Location
Yaaay........ I finally managed to get the permission for the location where I wanted to do the shoot for the opening scene of the movie. Phew - it is a relief and is exciting at the same time. One step closer to getting the remaining elements we need to finish the movie. Now a matter of co-ordinating the team required for the shoot and locking the date and time with them.
Amit
Labels: Five
Block Party
I totally forgot how much time has passed since the last update – 6 days just flew away. Editing ‘Five’ + Shifts at TVNZ + Prep for Saturday shoot + Saturday morning shoot = 6 days unaccounted for.
We did some pickup shots on Saturday morning - stuff which we had accidentally stuffed up the first time around and Andy Taylor helped me out on the pickup shots shoot by doing second camera while Benji was doing his usually job. Pickups went well and the weather matched up perfectly with the day when we shot the original footage. I have digitized the footage and integrated it into the cut and it works like a charm. The cut currently stands at 73 minutes and it will probably get tightened by another minute or so before I start adding the opening scene, some extra scenes (which I am writing right now to tie up some story threads) and the aerial footage. It definitely is a lot tighter than before and looking good after losing all the flab it had earlier - the story flows much faster.
Watched a couple of entertaining movies '
Hollywood Ending' and '
Dave Chapelle's Block Party'. Both of them were really entertaining in different ways. Definitely worth a watch.
Life for me right now is 'Five' and TVNZ besides that nothing else is happening.
Till later
Amit
Labels: Five
Experiments
I have experimented cooking different type of dishes in the past couple of days. The weirdest one I don't even know to call because it was so random - some of the ingredients - chicken, red capsicum, garlic, ginger, a shot of vanilla flavoured vodka, peppercorn, hot chili sauce, red beans, blackcurrant juice to name a few. I still haven't tried eating the dish yet - that I am leaving till tomorrow. :-)
I also experimented and came up with a quick snack - cheese pepperoni mushroom toast. It takes all of 10 minutes to make and it is yummy. The key is pan frying the mushrooms with cracked pepper to give it a nice flavor and use mozzarella cheese as topping as it adds a distinct flavor to the dish.
The current rough cut stands at 77.5 minutes and it will go down a further 3 minutes odd before other elements are added in and the movie is starting to feel tight, which is always good. I now have the aerial footage and will probably add it after we do the pickup shots on Saturday (weather permitting).
Managed to watch a french movie, '
The Housekeeper' - which was funny, gentle and a good slice of life. The ending was pretty wide open and is anyone's guess. I think the French like their open endings to their movies as they feel that cinema is a continuation of life and a story can never end. I could be totally wrong but I am still scratching my head for any French movie that I have seen which has a closed ending.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Five, Food
Light A Million Candles
The innocent victims of Internet child abuse cannot speak for themselves.
But you can.With your help, we can eradicate this evil trade. We do not need your money.
We need you to light a candle of support. The more candles we light, the more powerful our voice becomes.
This petition will be used to encourage governments, politicians, financial institutions, payment organisations, Internet service providers, technology companies and law enforcement agencies to eradicate the commercial viability of online child abuse. They have the power to work together. You have the power to get them to take action.
Please light your candle at
lightamillioncandles.com or send an email of support to
light@lightamillioncandles.com.
Together, we can destroy the commercial viability of Internet child abuse sites that are destroying the lives of innocent children. Kindly forward this to your friends, relatives and work colleagues so that they can light a candle too.
Labels: Cause
High Tension
Doubt is man's great friend and any belief worth having should survive doubt. Over the past couple of days I have had serious doubts about film making and how I have simply started charting untested waters without keeping any part of me safely tucked away on the shore. I would be lying if I said that it is all good because the truth is that it is scary going through uncharted territory and finding things out as you go. But at the end of the day – what is really satisfying is that I am living life instead of playing it safe. Not that playing it safe is a bad thing – far from it, it has its high points that includes being responsible for people other than you, which you definitely can't do if you are a nomad . And in the end – it comes down to the individual themselves and I think I rather enjoy exploring the unknown and seeing where life leads me – after all this is the only life that I will get to live.
I watched a couple of good movies yesterday night and it feels good. The first one was '
Factotum' – which works because of Matt Dillon and is a gently paced exploration of a writer's struggles and journey in finding themselves (or losing themselves). The second movie was a French horror movie called '
High Tension' which was simply brilliant for 3/4th of it's running time before taking an unexpected turn which kind of dilutes the impact of the overall movie a bit. It keeps you on the hook all the time and the sound design on the movie is fantastic.
The sluggishness and the dizziness I had over the past couple of days are gone. I think it was definitely food poisoning of some sort. I will start work on the rough cut from Monday and hope to tighten the cut. We still have a couple of pickup shots and a scene to film – which we will try and film over the next couple of weeks.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Introspection, Movies
Grrr.....
