Goodbye 2006
Before coming to bidding farewell to 2006 I would like to quickly highlight something important.
Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia is doing a fund raising in order to keep the site going. It is a fantastic resource and I think it a worthwhile cause to share the knowledge base - after all knowledge is power. Do donate whatever amount you feel like (big or small) to it to support the cause. You would have lots of questions about what and why - you can check out the FAQ section on it
HERE. In order to donate you can go to their page
here.
Yesterday was a lovely day as I attended Tania and Andrew's wedding. It was a different experience - more so because it was the first western wedding that I have attended. The whole event (including the reception) lasted about 8 hours - which is a big change when compared to any kind of indian weddings which are long drawn and elaborate affairs. Overall it was a fantastic experience and it is always good to be part of a family event - in this case the Wordsworth family.
Editing wise I have edited another 10 minutes in the 1 day I had since the last update, so the assembly now stands at 58.5 minutes. Yesterday and today are my days off editing and I get back to it from tomorrow. I hit the first rough patch in assembling on Friday as one of the scenes wouldn't cut together at all because of lighting and exposure problems on location. That was one of the last scenes we shot in the evening on one of the Saturdays of filming and we kept filming even though we were loosing light pretty fast. It has now come to bite me in the bum during edit. We will re-shoot the scene when we go back to shoot the pickups and the climax of the second act. It is not a biggie as it is only a small scene. But overall the movie is shaping up really nicely.
Since this is going to be the last post for 2006 I think I will get a little bit introspective of the year that has gone by. The year started off great with trip back home and catching up with family and friends in India before coming back to NZ. Work wise - it has been a tough year overall with all the struggles of trying to get 'Nowhere to Love' into production and ultimately postponing it till we got the script in a better shape and find proper funding for it. Add to that a rough year at South Seas where there were more downs than ups - especially the later part of the year, which made the overall year that much more tougher. And I unfortunately also missed my sister's wedding earlier this month. But the year had also had many positives where I managed to rally together a team to get 'Five' off the ground and into production in a really short time span. This more than made up for everything else. I also moved into a new flat which has been fantastic and proved to be a good move. I formed some great new friends and probably did more socializing than 2004 and 2005 put together.I paid off my student loan. I got my full NZ driving license and I have applied for NZ citizenship after finding that I was eligible to apply for it now - making the cut off date by 5 days (otherwise I would have had to wait for another 2 years). And finally being lucky enough to get the support from a lot of people in one way or another. So it has been by all means been an eventful year.
Now I head into 2007 with my second movie to be released sometime during the year. And without the security of a pay check arriving into my bank account every week as I will be freelancing instead of being in a job. It is definitely an exciting time to look forward to. A bit frightening at times but exciting and challenging nonetheless. Here is to another year lived to the fullest and to the future.
Walking the path untreadedWish anyone reading this a very happy new year and all the best wishes for another exciting year.
Adios,
Amit
Labels: Filming, Five, Future, Introspection, Post Production, Wedding
Tsotsi
Watched '
Tsotsi' - a South African movie which won the best foreign film oscar in 2006. It was a beautiful movie. Some of the music choices seemed a bit bizarre to me but I think they might fit with the South African culture.The thing which makes the movie really stand out are the performances by the leads combined with a well crafted story. The cinematography is raw and lush and the editing has a gentle rhythm to it. It is a really touching movie and is a highly recommended watch.
It has been a good day as I hit the 48.5 minute mark with the assemble edit today - 10 minutes of assembly in a day. Some days are really good where you fall into the pace while others are slow where you labor through some scenes. But I am pleased overall with the pace that I am doing. Just got to keep it up I guess. It is a long drawn process and this will carry on till the end of April, 2007 - which is when I hope to have the movie finished by.
I found this tutorial relating to working with P2 Media in Avid and thought it would be a really good link to share with everyone. You can check out the tutorial
HERE.
