Awarded
Well - FIVE was chosen as the Best Feature by the judges at DeReel Independent Film Festival in Australia. And yeah I am thrilled beyond words.
Besides that - just mentally preparing myself for tomorrow when I sit down with David to lock down To'ona'i - the short film that he is making. I need to sharpen my knives and forks to combat his nanchucks - it will be one helluva wonderful event I swear. I will write an update if I come out as the survivor.
I have seen the first 4 episodes of Season-4 of Battlestar Galactica and it is thrilling as usual. Seeing the cylon civil war was awesome - they seem to be laying parallels with humanity but I am finding it hard to imagine as to how they will wrap up the story.
Anyway time to hit the sack.
Till later,
Amit
P.S - the new DARK KNIGHT trailer rocks..it rocks real hard.
Labels: Five, Post Production, Short film, TV Series
Back
It has been a week and a bit since I last posted. The last week flew away in various things and I wasn't in the best frame of mind and body to write an update. I put my upper back out while sneezing and that took me a good 4 days to recover from that (it looks like I am 30 going on 80). And how do you manage to do such a thing like that? I don't know - I just somehow managed to do it. And now I am back to the usual story of having to check my backlog of unanswered emails and things to do.
Last week was also eventful in terms of tax returns. I thought I had paid all my taxes but my accountant thought differently as he clubbed together my earnings as a freelancer and my earnings after I joined my current job, together - which meant that I ended up in a situation of having to pay more taxes, which I wasn't happy about at all. The logic didn't make any sense to me and I followed it up with IRD and they advised me the opposite, so hoping to sort this stuff out with the accountant soon.
My new favorite dish is Keema Curry that I have been cooking for the past 2 weeks now. I am using
Shan Spice mix which takes care of all the spices for the dish and the result is mouth-wateringly good. I cooked the same for the pot luck dinner that happened at Rachel's new place, where I went for the house warming party. It was very well received by those who could tolerate the hotness of it {read: green chilli tolerance levels :-) } . Talking of food - I went to Kathryn's {well known screen writer and also ex-colleague from South Seas teaching days} birthday dinner at
Papa's Pizza yesterday and their
'New Zealand Venison Ravioli' was divine. If you get a chance do check out that joint - it is a cozy little place and well worth the visit for that dish alone - I wasn't sold on their pizzas though.
I watched a couple of movies on DVD and they were alright - 'Justice League: Final Frontier' {nice tone} and 'Alpha Dog' {brilliant acting}.What I am really waiting for is the Hollywood summer season to kick off - the movie that I am really waiting for is 'The Dark Knight' - the latest poster has some real balls.
That's me for now.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Food, Movies, Party
Out Stealing Horses
The book '
Out Stealing Horses' by Per Petterson has been a magical read. It is so lyrical but heart breaking at the same time. The narrative flows like a river and melts your heart and soul with it's simplicity which offers profound insight into the human condition. It is a highly recommended read and it is rare for translations to be as good as this one. The ending breaks your heart and you can judge it by the last line of the book which says 'we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt.'
David and Christina came over last night to pick up the DVD and watched the tweaked cut and I am still alive, so needless to say the cut is almost there - a couple more minor changes and the cut is ready to be locked. Now I get a couple of weeks break from the short film post before David sorts out background stuff and then we will have a couple more days in post for locking the cut down. Now it is time to concentrate on the music video and try and get that organized, so I am still able to finish it within the next couple of months. At this point - I need to test out the post workflow for the music video as it is going to involve a small amount of 2-D animation as well.
Well that's me for now.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Books, Short film
The Vancouver Film School/YouTube Scholarship Challenge
They are not paying me to put this up or anything but I thought I would post it here as it is a good opportunity.
The Vancouver Film School/YouTube Scholarship Challenge
YouTube and Vancouver Film School have partnered to create an international competition to make film school accessible to everyone. The challenge? Create a short film, animation or pitch addressing the theme "what matters to you." The prize? Three scholarships to any of Vancouver Film School's 14 outstanding educational programs, including Film Production, 3D Animation & Visual Effects, Acting Essentials and more.Submissions close at 11:59PM EST on May 9th, 2008. For more information, visit
www.youtube.com/vancouverfilmschool.