I forgot to go to my first swimming lesson this season and I am justifying it by thinking I am not feeling too well anyway (which I am not). I am still feeling a little bit woozy - easiest way to explain it would be I am feeling light-headed from time to time. Let's hope that this passes through quick.
Spent the better part of the day doing paperwork and trying to sort out pickup shoot for 'Five' - so much for trying to have a day off. I better get back to it.
Amit
Labels: Swimming
Intrepid
I am feeling dizzy – not mentally but physically – must be something I ate today. It has been a few extremely busy and eventful days – I would say almost 17 hour days for the past 4 days and it feels great even though I am a bit tired. I might take the day off from everything tomorrow – just to chill out.
I caught up with David M. and his family on Sunday afternoon for lunch. The homemade bread was an awesome treat as it was so yummy. It was nice catching up with them after a long time and having a good yarn.
Sunday night was weird in a manner of speaking – I was coming back from work around 12.00 at night and about 200 meters before the house I saw a girl walking in the middle of the road – asking for a lift. I pulled over but then another guy walked up and started talking to the girl and she looked like she knew him and the guy was giving out really aggressive body vibes. I rolled down my window and asked if everything was OK. The girl said 'Yes' but was giving a really weird body vibe as well – like she wasn't comfortable with the guy but had no option but to say 'Yes'. I said 'Fine' and drove away but as I was pulling up to park – something with the whole situation just didn't sit right with me. So I got home and asked Benji to come along with me for a drive - there was no way I could do this on my own - I definitely needed support if things got out of hand. I quickly explained the situation to him and asked him if he minded if we drove around to just make sure that nothing bad happens to the girl. We drove around a bit but didn't find anyone but just as we came close to the house we realized that we hadn't checked out one road close by and drove back up that road. And surprisingly the girl was there – asking for a lift and she seemed really scared. We asked her if we could drop her off somewhere and she said she wanted to be dropped off in the city. She must have been on serious drugs or something because she was extremely paranoid (she thought we were going the wrong way) and had massive blackouts while we were trying to ask her where exactly she wanted to be dropped off and just wouldn't respond for ages. She was giving out a really weird vibe and I think both Benji and me were happy when we finally dropped her off in the city before coming back home. It took a good half an hour to shake off that vibe. I don't get it – why do people do drugs? Whats the fun in that – especially if you can't stay responsible for yourself anymore.
On Monday I got to watch 2 episodes of the new series of '
Intrepid Journeys' (one of my favorite TV series) and it was awesome – the first one was a journey through China and Pakistan with John Tamihere – which screened on TV and the second was a journey through Iran with Mary Lambie – which I got to watch while doing a dub for that program. I think I enjoyed the episode with Mary Lambie more because of her energy and infectious charm. Sometime over the past week or so (I can't remember when) I finally managed to watch '
Hustle and Flow' – which was a movie really well thought out and well executed. So it kind of raises my hopes for 'Black Snake Moan' since it is by the same director. The movie really kicks ass because of the acting – especially from Terrence Howard as well as the supporting cast.
Sometime last week I was talking to John Davies – the man behind Arkles Entertainment (who picked up NZ/Australia rights to 'Memories') and he said that he would like to see the assemble edit of the movie this Tuesday (i.e yesterday), so he can decide if he wants to pick up the movie or not. Ever since then I was frantically working away on leveling up the audio as much as possible – since it gives a bad impression [even at an assembly stage viewing] if the audio is uneven (or not even audible). Benji helped out with that on Saturday and Sunday evening and carried on working on the audio while I was away working at TVNZ. So when I did finally encode the version for viewing – it wasn't too bad at all. I caught up with John yesterday morning and watched the cut with him. I got heaps of creative feedback from him and all of it makes sense, so I am going to implement those changes and I think that will definitely lift the movie up heaps. The other good thing that also came out of it was that John will be picking up the movie's DVD rights for NZ/Australia. So it is definitely exciting news and at the same time there is heaps more to do before it even gets to the stage where we can share it with the rest of the world. One of the other primary aims is to try and meet the deadline for Auckland International Film Festival. So yeah – lots more work to do on the movie over the next couple of months. The current cut now stands at 81.5 minutes and once I implement some of the suggestions I picked up today I think the length will go down to 75 minutes odd before adding the other elements which will then beef up the duration to 80-85 minutes. Better to have a tight cut, interesting movie rather than a loose cut movie.
'The Fountain' finally gets released here in NZ from Feb 15th and it is going to be a painful few days before I can get the time to watch it. So on that note – I will take leave for now. And yeah – Happy Valentine's Day – in all it's commercial craziness and artificiality.
