producer's rights and the writer's responsibilities. A structural approach to writing useful and constructive script notes.

One of the things that usually happens is that the writers and producers are so much on different planets that it is virtually impossible to make a movie. A producer is looking for a product, which they can market and sell to make money while the writer is only looking to create a story which seems true to them. In such a scenario making a movie without understanding each other's point of views is hard. Different markets have different working relationship between writers and producers. America has a more hardlined and tested approach(remeber there are always exception to the rules) where the writer is writing for the producers and makes whatever changes are asked for by the producer with only a limited say in those decision making processes. There is already an industry in place where there is money to make movies and they can afford to spend money on spec scripts and develop one of those into a movie which they think would get audiences into the theatre and make them money.

While smaller film markets like NZ, UK - where there are limited number of movies being made because of the limited finances available - go through a different process where the script is originated mostly at the writer level and evolves over a period of time with the producers working closely with the writer to find a movie which could be marketable. In such a reality it becomes essential to make sure that the writer is given creative freedom to explore ideas and also as a producer not to start dictating what the script should be from the point of view of marketing.

With each draft and revision - the temptation is always to give a huge set of notes to the writer and expect them to make the changes. Instead of doing that it is good to discuss things with the writer and then follow it up with suggesting 3-4 key story points you both have agreed needs changing. Then let the writer work out how they are going to make those key changes and not interfere in the actual creative processes.

As a writer - don't spend too much time setting things up and engage the audience by keeping them guessing the story. It is good to make a 90 minute movie - as it is more commercial and for that the script would be in the vicinity of 80-90 pages depending on what kind of story it is. While constructing a story the idea is to first have the story structure sorted and write the dialogue afterwards - as story structure is more important than dialogue when you are trying to create a good script. Identify your target market early on and write with them at the back of your mind - there is no point in writing a script which makes sense only to you and can not be realized onto the big screen. Drama is a genre which is the hardest to sell or make, so a script just can't be drama - it would need to have other elements in place - which play an equally important role in the story. Also when you start writing a story the internal logic within the script needs to be rock solid and the environment has to have some kind of an impact on the story. Anyway I think that is quite enough because my sense of that day has just got mixed up and even if you find atleast 1 good thing in all the stuff I have written about the workshop - the effort gone into this post is worth it.

I will take leave for now...btw - do check out the trailer for BORAT - which is absolutely hilarious.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Food, Script

posted by Amit @ 4:40 PM 2 Comments

Blur

The past few days have been extremely hectic and one big blur. The internet is finally working and dealing with Telecom has been a breeze- right from getting a phone line to signing up for the internet connection - all of which took less than 15-20 minutes. Now we have a new landline number which is (+64) 9 4191158 [replace '+64' with '0' if calling from within NZ] but we don't have a phone yet - so can't recieve any calls but the broadband is up and running and it is fast.


Benji and me took a walk over to the Birkenhead ferry terminal on Wednesday night as it was a pleasent night and decided that there might be some good pics there. The lights reflecting on the water was mesmerizing and we did end up taking heaps of photos.

On friday - I went to a producer's workshop conducted by NZFC (substituting for the script writer - Jordan, who is in Utah) along with Richard and it was a great experience. 5 feature film projects had been invited to spend 3 days time with Tom Strudwick - who is a script consultant in the UK (and he has worked with United Artists in their acquisition department and also worked with directors like Pedro Almodovar, David Lynch, Mike Leigh, Jim Jarmusch and Michael Winterbottom). The purpose was to analyse and develop each of the scripts further with the marketplace in mind. It was a good learning experience and the thing that was even better was to see other producers and writers who were at different stages with their scripts go through the same pains to keep the marketplace in mind while developing their movie further. I learnt heaps during that one day - not just about 'Nowhere' but about making movies with the aim of selling it to the audience. There were a few things which I didn't agree with completely but it was still an invaluable learning opportunity and it is always great to have an experienced player like Tom look at the script and share his feelings and thoughts about it and gentle give suggestions as to how we could possibly make it better.

Saturday - was again an action packed day. I was doing lighting on Angelique's short film and it was a fun experience. The first five minutes of the day were scary because the reality kicked in that I was actually doing lighting. But Drew is a fantastic DP, who instantly helped ease me into the role and Angelique's small personal pep talk while I was doing the first setup definitely helped a lot. I learnt heaps and it was a satisfying experience at the end of the day. Here is a photo of the action in progress


Today I think I will finally get around to cleaning up the house and man it is going to be a long day. Anyway I will leave things here for now.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Filming, Script

posted by Amit @ 7:11 AM 2 Comments

Woosh!!!!

Woosh is proving to be such a pain in the bum - we ordered the wireless connection and they sent us the modem. On testing it out, we are not getting any signal in our house, so they sent us a booster antenna, so that we can try and get the signal {their logic in not sending that to us earlier was that we didn't need it as we are in the good signal area}. And now the booster antenna has barely made a difference. I am writing from a Woosh connection but it is incredibly slow - feels like a dial up connection and it somehow doesn't want to work with the wireless router that I bought. I had a completely pain free experience of buying a wireless internet router, so that we can have internet on multiple machines in the house without having to run cables. Now just need to get the internet going one way or another - since wireless is proving to be a pain now thinking about going wired (through Telecom..grrrr). So for those wanting to know how Woosh is - my experience with it has been frustrating and annoying - I wish there was more choice here in NZ when it comes to telecommunications and internet.

Most of my unpacking is complete and now I just need to arrange things into their own little compartments. At the moment everything is still a little spread out in the lounge. I found an Indian store which sells samosas that are really close to the taste of samosas in India and they are definitely the best ones I have eaten in Auckland so far.

Since we don't have a TV at the new place, Benji hooked up his computer monitor to my laptop and we watched 'Infernal Affairs 2' and it was a good watch. There are some really weird music choices and some random pacing choices but it was still an enjoyable movie. And it kind of fills up the original story nicely.

But at this point I think I am tired from the day and the frustration of the last couple of days over getting the internet thing working, to write anything more - so I will be off to bed.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Computers, Movies

posted by Amit @ 8:48 PM 0 Comments