I have started watching a TV series called '
Popetown' - an animated BBC T.V series which was made but dropped without screening by the BBC because of protests from the catholic church. I have watched the 1st episode and I found it hilarious. Further updates on that when I finish watching all the episodes.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Avid, Five, Movies, P2, Post Production, TV Series
Christmas Aftermath
Today was the first proper day of editing where I got a proper 8 hour shift and it was good. I had been sneaking in about 3-4 hours of edit over the past couple of days so that the assembly would keep progressing nicely. At last count I have assembled about 38 minutes of the movie - which is not bad going considering that I have probably put in about 24-25 hours edit time into that. The real challenge in editing usually starts when the assembly is done and you start trying to get the pacing and rhythm right.
It is holiday season and most of the country is on a holiday break. I still find it amusing as to how almost the country comes to a stand still during this period. The shoppers don't mind it though since everyone is out shopping and this year there was a record spending spree leading up to Christmas where the total amount of transactions through credit cards and debit cards hit NZ$ 196 million in 1 day (on Friday)- which to me is absolutely insane as it does not include any cash or cheque transactions either. People find so much comfort in materialistic things when it is a feeling of goodwill and sharing that counts. Even if half the people did one good deed on that day the world would be a better place to live in.
On Christmas eve - i.e Sunday evening, I went and had dinner with friends at a Thai restaurant - the food was a bit expensive but really yummy. On Christmas evening I was invited to a lovely dinner with Lance and his family. The Christmas dinner was heaps of fun and was rounded up nicely by a table tennis tournament, card games and some lovely food.
I have been bad over the last week or so, in the sense that I haven't sent anyone any Christmas greetings or text messages or emails. I am so caught up with editing the movie that the dose of reality just jars me. So you can say that I have been really lucky that some people thought it worthwhile to drop me an email or a text wishing me the best for the holiday season but a couple of text messages have been really frustrating as well - they are from numbers I don't have on my cellphone. They obviously know me and have gone to the pain of wishing me but when I text them back wishing them the same and asking who they are, I don't receive any reply back. How annoying is that? I am not being an arrogant son of a bitch or anything, I genuinely want to know who it is because I don't have their number on my address book. We can make life so complicated sometimes.
I found out today that freelance work for me at TVNZ would start from the 3rd week of January, so now I have to really make my savings stretch that much more. On the other hand it is fantastic - as it gives me a good 3 week solid run at editing the movie and I can possibly get it to the half way through the rough cut stage by that point.
As a sign off note I would like to draw the attention to our environment.
Global warming has claimed it's first inhabited island recently. To the critics who think that global warming and climate change is just a whole load of shit then they ought to read this article as well -
Climate Change is turning animal's world topsy-turvy. And we are not helping other species either -
Orangutans are at the brink of extinction because of man-made follies. How did we let it come to this? Are we really that inhumane?
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Festival, Five, Global Warming, Holiday, Movies, Post Production, TVNZ
Deja Vu
Just came back from a screening of '
Deja Vu' and it was an interesting movie. It is a sci-fi movie hidden in the form of a thriller. The movie did surprise me on how well it was made - it's only major flaw is it's story ending which gives the whole movie an unsatisfactory feel because of inherent questions raised. Time travel is always a hard thing topic to pull off on film and unfortunately this movie doesn't quite pull it off in that department - what is interesting though is how they treat time travel. It definitely sets out to do something different but then falls into the hollywood movie trap. It is a enjoyable watch nonetheless - if you put the time travel logic aside.
You would think I would be updating the blog more often - especially since I have finished my teaching job and have more time on my hands. Well - that ain't true - i mean with having loads of time on my hands - it has been an extremely busy week.
The green screen stuff went well on Wednesday and it definitely was a steep learning curve working with the HVX camera and P2 media. Later that evening I had a meeting with Anita, Marjan and Andy over the climax of act 2 of 'Five' which we have to film in January. It was a productive meeting and the story strands are coming together.