Cheers
Amit
Labels: Movies, Short film
Further developments
The past 2 days have been super busy and I desperately waiting for the weekend. I was supposed to go for an audition on monday evening right after my acting lessons and because the character I was auditioning for was supposed to speak in an american accent I scurried around for an accent coach and I got in touch with
John Dybvig, after recommendation from Mike [my acting teacher]. The time was fixed for Monday late afternoon -straight after work and I was excited. Then early on Monday morning the audition got cancelled but I still decided to go through with the accent coaching as it is something that I had been meaning to do for a long time. So I went over to John's place for my lesson straight after work. The class was extremely helpful and I intend to keep at it, so that I have an additional skill set if need be. After the lessons I drove over to my acting lessons in the evening and then came back home and cooked some Keema Curry to wind down after a long day. By the time I hit bed I was dead tired. A 16 hour day in total.
Yesterday was no less busy as I went home straight after work and started working on To'ona'i. I started implementing the changes that I had discussed with David and I got into the flow of things pretty quick. Editing is not about cutting - it is about intuition and working from the heart rather than from the mind. Anyone can cut but not everyone can make a story flow - it is a craft (like writing or acting or any other creative art form), which you just develop as you gain more and more experience. I made some interesting discoveries about length and the time of a cut, that I am pretty pleased about.
Funnily enough I lost track of time and missed my physio appointment and ran really close to the line with my salsa lessons. The lesson was interesting in the sense that there were more girls than guys at the class - which was a problem as you can only dance salsa in pairs and the steps for girls is different from that for the guys and the fact that guys are the ones who have to lead the dance. It was a good workout, especially after the 2 private classes I took before this group class. A lot of what the salsa teacher taught in the private lesson started to make sense including the observation that kiwi girls are really hard to dance salsa with [not all of them obviously but most of them] and the guy has to work extra hard to make them work to the signals. Kiwi girls forget that in the dance it is the guy who leads and they just have to follow the signals and they try and control the dance. Typical!
Anyway after the salsa lesson, I came back home and went about authoring a DVD for Mr. Mamea and I didn't finish it till 12.30 at night. And by the time the DVD authoring was done and I had tested the DVD on a couple of machines I was on auto-pilot mode and was glad when I finally hit the bed. With post production schedules I hate running close to the line and I always like to keep aside contingency days just incase shit hits the fan - luckily in this case it did not and everything went to plan. So I did have a good sleep knowing that I had done my bit even though it was a 17 hour day and it was my 4th day of doing 15+ hours a day. So yeah I am eagerly looking forward to the weekend but that's not before I hand over the DVD to Mr. Mamea tonight and discuss further post production action on the short film.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Acting, Food, Post Production, Short film
To'ona'i Rough Cut
The weekend disappeared into post production for To'ona'i and I have just come out for a breather now. Mr. Mamea brought over his short film on Friday evening and we had the viewing of the rough cut he had done and after discussing the guidelines on how much liberty I had [ruling out any Michael Bay style fast cuts or David Lynch style mind games], I went about tightening the short film.
It took me an hour on saturday morning to get used to Final Cut Pro, which is what I was editing on [I usually edit on Avid] and then some more time to come to grips with the material in front of me. Once I had taken everything in, the next couple of days went away in a breeze as I was constantly finding ways to economize the story telling without losing the core of the story and also developing a more solid story rhythm and pacing.
I was pretty pleased when David viewed the movie again last night and did not have a heart attack and neither did he kill me for chopping off about 2 minutes off the running time of the short film. There are a couple of minor visual tweaks to sort out but the refined rough cut as it stands is looking pretty good and is flowing nicely. Sound post on it will be a challenge and my sympathies are already with the guy who will be doing it as it will be a massive mission to clean up the audio - which because of the nature of the short and the shoot wouldn't exactly have been easy to record in the first place. The rest of this week will be going into implementing those tweaks and also authoring DVD, so the David can do what he needs to do with them before the project moves into it's final cut stages.
