December in the park
It's been an incredibly busy period since my last post. I had a very short notice surprise audition come up as the actor who was originally cast for that part couldn't do the part because of personal health reasons. I did get the part and did a 1 day shoot on the TV feature and that turned out to be a fantastic experience. The other audition that I did went well and that again was a fun experience.
Since the work on 'Moments' has slowed down in terms of production, I decided that a way to speed up the process in the overall scheme of things would be to start compiling the scenes that have already been shot and edited to find out where the holes are and what needs to be done to fill those up. One of the holes was covering up dialog cuts in the scene between Tarun and me, so I went and got some pickup shots at 'The Whitehouse' as we didn't get any cut aways the first time round when we shot the scene there. We'll be shooting one more scene next sunday, which is a meaty scene and that should give me some consolation about the pace of the project. It's been a hard year but after the past couple of weeks I am declaring my year closed on a high note. Anything good that might happen between now and end of 2009 is a bonus. 2010 here I come.
Friday evening was the staff Christmas party and there wasn't anything terribly exciting that happened at the party. Yesterday I had a long overdue catchup with David & Christina and it was nice way to spend Saturday morning and afternoon. In the evening, I went to 'Christmas in the Park' along with Benji and it was bizarre event. There was something terribly off with the whole vibe of the event - it was like one huge coca cola commercial. It's supposed to be a family event but then you look around and see people getting boozed and stoned while kids and teenagers are running around. Both Benji and me almost got food poisoning over there when the thai stall served half cooked chicken skewers and they gave replacement sticks that were half cooked as well. The jerky pork kebabs from the Jamaican food stall more than made up for the earlier culinary misadventure. But to be on the safe side Benji and me decided to get a tequila shot on our way back, to negate the one bite of half cooked chicken that we had earlier.
Christmas in the Park
Beautiful sunset
Auckland Hospital
Distant viewings
Walk back
Grafton Cemetery
Bunch of people enjoying the cool air
The tequila shot
Earlier this afternoon, had a picnic lunch at Grafton Road cemetery which Angelique organized. It was an odd choice of location but a good one. It is bang in the middle of the city but it has so many trees and is pretty quite. It was an opportunity to catch up Tessa after ages and also got to meet Angelique's boy friend besides meeting some very interesting people.
Picnic at Grafton Cemetery
Sunshine
Sun and Shade
Flowers over a grave
Angelique & Kelly
Anna & Xien
Me & Tessa
End of picnic
And now it's heads down, preparing for the business project presentation that I've got to give to the TVNZ top brass tomorrow. Wish me luck.
Later,
Amit
Labels: Acting, Festival, The Moments In Between
Movies and all that stuff
My age and look and ethnicity means that auditions are far and few in between. I consider myself lucky even if I get 3-4 auditions a year, so it was pretty frutrating only having 2 audition till Oct and then suddenly having a couple of auditions come up while I was overseas. Typical huh!!! Well I had another audition recently and it went really well, even though I didn't get the part. As an actor - the best thing is to prepare well for the audition, give it your best shot and forget all about it as soon as you walk out of the audition room. If you get a follow up call then good for you otherwise you just carry on as if nothing has happened. I've got another audition this year, so I am pretty happy that this year will end with atleast 4 chances to showcase myself to casting directors.
'Rejected' is in the freezer as it has nowhere to go right now and the script is not in a position I want it to be and the script development process is extremely slow. The best option was to put it on freeze and concentrate on the existing project and other potential projects. Off the potential projects - 'Apsara' has got some legs and it is currently in active development. The script is by Angelique - a close friend and an ex-film school mate and it is being produced by Paula Jones. The script is funny, quirky and has a visual flair and it matches up with everything I want to explore and I guess I'm lucky that the script wasn't already picked up by someone else. More on that in coming months.
The production on 'Moments' is going slower than anticipated because of the holiday season combined with the usual scheduling conflicts associated with 'no budget' movies. Instead of stressing out about it, I'm just playing it by the ear and going with the flow. All this obviosuly means that we won't finish the movie in March'10 as originally planned and it might get pushed back by a few months.
An independent writer was in constant contact with me via email wanting to see if I wanted to direct her script in 2010 with a very miniscule budget. I said no to it because I wasn't getting answers to all the questions I was asking about the project and that's never a good sign. Topped up with unclear roles and responsibilities it was a disaster waiting to happen & all this without even seeing the script itself. After a lot of thought I wrote a very detailed mail as to why I can't accept the project and the response I got made me crack up laughing and I subsequently deleted all the emails related to the project. The final email from the writer/producer goes like this
"Subject: Re:Hey AMIT, in CONFIDENCEMorning Amarbir, thanks again for the email - much appreciated, all the best for your future endeavours:-). Kind regards" Amarbir is another Indian film maker based in Auckland and he is also a good friend of mine. So she obviously asked Amarbir about directing the movie as well or her next person to ask is Amarbir or maybe she confused me for Amarbir all along. I don't know and I don't care. :-)
I scored a couple of free passes to NZ Premiere of 'Morris: A Life with Bells on' - a UK indie movie. The writer/main actor was there for Q&A, so I went along last night and it turned out to be a small but funny movie. Definitely worth a watch. It definitely puts a grin on your face.
