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.
I am feeling exhausted right now and am about to hit the bed but thought I would quickly post an update as I won't have the chance over the next few days. On Sunday I finished watching the remaining 4 episodes of 'Heroes' and another 3 episodes of 'My Name is Earl'. Enjoyable..Very enjoyable. I also did some more editing for 'Five' yesterday.
Today has been crazy busy getting pre-production done for this coming weekend's shoot. Got the filming permit sorted, booked the location, booked the extra camera batteries, locked down the second camera and will be picking it up tomorrow, sorted out the audio equipment for the shoot. Besides that I caught up with Richard Collins over Nowhere to Love's script and planning to catch up soon to go over it in detail. Rang up the swimming school to inquire about the new session and found out that it starts again from 12th of Feb - and I might as well get back into it. Over the next 3 days I've got more training sessions at TVNZ and hopefully that will bring me upto speed with the job requirements for doing the freelance work there. And then there was this crazy work seminar with WINZ, which consumed half the day - which I won't even touch right now as it really pissed me off. Overall made a couple of crazy decisions this afternoon and I think it is for the best. Got to follow the instinct.
Later in the evening, I met up with Ayyaz and his family - who are visiting New Zealand and it is their last day here, before they fly back to Canada tomorrow. I met Ayyaz in 2003, through a short film website called triggerstreet and we hit it off instantly. Since then we've been in constant touch and he was one of the composers for 'Memories of Tomorrow'. So it was great finally meeting him in person and catching up about movies and directing and other things. I got back about 35 minutes back and am feeling shattered.
Off to bed for now. Hope everyone's new year has started off on the right step. Till later, Amit
It is Tuesday and I have just got some time to do a small but quick update on 'Five'.
Sunday was an extremely long day and a huge challenge but it turned out to be a fantastic day. First day of any feature shoot is always tough because the cast and crew are trying to find the rhythm of the movie as they go along. I felt really lucky to be working with such a talented bunch of people because everyone found their rhythm really quick. I have digitized all the footage from the day's shoot and all we need is 3 pickup shots (not scenes - just shots) and it looks fantastic. So I am really chuffed and the great thing was everyone had fun while doing it. I can't describe how satisfying that feeling is. We also have some fantastic behind the scenes footage but for now here are some of the photos from this Sunday (click to enlarge photos):
Everyone preparing to shoot a scene
Andy and Marjan preparing for their scene
Lance and Benji discussing camera angles and coverage
Mike preparing his ingenious SFX rig while Dave films it
Marjan and Anita listening to a discussion
Richard and Andy in a moment from the movie
On Monday evening I caught up with Lance and Benji for a camera dept. meeting and told them my thoughts over Sunday's shoot and also had a small briefing for this coming weekend's shoot. Today, earlier in the evening I caught up with Mike - the art director, to discuss the art department requirements. I have already done the schedule for this weekend and now have to work out the logistics of everything.
Am I enjoying it? Every single moment of it. Till later, Amit
Wednesday - shooting script lock down. schedule for this sunday's shoot locked down. discussions/briefing with actors about shooting style and how we are going to make this happen. picked up second camera from a friend. bought couple of t-shirts and a watch for the character I will be playing. Thursday - drove down to waitakeres and got location permits for shooting in the woods sorted. picked up rental batteries for cameras and bought tape stock for the shoot. swimming lesson #2 (i am good on my chest but not so on my back) and an informal catch up with Lance and Benji. Friday - checked out sound gear. technical camera tests for visual look & aspect ratios. Today is sorting out last minute technical stuff combined with sorting out food etc. And obviously going through the script and making sure that I am prepared for tomorrow. Next post will be on Monday - if I get the time.
I have ticked off most of the stuff on my shopping list for the movie - just another 10-15 items to go. First shoot date is this coming Sunday and we are still putting final tweaks to the script. Doing a movie on such short notice/time span has definitely been a huge challenge and a big learning curve. I have an idea for the 'Five' website (finally!!) and now have to implement it.
Still sleep deprived for a good portion of the time - I might get some sound sleep tomorrow night (keyword is 'might').
Sir Nicholas Stern's report on economic impact of climate change has come out and it seems to have finally shaken people up. You can read it HERE. If you don't want to read the full report then check this out to read the summary.
Nothing much to say except for the fact that most of it has gone into preparing for the movie. I need more hours in a day.
I will leave you with a couple of pics (click on them for larger image) which I took at the school where there was an external production happening.
