Musings of an Idiot

Frank & Anne

We just finished shooting the first scene for the 'freedom' project and the scene we shot was originally part of 'Rejected' but I had chopped off the scene during the script revision and developed it into a stand alone scene for this project. I am tired right now so will leave you with a couple of pics from rehearsals {and will update with couple more pics from the shoot later} and also the script for the scene we shot.



If you don't like profanity skip reading the dialogue.


Anne walks out of the house slamming the door behind. Frank finds the keys lying around and pockets them.


Frank pretends to find the keys and offers them to Anne.


Anne leaves the house and closes the door behind her.

Frank runs out of the house after her.

Big kudos to everyone involved with the scene- Liz, Drew, Benji and Lance. I'll try and do a rough cut of the scene later this weekend and see how that shapes up.

Peace out,
Amit

Labels: Filming, Freedom Project, Movies, Script

posted by Amit @ 12:16 AM 0 Comments

Man Wired

It's been a week since I last wrote and it feels like it's been a month already or something. Lots has transpired between then and now. First up was the house warming party which was great as Nic {the male part of the new couple in the flat} had a couple of bands come and play live music for us since he played in both those bands and it turned out to be a chill party. It got messy towards the end though as people do stupid things like throw blueberry cakes at each other - which we had to clean up the next morning anyway. I was the last one to go to bed at the party at about 4.30 AM in the morning when the last people left. Thankfully no one threw up in the house and no one created a nuisance either and it was good catching up with some old friends and meeting new people. The next morning was hard work cleaning up the mess but luckily Lydia - my other flatmate chipped in and we got through most of the cleaning in a couple of hours.


Acting classes are coming to an end - another 6 weeks and we are finished with them. It will be a strange feeling but it is good that they will come to an end - which would free up some time for me to pursue my film projects. Alex Samuel - a film school friend, has come on board as producer for the couple of projects that I am developing and we will be going to Mumbai, India in October for a business trip. I've gotten my leave approved from work and booked my flights straight away as there were some good deals going and my current tickets are approximately half the price of the tickets I paid for on the last trip. I am excited about the whole thing and the script reworking starts in earnest from next week.

Benji and me finished shooting the rest of the music video and it was a good experience as we went up the Sky Tower - which is the highest building in Auckland and shot a time lapse and also some other cool stuff. I have a good feeling about this music video. Benji finishes the rough cut next week and will take it further from there based on what's needed. Here are some of the pics of Auckland I took while I was up there on Sky Tower.


I've now tried 2 gyms and I have decided on the one I like and my fitness regime kind of starts later this month. Time to get fit and improve my stamina as well as get my aerobic capacity up. Lance and me found a few new tennis courts which are astro-turf and playing on them is awesome. We've had a few games and will probably have more I've sold off my Nintendo Wii and paid off my credit card bill that was overdue because of all the extra shopping that I did in India. I watched 2 movies in the meantime - 'Man on Wire' & 'Valkyrie'. 'MoW' was an awesome doco and really pulls you into it's dream and it enforces the power of dreaming the impossible and then going about achieving it. 'Valkyrie' was a good thriller and surprisingly well made and well acted but it misses a couple of emotional beats because it doesn't explore some key motivations and philosophy. I is still an important historical document of sorts. Well worth a watch.

Louis Vuitton Cup is taking place in Auckland and I walked down to the viaduct to catch up with Lance's family who were enjoying the afternoon there. It was a fun way to end what has been a hectic week and I am tired and glad to have a couple of days off now.


Till later,
Amit

Labels: Acting, Filming, Movies, Music, New Zealand, Party

posted by Amit @ 9:02 PM 0 Comments

No India

It's been a long time coming but I still find it hard writing about India - I don't know why. Maybe it's because I don't want to offend anyone by writing my thoughts about my trip back home or maybe because words can't describe the experiences that I had in India - some of which have been life changing experiences for me. Life changing experiences don't have to be major, dramatic events but even small, relatively insignificant events can lead to a change of perception and world view and I think I experienced a few of those during this trip and I am really in no mood or of any particular inclination to share with the rest of the world. After much deliberation and procrastination about the whole thing I decided not to write about my Indian leg of the holiday. But needless to say I would like to thank everyone back home for making this trip wonderful - friends, acquaintances and especially my family. I will upload pics from India to the web sometime soon and then link it up.

Things have been busy otherwise at work and I will be a happy man from next week once my boss comes back and I hand over his responsibilities back to him. I enjoy higher responsibilities and I think I did much better than last time dealing with stuff but it is draining when you are trying to do two jobs at the same time.