I had 2 afternoon shift training sessions at TVNZ on Thursday and Friday - which meant that my days were really long. I managed to squeeze in 4 hours of editing 'Five' in those 2 days and I am learning to pace myself - so I can still give a 100% to my training sessions. It is holiday season and I don't have any sessions worked out for further work at TVNZ next week, so I will have a full week dedicated to editing 'Five' - which should be heaps of fun.
My physio sessions were supposed to be complete yesterday but I have to go back once more in the new year for them to make sure that I am all fixed up. My neck and back are feeling heaps better and I am continuing the exercises I have been suggested to help the process.
'The Fountain' graphic novel that was resent to me by amazon.com - arrived in mail on Thursday and I read it straight away - it is fascinating. The story combined with the art work pull you into another world. I am not going to discuss the plot or the story because it is hard to explain the depth and philosophy in the story by trying to give a synopsis of it. It was a worthwhile purchase and I am now looking forward to the movie - when it gets released.
Nothing much else to update about for now.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Five, Graphic Novels, HVX, Movies, P2, Physio, TVNZ
Three Burials and a Wedding
It has been a busy few days - it almost feels like eons since I posted.
First I would like to say 'Congrats' to my sis - Veni, who got married on the 15th of December. There are no other words to express my joy - it is always hard finding a life partner and it is great that she found hers. All the best for the life ahead sis.
My neck/back is feeling a lot better. Another 2 physio appointments to go and I think it will get me back on track. Saturday went into cleaning up my room - which had become a complete mess again. It took me longer than normal as I did not want to strain my neck or back.
I did watch '
The Three Burials of Melqauiades Estrada' on Saturday and it was an awesome movie. One word for describing it would be - 'poetic'. It is beautiful and lyrical and gentle. It transports you into another world and it is a highly recommended watch.
I have started assembling 'Five' on Sunday and spent about 5 hours before I had to stop because of my back. Editing is so much fun - I had almost forgotten how good it felt in front of an edit suite playing with the footage.
On Sunday evening - I went to a Christmas dinner at Barbara's flat. Each of their flat members could invite 2 friends and everyone had take a cooked dish along with a 2 Dollar gift. I cooked some 'Tofu Curry' and I wasn't particularly happy with it - mainly because tofu doesn't have any taste and to me that is boring. Next time I will use paneer {Indian cottage cheese} and I think it will taste heaps better. It was a nice dinner - got to try different types of dishes and also got to meet some more wonderful people. It was a pleasant evening.
Monday was a bit tiring as I did about 10 different jobs through the day ranging from sorting out stuff at TVNZ with my ID to a job interview in another department at TVNZ to picking up my new printer - to name a few. I later went and watched '
Jindabyne' with Julia and Barbara. It turned out to be a terrible movie - it was beautifully shot but the story and the pacing were completely out and it just felt like an overdrawn soap opera. It was annoying as hell trying to sit through the movie and the movie felt like an exercise in trying to showcase the scenery and trying to portray some of the Australian indigenous cultural issues - it succeeds at showing off the scenery but everything else about the movie was bland. Maybe the movie works for australian audiences but it definitely did not do it for me. I felt shattered by the end of the day and today was no different.
Got another big day tomorrow where we will be shooting some green screen stuff for the movie - which means that I will be picking up and dropping off the camera and the green screen for the shoot. Also have a script workshop session later in the evening with the cast of 'Five'. Auckland Regional Council came back to me after I put in request for additional shoot dates in Jan and have generously agreed to grant us permission under our existing cover - which is fantastic as I don't have to sweat about the location now.
Anyway I think I will go to bed for now.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Festival, Filming, Five, Movies, Physio, Post Production, TVNZ, Wedding
Convenience!!!
It has been a long day. I went to TVNZ to see/do a day's work in the technical operations section and spent the whole day in tape operations room - it was heaps of fun and a great learning curve. I kept bumping into so many friends from 2003 - Logan, Dan West, Brian Mead, Alex Samuel and a couple more people from South Seas from different years. I will be doing freelance work with TVNZ after I complete my 3 days training with them sometime next week - so it is great that there is some avenue I can earn money from to pay for my bills while I edit 'Five'.