Innocence
It's a kind of magic
Oh yeah - spent a couple of hours in the rain along with Benji trying to change a flat tyre on my car. It wasn't bad - wasn't great either. Atleast there is a sense of achievement in doing that. I'll take it to the mechanic tomorrow and make sure that I tightened up the bolts properly - don't want to loose the tyre while driving.
I had my first proper swimming lessons today. I definitely need heaps of practice just to stay afloat - literally. It was fun though.
Acting workshops are going well. Improvisation is so much fun and that much more challenging because you have to be in that moment all the time. It is so close to production that it is hard to believe - a week and a half and we will be shooting the movie. Need lots of sorting out to do this weekend -especially with buying food supplies, accessories etc. We now have public liability insurance and statutory liability insurance along with third party damage with fire and theft cover for the company car. Learning from the last movie - insurance is a definite must even for 'no budget' films so that they remain no budget movies and don't end up being a twenty thousand dollar movie because you accidentally damaged something worth 20K.
SIPF decision came out for October round of funding and 'Nowhere' still hasn't got the financial support it needs [a sophisticated way of saying that we didn't get the funding]. I don't know if I will ever get any kind of funding from New Zealand. A bit disappointing but oh well, cest la vie..
The weekend trip to Tauranga and Mount Manganui was heaps of fun. We (Julia, Barbara & Me) went in Barbara's car and it was a fun road trip. It was overcast for most of the weekend but thankfully it did not rain till today i.e Monday.
Friday evening workshop extended till almost 10.00 PM and it was great fun. The characters are shaping up nicely and I am almost killing myself with nervous anticipation of things to come.
Richard with Marjan
Marjan
Anita
Anita, Marjan and Richard
I was too tired to heat up any food after coming back home at 10.30, so Benji and me went to this Asian restaurant called 'Momo Tea' (close to our house), which stays open till 3.00 in the morning. It was an experience and a half - I asked Benji to look around and see how everyone was so fashionably dressed even at 11.00 at night while we were casually dressed. Benji laughed and said that is probably not the reason we would stick out - as it turned out everyone there was Asian except for the two of us. The food wasn't bad at all - will probably go back there when midnight hunger pangs strike.
On Saturday - the road trip started early. I drove to Barbara's place and dropped off my car there and we then picked up Julia en route. Our first stopover of sorts was at Owharoa Falls and then we had another stop over at Waihi where they were having the monthly arts and craft market. [P.S - All photos are enlargeable if you click on them]
Owharoa Falls
Owharoa Falls - at the base Sleepy town of Waihi
Arts fair in the community hall
We were famished by the time we got to Tauranga. We had lunch at a Turkish place called Zeytin and the ambiance felt really authentic and to top it off the food was finger licking good, it impressed on us so much so that we had our lunch there the next day as well. Once done, we roamed about the CBD for a while before checking into the backpackers.
Lunch @ Zeytin
The backpackers we stayed at, Pacific Lodge in Mount Manganui was a cool place. The guy who runs the place, Murray, was really funny and eased us into our room. It was a good place to meet people from different parts of the world- all nomads or people in transition. We dropped our stuff off in our room after that everything is a blur in terms of the number of times we were in Mount Manganui and Tauranga. We avoided climbing Mt. Manganui straight away because it was overcast and it looked like it would bucket down with rain any minute. The weather cleared up early in the evening which gave us the opportunity to hike up the mount.
Mount Manganui (from the beach) Magic Hour
Empowerement and liberation
View from the top
Barbara, Me & Julia
View of Manganui Beach
A Beach volleyball tournament in progress
Tip of the Cliff
Julia is ecstatic over reaching the end of the cliff
Who are you looking at?
Just before we left Tauranga on Sunday evening, I bumped into one of my mates from South Seas - Bren Frank at the cinemas. It was good catching up with him again after a long time. He is currently working in the lighting department on '30 Days of Night' which is shooting in Auckland.
A guy fishing in the Waikato river
We took a detour through Hamilton and had a brief stop over for a stroll plus dinner before returning to Auckland. All in all it was a fun trip which came at the right point in time.
Today morning I went over to David M' place to check out a couple more locations in the Waitakeres and went for a walk even though it was raining (it has been raining the whole day). It was good but then I had a realization and we cancelled the hike to 3 other places. Now this week will be busy with organizing stuff and scheduling for 'Five' along with the usual workshops.
A walk in the Waitakeres
I have put up a couple of items on trademe for sale - a comic book and 1GB of laptop RAM, so if you are interested or if you know of someone who is looking for that stuff then bid on it.