That's me for now,
Amit
Labels: Acting, Apsara, Movies, Rejected, The Moments In Between
Door Bang
Hyderabad is nice and hot during the day and it is nice during the evening. I walked around in peak sun for a couple of hours today, doing some shopping, and I have gone 4 shades darker, atleast. The pollution is pretty bad and the roads are definitely not pedestrian friendly. Food is still super awesome and I am loving it.
I gave up the idea of going to a gym while I am here as the nearest one I could find was a couple of KM's away and that too on a traffic heavy road. Not worth it was my first thought when I finally tracked down the gym. I did run around on the roads plus I found a decent sized park, so I did that for a couple of days but had to take a 2 day break from it as I managed to strain my knee as running on the streets puts massive pressure on your knees since you don't have any cushion for the impact. Only small success over the past couple of days has been that I finally got a new computer chair and a wireless keyboard/mouse to make it easier to work online.
I acted in a short film before I started off this trip and you can see me getting tortured here:
http://www.gorilla-tv.com/node/289That's me for now.
Amit
Labels: Acting, Hyderabad, Travel
Weekend Shoot
I am currently feeling drained and exhausted but very happy at the same time. We had a fantastic shoot over the weekend and we got 5 scenes done over a 4 hour period spread over saturday night and sunday afternoon. Day light savings kicked in this morning and we've had to move our clocks forward by an hour - which meant 1 less hour of sleep this morning and I guess that's added to the exhaustion.
I am happy because the performances from Simon and Michelle were spot on and the scene between Simon and me went really well too. I am really looking forward to finishing off the rough cut on those scenes before my trip to India. I also managed to do a rough cut of the scene between Tarun and me and the down side of it is that we'll have to ADR the whole scene because the location audio is unusable because of background music.
Overall we have 10 scenes in the bag and it is scary to think that I have been operating a camera on 6 of those scenes. It isn't too bad I guess - considering that we are shooting in a dual camera setup and the workload is being shared by several other people on each different shoot {and I am competent at camera work I suppose - at least I won't have anyone else to blame if I screw up the footage }. We've got another 12 scenes odd to shoot and I guess that's something that I'll be going full steam on once I come back from India. In the meantime though Michelle is work shopping and developing scenes with a couple of actors while I am away to speed up the process. And we have locked down on one of the scenes between Lauren and me while the workshop to lock another one down is due this tuesday.
I have a full week of night shifts this coming week - which will give me the time for the rough cut plus as an added bonus my body clock will be closer to Indian time- a great way to prepare for the trip I reckon. :-) That's the update on the movie for now.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Acting, Directing, The Moments In Between
WH
More developments on the 'freedom project' front. I acted in my first scene for the project last night and it felt good. Simon was directing and he was on one of the cameras while Benji was on the other. I don't have to worry if we got the coverage and everything we need to make the scene work in post production because Simon will have to deal with it..wohoooo.... A special thanks to Brian Le Gros who was generous to us with use of his property and making things possible even though we are a 'no budget' independent film.
We are shooting the next scene for the project next week and I am excited about that as well. Benji is dropping out of the project after next week's scene but people have been generous with their offers of help and the project has to go on one way or the other. Also we are close to recasting the part opposite me and just awaiting confirmation that it is all go from the actress.
I did a small acting freebie for TVNZ7 idents and those will start airing this week on TVNZ7. I also managed to cull down my list of movies to watch at the NZ International Film Festival to 5 and finally went and bought the tickets.
Signing off,
Amit
Labels: Acting, Freedom Project
Finito
Last night was my last Meisner acting class and I've somehow survived the 80 week course {which took 2 years to complete because of all the public holidays and breaks in between}. It was a highly emotionally charged affair with lots of tears and lots of laughter. I am glad that I now have my monday evenings free and I've got time to go full speed on my feature film projects but at the same time I'll miss my friends from the acting class.
Everyone performed their final pieces and some were hilarious while others were very insightful. One of the insightful one's was a monologue read through by Sarah. The monologue is called
'Everybody is Free' (also called the Sunscreen Speech) and the monologue goes like this:
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ‘97, Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis or reliable then my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice….now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind, you won’t understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded, but trust me in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.
You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind: the kind that blind sides you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.Floss.Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. (if you succeed in doing this, tell me how).Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of Calcium.
Be kind to your knees — you’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40; maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body: use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or what other people think of it; it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance…even if you have no where to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions (even if you don’t follow them).
Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly.Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to your siblings: they’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but what a precious few should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps and geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Travel.Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old; and when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.Respect your elders. 
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse,but you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you are 40, it will look 85.Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia;dispensing it is a way of wishing the past from the disposal–wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.For my final piece, I collaborated with Monika and we worked off her idea to do a mini rip-off of 'Slumdog Millionaire' and we put on a small scene called 'Slumdog Meisneraire'. It was heaps of fun - especially trying to answer the questions with a straight face while looking at Monika's fake beard and moustache which kept trying to fall off. The other highlight of last night was Caren turning up to class - she had a brain surgery a few weeks back and she somehow postponed her MRI scan meant for that evening in order to attend the last class. It was an incredible moment when she turned up for the class.
From each batch Mike picks graduates with further potential for 'Masterclass' where they get to hone their skills even further. I will be going into the masterclass on and off - not as an actor but as a director - more so because I am already working with a fair few master class students on my experimental project. But that is a whole another journey.
That's that for now.
Till later,
Amit
Labels: Acting