Adios,
Amit
Labels: Five, Random, TV Series
Flight
Just back from spending a couple of hours at Tony Monk Films scrolling through tapes - looking for the aerial footage I want for 'Five'. I've been lucky since Blair Monk already did the bulk of the work and gave me short listed tapes to view at - which cut the search process significantly. I've found all the clips I need and now it is a matter of getting them onto a tape, so I can then integrate it into the movie.
I also caught up with Rachel Gilchrist after ages and it was good seeing her again. Talking of which - 'Memories' is still available to view online at
SuperPass Movies - where they are keeping the archives of the 'movie of the week'. Real Networks seem to have got their act together as the streaming was great and there was no jittering or stopping or frame drops - even on our relatively modest broadband speed.
A trailer which has gotten me excited is '
Black Snake Moan' and it definitely looks like a killer movie. You can watch the trailer
here. Talking of which I have started editing the teaser trailer for 'Five' but I don't think it will be ready for another couple of weeks.
Till later
Amit
Labels: Five, Memories of Tomorrow
Safe NZ(?)
NZ has been ranked 4th best country in the world to live in ahead of USA - which comes in at No. 5. The only thing which bothers me with the new report is that they say it is based on several factors including health care and education system. Every other factor in the survey I would say yes to but to give credibility to a struggling health care sector and education system is a bit misleading. Or am I missing something? You can read the article
HERE. Generally NZ is a safe country but there has also been increased incidents of alleged sexual assaults on foreign travelers - I wonder if that was taken into account for the survey - or is it that other countries have it more dangerous than NZ? On the other hand you can see
how Australia kills its visitors. (:-)
Yesterday evening I had dinner at my place with Ian, Barbara, Julia, Ellen and Mark. It was heaps of fun and a bit of socializing for me in almost a month, besides Anita's birthday party in Jan. Sometimes time just flies away without so much of a whisper.
I am currently talking to
Tony Monk Films for licensing some aerial footage for 'Five' - I had always planned to have one aerial shot in the opening few minutes of the movie to set the geography and scope of the story but it had gone on the back burner with the production and post production occupying majority of my time. Now that the rough cut is progressing as per schedule I decided to get back onto the case and things are looking positive right now. The other 2 things which I have been on the back burner with the movie have been the website and the teaser trailer - I don't know when I will get to that portion as I have still got to plan and get the opening scene of the movie shot sometime within the next month or so.
Anyway I am going back to the rough cut.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Five, New Zealand
Rough Cut Begins
Well - watched the assembly for 'Five' a few times now and made some notes about the changes I need to make. Fortunately - the list is only 2 pages long right now and once I implement those changes I think the movie will be in a much better shape. Sound design will obviously make a huge difference to the overall product. I have been talking with Benji and we will be aiming to do a proper 5.1 mix this time around - it will take us a bit of extra time to get it right but I think it is totally worth it.
So I have now officially moved the project into the rough cut stage and have started working on the changes and it definitely takes more time than the first assembly because you are trying to make something work - which means going back to the source footage and reanalyzing the footage from that scene and seeing if there is anything else you can find to achieve what you want to show. When thing starts working - the amount of satisfaction you get is immense.
Freelance work at TVNZ is going great and I am loving it. Shift times vary between 0700-1530 or 1530-2400 on any given day and it works out nicely because it still gives me time even during my work days to do a little bit of editing. Overall the freelance work is a great balance to the editing I am doing and I am a happy chap.
I received a letter from Department of Internal Affairs letting me know that my application for New Zealand citizenship will be assigned to a case officer in approx. 8 weeks time and that I need to send all my original documents to them for the same - which I promptly did - so I guess I won't be travelling out of the country for the next 3 months or so. Heeheee...
And in completely unrelated news - I spent a fair bit of time arguing with billing department at Telecom since they mucked up the amounts for our broadband plan without any fault of ours. It has been time consuming but relatively pain free as I explained to them the whole situation and as to how Telecom was charging us more - they have sorted out it out for now and have credited our account back for the extra money charged but here is keeping fingers crossed that I don't have to go through the same exercise again next month.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Five, New Zealand, Post Production, TVNZ
Memories of Tomorrow
'Memories of Tomorrow' is the movie of the week at www.film.com this week and you can view it for free between 30th Jan'2007 and 5th Feb'2007. So if you do want to watch it you can check it out
HERE.
Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..............................
Amit
(Currently listening to Julie Delpy sing '
Je t'aime tant' from the
OST of 'Before Sunset'. The beauty of listening to a song in a foreign language is that you don't know what is being said, so you are guided in your emotions entirely by the tone and spirit in the singer's voice.)
Labels: Memories of Tomorrow, Music