I'll sign off for now. Till later, Amit
[P.S - I have started taking swimming lessons since I thought it would be a good idea to know how to swim considering that NZ is essentially 2 big islands.]
oooh. And one more thing - you can watch the first 4 minutes of BORAT here. Be warned that you could find a fair few things offensive within those 4 minutes.
It has been a long and intense week. Things are only about to get busier from now. Had a couple of long and productive workshops for 'Five' and it has been creatively challenging but fun.
I am off to Tauranga for a couple of days for a quick break but the weather doesn't look too good - overcast and drizzling.
Time passes, scars don't. They try and heal but the hurt opens up the wounds all the time. Pain is another form of pleasure but pleasure doesn't heal either. It is so momentary that the pain becomes all the more real. A paradox that is hard to break.
Out of the Blue
I just returned from watching a new NZ movie titled 'Out of the Blue' and it was a haunting look at the 1990 Aramoana massacre - which shook up entire NZ because of it's brutality and pointlessness. The movie explores the event with faithfullness and you feel the horror of the event unfold and frighteningly so because of the unpredictability. There is no gratituous violence - when it happens, it is quick and brutal (even the off-screen deaths). The cinematography is painfully beautiful and the edit is nicely timed. The movie is definitely a good one, made all the better by spot on acting by everyone.
It has been a crazy week - script, workshops, trying to get avid media composer running on my laptop, rebuilding my laptop, meetings and viewings at school, pre-production work for 'five'. I can't run Media Composer on my laptop as it is having problems with my graphics card which in turn is causing a video lag, which can't be fixed. So I am returning back to Avid Express Pro HD - it is still a great editing tool but doesn't have as many facilities and finishing tools as a Media Composer.
Hard to believe that time has again proved tricky to keep track of. It is thursday evening and another week draws to a close.
I finally put in my citizenship application yesterday after filling out the form and getting signatures and stuff. Now keeping fingers crossed for things to sort themselves out. Also had the first workshop with the actors for 'Five' on Tuesday evening, which proved to be really good and intense. Now just have to accelerate things even more since we are a month away from shoot now.
Watched a couple of movies - a really depressing australian movie titled 'Look Both Ways' [really well shot and directed and acted but still very depressing] and a really bad horror movie titled 'Saw 2'...ooops did I just say that?
Went to the Auckland Art gallery to attend the reading of a theatre play titled 'Mike and Virginia' written by Kathryn Burnett & Nick Ward. It was heaps of fun and overall had lots of stuff going for it. Once a couple of things are smoothed out, I think it would be a fantastic play to watch.
Auckland Art Gallery
Aotea Square @ night
Here is what I was feeling like this afternoon - pretty random but still beautiful.
I am running a temprature today and it came out of nowhere too. I have taken some medicine and hopefully should be up and running by tomorrow morning.
I did an interview last sunday for a podcast and it is online now. You can listen to me 'hmmm'ing' and 'aaah'ing' through the questions. I do that a lot - I need to think of the answers before hand instead of just doing impromptu answers where you can hear me thinking. My indian accent isn't too bad or is that my perception???? While you are at it - check out 'Black Magic' website which provides info on films happening in NZ.
I am managed to save a couple of hundred dollars on necessary equipment upgrades and it feels great. No special magic or pep talk - I just asked if I could get a discount and got it. Increasing my laptop RAM to 2 GB to run media intensive applications and also getting a 1000 GB external hard drive for storage and editing requirements for 'Five'. I think the money saved will be going into procuring permissions for shooting in the bush area around the tramping hut as it belongs to Auckland Regional Council - keeping fingers crossed that the fees isn't too much. Still need to sort out public liability insurance and logistics etc. for the actual shoot. It is definitely going to be a busy couple of months.
Anyway - I am feeling a bit drowsy from the medicine, I think I will go to bed. Bye, Amit
Finally the end of the term - I am supposed to be at the end of the term party right now but somehow I can't get myself to go there. Really bad of me but I can't help it. Parties and me have never gelled together - I avoid most of them until it is absolutely necessary and critical. My car is now in nice working order - I got the stereo fixed and had my old stereo replaced with a stereo that my old flatmate, Greg, donated to me when he got himself a new car stereo. It feels so good to finally have music in the car (after 3 years). So I am definitely a happy chappy at the moment.
I did watch 'Nacho Libre' though and it was a movie I can't seem to form a strong opinion about - it has some good bits and has some average bits. It definitely doesn't leave as strong an impression as 'Napolean Dynamite' - directed by the same director. It feels episodic and somehow doesn't really gel together nicely.