There are other commitments to fulfill this week and I am sure I will somehow manage them as well.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Post Production, Short film
Long long day
Feeling a tiny bit tired after the long 17 hour day yesterday and it is going to be another long one today. Yesterday - we had the TVNZ
Regatta straight after work and it was fun. There were a couple of moments where you actually had to work but overall I did feel a bit useless as all you do is sit on one part of the boat to balance it out. The good thing was we had a relaxed and experienced skipper and first mate and fun team mates, so it was well worth the experience.
Arrghhhh...Which boat shall we steal?
The hippy pirate - John
Even pirates need to look good - Jo and Lauren
The real psychedelic pirate - Bruce
I wanna sink that boat
Sulky pirate John (after loosing their pirate hat)
On this boat the first mate does all the work 
The skipper assessing wind conditions
The race in progress
The final stretch of the race
Docks at twilightStraight after the race - I raced off to watch my good friend and acting classmate- Claire's play 'Dead Meat' which she wrote and directed and it was great. I also got to meet a lot of new people within the acting community. It was put up as part of
Smack Bang Theatre which is supporting new and innovative New Zealand theatre and writers. And after the play went to a farewell drinks party for Dave - another acting friend and ex-classmate. And again it was a pleasant surprise catching up with a lot of people including old film school classmates.
So all in all it was a really long day and today is going to be no different - not as much with social commitments but with work.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: New Zealand, Party, Random, Theatre
Disappear
I am just watching my life disappear in front of me.
Nothing makes sense and I can't do anything about it.
Amit
Labels: Random
Weekend!!!!!!!!!
I had a weekend off and it was really nice as I did nothing - I recovered from the weird week that was last week and basically slept through most of it in between doing some writing for 'Rejected'. It is going to be a busy few weeks with the impending post on 'To'onai' from later this week combined with a lot of smaller commitments during the week and ongoing projects.
I have also slowly started getting back into running as part of my conditioning program for my hamstring recovery. It was definitely really hard to start off with but I am slowly getting into the rhythm and it feels good. Another 2 weeks and my hamstring will be completely healed (fingers crossed).
One of my newer ongoing projects is learning how to speak Spanish. I don't know why I wanted to learn a new language but I felt that I had to and the only language that came to mind was spanish. I wanted to learn it at a language school but that would have meant trying to co-ordinate and block out times in my schedule, which would have made life a little more inflexible, so I searched online for some good self-learning spanish language programs and found one that I liked. I went ahead and bought it and now am learning espanol in my own time. :-)
It feels great getting my weekends back and also at all the progress of all the current projects {atleast the ones that I am actively pursuing}.
That's me for now.
Amit
Labels: Random, Short film
Out Stealing Horses
I am reading this awesome book titled 'Out Stealing Horses' and there was this paragraph which nearly ripped open my heart with it's simplicity and insight. I had to stop reading the book so that I could just let the paragraph sink in.
'People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and pinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, because they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself.'
That's me for now.
Amit
Labels: Books
Brief Update
It feels like ages since the last time I updated on here. There hasn't been anything significant happening at this end. I spent the day at home as I wasn't feeling well at all but I am definitely feeling better now.
The work on REJECTED is happening slowly but surely and it is turning out to be a fun process , writing in collaboration and having fun with the characters. Talking of collaboration - I dropped out of the short film that I was writing as it didn't make sense to divert my energies to writing something in an art form that I am not focussed on in the long term. As far as the music video is concerned - I have a concept but now I am racking my head about implementation and achieve what I want to see on screen. The self-imposed deadline for the music video release is end of May, so hopefully I will be able to achieve that.
Besides all of this - I am helping the inscrutable Mr. Mamea finish his
short film and I am involved in the post production side of things as a consultant/supervising editor/post production dictator. Just had a meeting this evening and things are looking good with the workflow and I set some deadlines which will surely make life interesting for Mr. Mamea as he slaves away wondering about the meaning of the word 'freedom' and then we will re-assess the situation. Muhahahaaaa {evil laugh}.
That's me for now.
Amit
Labels: Script, Short film