Getting to work is really convenient - I step out of the house and I am a minute's walk from the ferry terminal. I catch the ferry and it drops me off at the downtown ferry terminal, from where TVNZ is 5 minutes walk up the road. It takes away the hassle of driving the car in peak hour and the woes of trying to find a cheap car park in CBD.
My neck is still hurting like hell and I am feeling very nauseous as well for some strange reason. Feel like lying down but I can't. Last day of work tomorrow and I am excited.
Gotta go for now. Need to feel the pain a bit more.
Amit
Labels: TVNZ
Pain!!!!
The pain is searing through the body and the head. Feeling better than yesterday because of the physio treatment earlier this morning but still in a pretty bad shape. Sleep is painful. I might change my computer chair and my bed - it is still a thought but I think I need to take more care of my body. I don't want to end up immobilized and end up harming my work.
I suddenly realized something - 'PAIN' is a 4 letter word as well. Hee..heeee...
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Physio
Where the truth lies
I am sitting in excruciating pain with a heat pack across my shoulder, neck and back. I somehow managed to hurt myself without knowing it and woke up at 3.00 this morning with unbearable pain and couldn't go back to sleep. I rang up a physiotherapist first thing in the morning and arranged for an appointment - which was not till later in the morning. Normal routine things were painful to do - even putting on a T-shirt was a mission. Anyway the physiotherapy session itself went well and I am feeling a lot better than I was in the morning. I have 2 more appointments - one tomorrow and the other on Friday to try and sort out the neck and back. I had to cancel my last swimming lesson for this year as there was no way I could even get to the swimming pool leave alone getting into it. And I won't be attending this year's graduation ceremony either since pain is not good in a social event and I can barely keep a straight face with the discomfort I am in.
The gone weekend was busy in a different way - I have been doing frame grabs from the movie, so that I can put them up on the wall - that way I can visually see the overall structure of the movie and identify key emotional and story points which have to come through. It is important because when you are working on a big project it is easy to get lost and loose track of what you set out to achieve. I was taking the frame grabs to different photo places to get them printed and see which one got good results - out of the 5 print places there was only 1 which kind of printed decent pics and if I go with them it will cost a small chunk. To me it seems like an unwise business decision that I should give someone else that much money when I can buy a printer, which will become a future asset. So I am seriously thinking of buying a multi-function printer which can print photos, normal paper and DVD/CD's - that way I can maximize the cost-benefit of the purchase. I ended up doing lots of research and I am veering more towards buying a Canon iP5300 printer - haven't made up my mind yet but getting pretty close.
I rented out '
Where the Truth Lies' - a movie by Atom Egoyan because it was a movie mired in rating controversy last year and I did want to see what the fuss was about. The movie turned out to be a really well made movie and doesn't fake its punches. It is an artistic achievement and features brilliant performances by Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Alison Lohman. The camera work is exquisite and so is the editing. I definitely think the rating board killed the movie's reach. It is a different kind of film-noir and it would have been great seeing it on the big screen. I also got out a movie called 'The Squid and the Whale' but didn't get a chance to watch it - I might do it this weekend.
More things simmering quietly underneath (well not so quietly since i just wrote it on the blog) and will update things as they happen.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Movies, Physio, Post Production
Casino Royale
I went and saw the new James Bond flick with Julia and Barbara on Thursday evening. It was great catching up with them after almost a month and a half. The new Bond rocks but the movie get extremely tedious and flawed towards the end. Daniel Craig is unpredictable as Bond and it makes the proceedings a lot more interesting plus it is a great change not having all those gimmicky super gadgets. The movie instead relies on brutal hand to hand combats for most of the time. If they had trimmed out about 15-20 minutes from the end it would have been the best ever all time Bond movie but alas - the last 30 minutes just dragged on and on and on...
The swimming lesson this week was awesome because my learning curve accelerated a fair bit and I can now actually do freestyle swimming without relying on a floating board but I am yet to practice the breathing technique while swimming. Thats the next major thing I have to start practicing but it overall it was a great feeling having made that progress.