As a sign-off note - we have secured permission to shoot at the location we want for 'Five' and it is an exciting development. I also had a couple of meetings to try sort out an insurance cover for the shoot and also had a meeting at Val Morgan to explore possibilites of advertising in the cinemas to build up to the Theatrical/DVD release. I have sketched some concept teaser posters for the characters in 'Five' and hopefully will be designing some within the next couple of weeks.
It feels good to have the car back and that too without the dent in the door. It cost me a fair bit to get it fixed but I figured that it needed to be done so that I did not have to buy another car at the end of the year.
It has been pouring down the whole weekend - a sudden change from 7 continous day of sunshine, and all I have done is watched about 12 episodes from the second season of 'Arrested Development' (brilliant as usual!!!) and also watched 'Brick' - an independent flick which is a genre blender - a film noir set in a high school. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is definitely an actor to look out for because of the creative choices he is making. Brick was a taut thriller and it worked for me. You loose track of their lingo at times but still the movie never lets go of the grip it has on you.
Chairs
I did go and play paintball along with Dean, Becks, Jono, Troy, Max and a whole lot of other people (friends of friends) on Sunday afternoon. It was heaps of fun and great physical exercise. I am still a bit sour in the chest and the thigh from the hits but it isn't too bad as the experience was exhilirating to say the least.
Everyone having a drink after the paintball game The war zone was those pine trees behind the shed.
Budgeting for '5' is proving to a bit more of a challenge than I thought- despite the fact that it is going to be a low budget movie. I am tossing figures in my head between marketing/promotion costs, insurance costs, production costs. The plan is to try and earn the production costs back this time around and also to make a profit. If you are a low budget movie - it is just that much harder to get publicity and an audience - in order to earn your money back. It is a different kind of challenge but am loving this one for precisely that reason.
On a completely random note - Coke has opened a $25 million bottling plant in Afghanistan and the media is projecting it as a way of kick starting that economy. What a load of bullshit!!!! People have to survive first in order to buy anything and for that an essential would be health services - not some western fizzy drink. Wake up people!!!
Anyway - I will be sitting my practical driving license tomorrow morning. Hopefully I won't run into any unexpected problems this time around.
I went to the supermarket yesterday to get 2 AAA batteries but to my surprise the supermarket was sparse and so were the shelfs. I knew that there was a strike by the distributors who wanted a hefty 30% pay rise but didn't know that things were this bad. I think the matter does need to get resolved quickly as it will impact on everything - I got my 2 AAA batteries though (for now). On a positive note the petrol prices went down by 15c/litre - which is a considerable downslide considering that gas prices only keep going up. Alternately - this could be the sign that gas prices will definitely hit NZ$2/litre by Christmas.
I couldn't sit my practical driving exam as my right indicator and brake light inexplicably stopped working - so now have a new date for the exam. I went to the mechanics to see what the problem was - the unit on which the 2 lights are fixed had slid down into the boot (possibly while closing the boot). While I am at it - I have decided to get the dent in the car door fixed as well so that it doesn't give the driving inspector a reason to complaint and fail me on my practical again.
Today has shaped up to be an extremely busy day - I got woken up around 4.00-4.15 AM by someone laughing - not sure if I was dreaming or actually heard the laugh but I couldn't go back to sleep after that. So I spent the remaining time reading and as soon as it was sunrise - I got ready and drove over to David's place (which is in the Waitakeres) so that we could go hiking and look at the location we want for filming 'Five'. The hiking trip was lead by Christina (David's wife) and on the trip were David M - the scriptwriter, Abigail & Rawiri (David's kids), Ala (David's dog) and me. It was an awesome trip and the location was fantastic - it captures the mood and feel of the movie really well - it is a 45 minute walk from the nearest road and it would be a great location for filming...now keeping fingers that we are able to secure the location on the dates when we want to film.
David doing research for the script (:-)
Clockwise (from L to R): Christina, David, Rawiri, Abigail
The wonderful location
I then drove back home and after a brief rest went and played badminton with Dean and Becks and Craig and Marissa after a long time. Man it was hard - i just couldn't open up - my shoulder and wrists felt so stiff that I couldn't get my game going. Hopefully it will get better if I get back into it. So yeah - feeling pretty exhausted right now after the long day.
