Musings of an Idiot

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.












Straight 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

posted by Amit @ 7:44 AM 0 Comments

The Palm Tree

The post production funding for 'Five' has been declined by SIPF; which didn't come as that much of a surprise as I was expecting it to be rejected. No real reasons for expecting that outcome except for my gut feeling that it would happen even though it was a strong application with a distributor already attached to the movie. I don't think I will ever get funded by NZFC or SIPF - again no rhyme or reason for that thought - just a feeling {I think I might have said it in one of my earlier posts or it is just deja vu}. So the path is clear that I need to keep working on finding ways to make 'no-budget' to 'low budget' movies till I am able to attract funds from private sector or overseas.

Talking of post production - the plan all along was to keep working on it as if we will never get the funding and the approximate date for finishing off atleast the 2.0 mix is 1st week of July - at which point I need to start sending the finished cut to any film festivals that select the movie. After that point - Benji will keep working on a 5.1 mix for the DVD release, probably for another month or so. Sam Good has joined the audio post team as a foley recordist - which is great as that eases off pressure on Benji a bit. I will be starting the colour grade on the movie this week. So work on post is still going ahead full speed.

I watched 'Hushabye Mountain' on saturday along with Brett - one of my acting classmates and it was good play. The acting and production design was brilliant - there were some story threads which didn't tie-up nicely but still it was a great experience watching live theatre. Unlike movies - you don't get second chances while performing. What is done is done and the audience reaction and feedback is immediate - so it definitely is a scary process performing live.


I also caught 'POTC3' and was very disappointed. I didn't go into the movie with any high expectations and was annoyed when the movie just started acting self important with no continuity whatsoever with the previous installment. The only point the movie comes alive is when Johnny Depp is onscreen and that too when he is not talking to himself - otherwise it just felt too self important and pretentious where it was creating a mythology and trying to solve it within the same movie. And one of the major villains of the piece was the blandest one I have ever seen on film. Anyway - I will stop talking about the movie because it was an average experience.


I had a lovely Sunday morning/afternoon having lunch with David and his family. I love the bread that he cooks and D was kind enough to give me half a loaf to take home...yippeeeeeee......

Anyway kind of drained right now after a full days work and the acting lessons in the evening.
Till later,
Amit

Labels: Five, Movies, Post Production, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 9:10 PM 0 Comments

The Plug

OK...This post is mainly for 2 things - one is to try and raise some more awareness about Earthrace (and their need for support at this stage) and second is try and convince you to support local theatre instead of spending that amount on some Hollywood blockbuster (you can do that too if you like but who would you rather have your money - some struggling but talented local artists or some moneymakers across the shores)

Earthrace - in it's bid to raise some money to keep the ground crew moving from port to port has started a promotion raffle with some pretty wicked prizes and top the deal off there are only 3000 tickets available, so the chances of winning something increases to 1 in 700. You should check out the SALES PROMOTION RAFFLE DETAILS HERE. And do it quick as they are bound to go quick.

I am planning on checking out a play titled 'Hushabye Mountain' this weekend and I am excited as one of my classmates from the acting class is in it. And again, the play has only 9 shows left {1 show a day}, so I would suggest that if you get a chance and are keen to check out some local theatre - the artists will definitely appreciate your support.

Yesterday was my day off work but it disappeared into encoding the movie into various formats for further work - a quicktime file with dialogue only, a quicktime file with everything, an MPEG file with NTSC encoding, an MPEG file with PAL encoding. Plus uploading the quicktime files so that the music composer can download the files and authoring an NTSC DVD of the movie to send to film festivals for selection purposes. So yeah - long and short of it is that the day off was a day off from nothing at all. It is good to be busy.

A couple of days ago I did manage to watch 'No. 2' - a NZ movie which was adapted from a very successful kiwi play of the same name. It was a mixed bag - there was some stuff which was delightful while there was also a lot of missed opportunities. The movie says that it is a big hearted and exuberant story but somehow the heart is missing in a few places. It makes me sad because it was definitely trying to be different but the warmth and the exuberance just does not come across on-screen. And the other thing which annoyed me was the 'sanitized' shooting to the point where it was driving me nuts - when you go out on the streets - you don't find them empty - you always find it full of cars and people etc and when you remove those elements while filming it just feels artificial and a big setup. I wish NZ dramas didn't do that - I know it is hard and all with permissions and all but where there is a will there is a way.

There was another interesting meeting I had last week that I completely forgot to mention. It was with the director of a 'bollywood' movie that is shooting here in NZ. It stars Celina Jaitley and Ben Mitchell {a local TV star} among other known indian actors. Hmmmm.....i will leave that experience for a later post when I am a bit more fresh.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Cause, Movies, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 9:17 PM 0 Comments

Look both ways

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.


Here is what I was feeling like this afternoon - pretty random but still beautiful.



As a sign off note - there have been lots of newspaper articles this week both locally and internationally which have given increased importance to the warning signs of global warming. Here are some which you might like to read:
"Global warming will threaten millions"
"Alaskan storm cracks iceberg in Antarctica"
"Antarctic ozone hole hits record"
"Get ready for freak weather"
and possibly one of the rare pieces of news where US has done something positive for the enviroment "US offers debt-for-nature swap to Guatemala"

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Five, Global Warming, Movies, Pre-production, Theatre

posted by Amit @ 10:04 PM 0 Comments