In the meantime I finally managed to make some critical decisions about the music video that I wanted to do for Sora Shima and we finally shot it. The first step for me was getting Benji involved and he came up with a cool concept and then I contacted Claire [friend and acting classmate] to help out by appearing in the music video and we shot it over 3 hour time frame for 2 days at different locations. It is all shot on Benji's digital camera and this will be an interesting experiment when we finally finish it. The shoot went really well and the photographs look amazing, so I am pretty confident that it will be a good music video. Here are some behind the scenes photos from the music video shoot.











I've managed to sneak in a couple of movies in all the hectic time I've been having and both of them turned out to be good: Slumdog Millionaire and Gran Torino. Slumdog Millionaire is beautifully shot and nicely edited but it misses a fair few emotional beats and thus for me was a good movie - not a great one. Gran Torino on the other hand was very captivating and draws you in slowly but surely and is funny, dramatic and emotional at the same time. I finished my week of free gym trial at Bodytech and planning on doing a week's free trial at Les Mills before deciding which one I want to join over the long term period. We have a house warming party at our house tomorrow night and it should be an interesting night - mainly because this is one party I can't avoid going to.

And that's about it from me for now.
Till later,
Amit

Labels: Filming, India, Movies, Music, New Zealand, Travel

posted by Amit @ 10:45 PM 0 Comments

No Budget Film School

Well here is a great series of articles related to 'no budget' film making straight from Microcinema Scene. I love it and it is definitely a must read for anyone wanting to make their own movies. Check it out in all it's resourcefulness.

I went and saw 'No Country for Old Men' yesterday evening and it was a good movie spoilt only by the last 5 minutes - maybe because it is a faithful adaptation of the book. It was rivetting nonetheless. Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin are beyond fantastic in this movie. I even had a nightmare about Anton Chigurh last night - the character is that frightening. Here is an exchange in the movie that just about hints at the menace that Anton Chigurh is.

It is definitely a movie worth watching.

Amit

Labels: Filming, Movies, Post Production, Pre-production

posted by Amit @ 7:51 AM 0 Comments

Pickups

Another few days disappeared down in time and it had been a productive weekend. We did the remaining pickup scenes for 'Five'. Saturday evening was guerrilla style - we shot at Andy's place with house lights and a table lamp + a side lamp providing for our lighting. And for a car pickup Benji came up with the idea of using the fluros on his emergency light to provide some uniform lighting to the scene. We gaffer taped the emergency light to the roof and it worked great.


Sunday has been awesome. We got all we needed for the pickups and it was a great experience. Bethells Sand dunes have a great energy about them and it is simply a beautiful place. The challenge for Sunday was to shoot the remaining 2 short scenes in the afternoon/evening - in such a way that it looks like night - basically shoot 'day for night' without any money or any lights. Again some creative thinking and research from Benji got us through the challenge and I liked what I saw being shot. A special mention goes out to Tahi - who spent close to an hour or so in the water - being 'drowned' - so much so that a little fish came to her wanting to befriend her - serious!!!








So photography on 'Five' is finally complete - no we need one more shot that we need to get tomorrow evening but it is just one shot. Now it is back to editing the movie. The website has run into some interesting problems with operating uniformly with different browsers - more specifically - it has problems functioning normally in Internet Explorer, so have to try and figure out a way to make it work.

On the other hand - I decided to try and cook some dosas for breakfast this morning - just the ready made powdered packet one since making the base from scratch is a bit more time consuming. After the first two dosas went haywire it almost felt like it was going to be like the 'kebabs' day but tried it a third time on Mary's insistence and it worked. The dosas were kind of small initially but they got better as they went. The good thing was they tasted like how they should and the sambar was good as well.

A couple of days ago - I saw this magical image but just couldn't stop to photograph it as I was driving in peak hour traffic into the city to get to work. It was the day after the massive rains that lashed Auckland and as I was getting onto the motorway the dark clouds were clearing up and you could see the silver lining in the clouds as the sun was revealing itself. As I drove round the bend - the image I saw was stunning: crystal clear blue water and into the distance was Auckland city covered in clouds with only the top of the tallest building visible. It felt like a vision from the future - a city set in the clouds. As I drove into the city the visual was even more amazing with the sun starting to reflect off the shiny windows of the sky scrapers as the cloud was starting to move away from the city. I wish I could have stopped somehow to take those photos but oh well!!! There is always a next time....

Anyway - a bit tired after the shoot, so I will go to bed.
Till later,
Amit

Labels: Filming, Five, Random

posted by Amit @ 10:13 PM 0 Comments