Over the past 4 days I have tried getting onto blogger but it has been annoying as hell not being able to access the blog to post. It almost seems that their servers are overloaded ever since they put up the option of logging in either with your blogger username or gmail username...what a silly idea - especially if the servers are not capable of handling that much load. Or does Pluto being stripped of it's planetary staus have anything to do with this whole thing? We now live in a solar system with 8 planets and not 9. So as it stands I am seriously contemplating retiring blogger as my blogging tool and move onto wordpress to do all my blogging. It is free and is not owned by a company and it runs on your own server...so every reason to shift to it - especially after the past 4 days.
Friday was a fun day at school as there was the South Seas version of Dragon's Den and the school was buzzing with nervous excitement since the panel invited for it were top industry people: John Barnett (CEO, South Pacific Pictures), Nick Ward (Top screen writer), Paul Swadel (EP,Headstrong),Stan Wolfgramme (Producer), Tim O'Brien (Development Executive, NZFC). Kathryn Burnett arranged for all of them to spare 2 hours of their time to listen to the story idea pitches from 13 student directors and decide if they liked them or not and then give additional NZ$ 500 prize money to go into the production of that short film towards the end of the year.
The event itself was a real learning curve - just watching from the sidelines but even more exciting was the whole initiative taken by the students to setup a temporary 4 camera studio setup in the lecture theatre. James Brookes was the mastermind and the geek team setup a fantastic production. Here are some of the pics from that event.
Wade doing last minute tech checks on the makeshift control room
James setting up audio desk while Vic looks on
The directors mentally preparing themselves for their pitching session
The students enjoying the tension build up
One of the directors pitching his idea to the 'dragons'
From L to R: Stan Wolfgramme, Nick Ward, John Barnett
From L to R: Tim O'Brien looks on as Paul Swadel makes a point
Over the past 4 days I have watched 3 good movies, 1 average one and a really bad one: 'Eight Below'; 'Inside Deep Throat' and 'Moolaade' were good. 'Darwin's Nightmare' was average while 'Bloodrayne' was bad. Eight Below was surprisingly refreshing and I really enjoyed it. And the best thing was not seeing CGI animals but real animals go through the whole story - which makes it even more compelling. The 'Behind the Scenes' was decent and gives a quick overview of how they managed to pull it off. 'Inside Deep Throat' was an interesting movie and it succeeds as it is more interested in explaining the mechanics as to why an adult movie with the title 'Deep Throat' made for US$ 25k went onto gross US$ 600 million and why it has always been surrounded by controversy {no - not that kind of controversy - more like freedom of speech; censorship; moral policing and feminism} and how it started a revolution of sorts. 'Moolaade' was a Senegal/French movie set in a small tribal African village. It was gently paced and was a bit long for it's 120 minute run length but it was a great watch - it had a warmth and genuity about it. The story was powerful and it shaped out to be harrowing and uplifting at the same time. Definitely a good watch. 'Darwin's Nightmare' was a bit long and did not really need it's full running time to make it's point. There were some bits which dragged on and on but still an awesome doco subject. 'Bloodrayne' - I won't even waste my time talking about it.
I went to the Takapuna library on Saturday after a couple of years and it felt great. I almost forgot the joy of searching for books and the surprises that lead you into a different train of thought while searching for them. So now I have 4 books on my desk, out of which I have already finished one of them {'Greek & Roman Mythology'}. The tramp which was scheduled for sunday has been postponed till next weekend because of unavoidable reasons, so hoping that the weather holds up next weekend. Another cast member has been added to 'Five'. The cast would have been complete but there is an outside possibility that we might have to recast one of the roles because of time commitments. But it is still an exciting development and leads us closer to the goal.
Finally - a relaxing day (in a manner of speaking) after a hectic last week. Thursday/Friday were super-hectic at school, so today was definitely a welcome change. Benji and me had a house warming party yesterday night and it was a good get together - international students from this year popped in and a few people from our 2003 batch came in to warm the house up. It was good fun.
Today, I went out to do some more location reccees along with Benji and Richard but couldn't find anything good.
Me filling up the car at the petrol station
We went through Pokeno, Tuakau, Pukekohe and then couldn't think of any other places to go to after that. None of the places had the charm of Coromandel or even came close, so the thought is to stick to Coromandel.
Benji {click me for a larger image}
Richard
Walking through Tuakau shopping centre
The fifth draft for 'Nowhere' came through and it is definitely the strongest the story has ever been till now and it is exciting to see the story develop nicely. Now have to step up the pace on other departments, especially acting. There have also been some more exciting developments with regards to financing and hopefully the deal comes through.
The whirlwind of life's paradoxes are adding more riddles. Only the warmth of the gas heater in the lounge seems to be real at the moment.