Anyway not much to report for now.
Adios,
Amit
Labels: Movies, Swimming
Photo Gallery
The photo gallery for 'Five' is up and running. You can check it out
HERE.
I sometimes get the feeling that I am really detached from this illusion of reality and the feeling has been really strong over the past few days. My version of reality sucks at this point and if you add to it the vivid nightmares I have been having over the past few nights - it isn't exactly a great place to be in.
I spoke to my family in India as everyone is together for my sister's (first cousin) wedding and I am the only one missing from the entire family. I don't know if I should cry or just shut off emotionally - I feel completely alienated at this point in time and I have no one but myself to blame.
I had pitched myself for a 1st A.D. job on a medium budget HD feature to be shot in January but I don't think I have got that job - the reasons I have heard through grapevine is they are not sure if the crew will understand my English or not. What the fuck kind of a reasoning is that?! Anyway things happen for a reason - so I should thank my stars and concentrate on editing 'Five'.
Greencine.com has picked up the internet rights for 'Memories of Tomorrow' which will distributed as VOD {Video on Demand} through their website. It is really exciting as it is another venue for distribution for our first movie. I will post a link once things are up and running from their end - it might take a month or so.
I will take leave for now.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Five, Introspection, Memories of Tomorrow, Wedding
March of December
Another week gone screaming past and heaps of stuff has happened in the meantime. I am tired from today, so the order of things might be jumbled or sometimes incomplete or both.
I met up with some family friends who were traveling through Australia and New Zealand and had a few days stop over at Auckland. It was good catching up with them.
My swimming lessons are going well and I have 2 more classes left for the year and then will restart next year sometime. School is as hectic as ever. I am glad that I am leaving at the end of this year. I definitely need more time to myself.
I have finished digitizing all the 24 tapes and I have also digitized 2 of the 3 'Behind the Scenes' tapes. I have decided not to use the group clip/multi-cam edit mode in Avid for editing as it will slow the whole thing down and also give less creative movement with the edit. I will be treating it as a single cam edit (even though we shot with 2 cameras). I won't be sub-clipping the footage either as it is another time consuming process instead I will be using locators on the source footage to make the notes I need to edit.
I went and watched a Korean movie called 'The Host' yesterday evening. I didn't particularly like the movie - it is well made and executed but the Koreans have a weird story telling technique. I was constantly frustrated by the build-up of crucial scenes not coming to fruitation and the whole experience wasn't getting any better when the projector in the cinema kept going out of focus from time to time. The movie is well-made - very melodramatic and funny for a horror movie and the special effects are good but the movie just didn't do it for me. Benji on the other hand loves the movie - so you have to decide for yourself.
I had ordered 'The Fountain' from amazon a few weeks back and the book arrived on my doorstep this Saturday but I was dismayed to find that what I got wasn't a graphic novel but a movie tie-in book which had photos from the movie and the original screenplay of the movie. I was very disappointed and I gave amazon customer care a ring later in the evening to explain how I thought I was ordering the graphic novel but instead ended up ordering the movie tie-in book since both have the same description. They were understanding and sorted the stuff out for me. I get to keep the book I have and they will be sending me the graphic novel straight away - so am happy with their customer service.
My desk is almost tidied up and need to sort out the bunch of DVD's/CD's sitting there. My room isn't in too bad a shape - I just need to tidy up small bits and bobs. The next mission is tidying up the house - which has suffered from lack of attention through November because we were filming 'Five'. The 'To Do' list is currently sitting at 6 major things and I think this coming week will be focussed on reducing or completely crossing off the list (if I am lucky).
On a sign-off note I am amazed by articles like this "
Single women ask' Where have the good fells gone?'"[and
the supplementary article to it..]. Well I think if those single women get off their high horses and stopped being judgmental then they will find all the single guys they need. Typical female way of questioning things when things aren't going their way (shrugs his shoulder in disbelief and dismay).
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Avid, Five, Graphic Novels, Movies, Post Production, Random, Swimming