Just got back from the trip to Coromandel and it has been an extremely productive and awesome trip. We meet some really amazing people, ate some yummy seafood, saw some beautiful places and worked really hard on the script and the pre-production details. It was a trip well worth it. To try and describe all of it would be a little hard but before I go into the details it would be worthwhile mentioning that I have fallen in love with smoked fish- that has been the diet most of the time - different kinds of smoked fish: orange roughies (my favorite), kapuka, trevally, tarkihi, mussels (not a fish but still seafood)...There is no place is Auckland that I know of which provides that many wide variety of smoked fish.
Nowhere to Love
We met up with the person from Thames-Coromandel Council in Thames, which is a buzzing little town and he was really helpful. We headed off to Coromandel and started doing the location hunt based on the location list we had and the first day was really really successful as we found a dairy, a pharmacy shop, a cafe, a car workshop, a tow truck, a gas station, several other smaller locations. We also knocked on a few houses and asked them if we could film in their house and were absolutely surprised when people would let us into their houses and let us take photos. Full credit to Richard who did all the hard talking. The trust and the warmth that we got in Coromandel was humbling and uplifting.
We got to taste some gobsmakingly great tasting vegetable pies from Coro Pies. Everyone kept pointing us to Coro Pies and when we went to the shop - Richard couldn't find the pie he wanted, so Rob - the owner of Coro Pies let us taste their special vegetable pie, which they had invented recently, for free and asked us for feedback. I have never ever tasted such tasty vegetarian pie ever and I would highly recommend that you drop them a visit if you are in Coromandel. It is on Wharf road - tucked away besides Coromandel Automotive Repairs.
We went back to our cabin at the holiday park and sat down for some solid script analysis for a good four hours. Inbetween we witnessed an amazing sunset - the photograph below doesn't do it any justice but it was magical and spellbinding.
A beautiful sunset in Coromandel
After a really busy and productive first day - both Richard and me crashed into bed by 8.30 in the evening. We started the day early on Saturday in our effort to try and find more locations and scenic spots we could use for the movie. We decided that we would go upto Colville because a fair few people mentioned about a cafe and a store run by hippies. The drive up was pleasent and found Colville to be a sleepy town.
Has anyone seen my car???? I think it is somewhere over there.
Colville - a sleepy town north of Coromandel
We stopped at the Cafe and had our breakfast. During that time we got a call from Tom Look - the editor of Coromandel Town Chronicle - the local newspaper, since Richard had rung him the day before without luck. It so happened that Tom lived in Colsville and he drove down with Jennifer Greene and we had a long chat over breakfast about possibilities of covering the movie and giving us some much needed publicity in Coromandel. He invited us back to his home-office, which is set in an amazing location. It ultilizes solar energy and Tom has also set himself a dish for internet connection, which he then also distributes across to the town. It was amazing seeing people live off the land in a way - they are more prepared for an energy crisis than any of us living in the cities and towns.
The home-office of Tom
Richard and Tom in Tom's office from where he prints the newspaper
After the briefstop over at Tom's house we procceded to come back to Coromandel to search for more houses but took the 'loop' on insistence from Jennifer that it would take the same amount of time. The loop is supposed to be the circular route to Coromandel by going through Cape Kennedy - man what a trip it turned out to be. The first thing we did was give a lift to a hitchhiker: Kate - a 18-19 year old american girl who had been hitchhiking across NZ for the past 6 months. She was going towards Sandy beach and we dropped her off after a short ride as our ride went in a different direction after a particular point. Our trip back to Coromandel took almost triple the time from Colsville through the loop and to compound our misery the road wasn't solid - it was gravelled all the way. So by the time we got to Coromandel we were pretty drained out from the travel.
Smooth road back to Coromandel?
A scenic spot near Coromandel
A couple fishing in low tide??
We knocked on a few more houses to get permission for filming, ate a few more smoked fish, completed the script analysis and we were pretty exhausted by the evening - all we could think of was hitting the bed. We woke up today morning to the most horrendous weather that one can imagine and we took our trip back to Auckland after grabbing some breakfast and buying some more orange roughies and garlic marinated smoked mussels to have for dinner in Auckland. The weather is the same here in Auckland as I write this update but I am thrilled about the progress that we made on the movie over the past 3 days.
A really bad rain day in Coromandel - a look from our cabin.
I think I will stop typing now and wash my clothes - otherwise will have nothing to wear this week -which wouldn't be a good sight. I will upload the location reccee photos over the next couple of days.
