Back from Australia

Just rolled back over the soggy, cloud-bestraddled shores of England after a brief return to my hometown of Brisbane, Australia. They've been having a hell of a drought out there over the past year, though you wouldn't have guessed it from my arrival - no sooner do I step off the plane than it starts bucketing down for two days straight. Hmm, maybe a new career beckons as a Rain God (little nod to Douglas Adams RIP). It cheered the oldies as it filled their new 10,000-gallon watertank, and they they can now enjot their two-month stint in the gemfields of north Queensland knowing the jungle that is their backyard will be watered. Still, once the rain abated I managed to hit the water for the first time in nine years to do some fishing with my father, brother & nephew. Only a small flathead & bream were the result, but we did better on the crustacean front - eight good-sized sand crabs from the crabpots we laid out. I'd almost forgotten how much enjoy eating one's own freshly-caught seafood - must be something that tickles the atavistic part of my battered soul.

It's always a bit of a shock to the system seeing the old town again. So much has changed over the years (I'd be hard-pushed to recognize the centre of town anymore), and yet other things are pretty much exactly as I remembered them twenty years ago. Managed to catch up with several of my old college & high school chums at a BBQ thang on the river - all looking remarkably good, tho' all turning grey-haired now they're in their mid-forties. I still retain my sandy blonde locks, tee hee. They're all comfortably married with kids & hefty mortgages, which I guess is the main contributing factor in aging us all prematurely. Must get around to doing some sort of grown-up stuff like that myself someday. But then, do I really need a beergut & grey hair...?

The main instigating event for my trip was my parents seventieth birthday bash. We took over (well, two thirds took over) a Greek restaurant called Kapsali on the Brisbane South Bank (which is scarily coming to resemble the London South Bank area as time marhes on). It was a great evening with some seventy-odd guests, a mixture of family, a few distant relatives from as far afield as Tasmania and old friends all chipping up for the festivities. The oldies certainly aren't letting the grass grow under their feet, as they left almost straight after their do for a couple of months on the gemfields, to be followed by a trip to Sabah/Borneo. I think they're gonna keep milking the travel bug until their health goes, which may be some time yet on current form!

We've had the first screening of our latest film "Bad Day" at the BAFTA cinema in Piccadilly. Very well attended thankfully, there's nothing more soul-destroying than having no-one turn up to see your pride & joy take it's first steps into the viewing world. The film went down very well indeed, the ending even had a few of the ladies in the audience in tears. Which surprised me, but them I've often been told I have a heart of stone. Ah, maybe they're right, who knows. It's now time for the long hard slog of trying to get a sales agent or distributor on board to tout our cinematic baby to the world.

Fingers & all appendages crossed...

Easter, and where has all the bloody work gone?

Yup, that time of the new year when everything seems to run out of steam. At least the stuff that pays.

Also seems to be the time of year for women of my acquaintance to do some 'testosterone housekeeping'. Yet another one has hit the magic age of 34 (odd how it's always around then, anyone else notice this?), and realised she has to sort herself out man-wise. She a lovely, sweet girl but boy has she developed a taste for dating douche bags. Admittedly very hunky, attractive, dark-haired douche bags, but douche bags none-the-less. It's been such a joy to watch her becoming so self-aware & self-confident that she can now recognize this destructive dating pattern she's been in for years and take steps to break out of it. I guess the incentive of the biological clock ticking away also helped spur this on. Good luck to them all, I say - remember, it's not the men out there that are the problem, it's just the one's you have the taste for dating. Self-analyze & then make the right choices, girls! Guess the same applies to bloke dating patterns as well...er, then again, as long as one's getting laid & the conversation hasn't turned to having kids...

An old friend has also turned a corner in his complicated life. I lost touch with him years ago after his marriage broke up, and he completely dropped off the radar. I've recently re-established contact only to discover he has gone back to his home town of Manhattan, Kansas! He'd had a rotten time of things in London since his divorce - job & money problems, a torturous (but adventurous!) love life & finally a serious burglary in which he lost pretty much everything he owned. And to really put the boot in, his father also passed away. This is what precipitated his move to the US, where he moved back into the old family home and spent time & effort renovating it. And this is where the fairytale ending kicks in - he popped in to the local opticians to get an eye problem sorted & found the optician was an old GF from high school. They've since rekindled their romance & have set up house together. Almost gives one faith in humanity, stories like this.

So, all quiet on the work front and I guess it's time to do some light housekeeping, writing, book-keeping and other such mind-buggeringly interesting stuff.

Oh, and finish off our little film...

IDD's with the sound dude today getting on with the final mix for "Bad Day". Knew it was all going too smoothly - sounds like the guy hasn't got a clue about how to mix for a feature film, let alone an IDD feature film! Wonder if IDD's gone Krakatoa on his ass yet...wouldn't be surprised, he gets that way when he's actually paying people to get the job done. Our deadline now looks like the 16th April, as that's when we're back at M2 to finish the grade, marry up the sound & get DVD encodes & submasters struck. Also managed to wrangle a tentative screening at BAFTA on or about May 10th, so if you're in London look us up!

FF's just managed to get a copy of his film "Cold Earth" (think the website's up now - www.coldearththemovie.co.uk) off to the submissions bods at the Cannes Film Festival. Dunno when he'll hear if he's been granted screening slot/s, but he's cracking on with his Avid man in Nuneaton finishing off the grading & final sound mix. He's carried on having problems as well, as it appears his editor guru is nothing of the sort. Pretty much everything he said along the lines of "yeah, I can do that" when he pitched for the job (i.e. grading, special effects, sound mix), he in fact can't do...at least not to a consistent professional level. And especially not unsupervised. I've tried to pass on my pearls of wisdom re basic grading techniques, use of vectorscope & waveform monitors, acceptable audio mixing levels etc, but much appears to be falling on deaf ears. Conversation always seems to go along the following lines -

Me - You need to use the waveform monitor to check you're not crushing blacks or clipping whites.
Him - Avid Adrenaline doesn't have scopes. (emphatic)
Me - Er, yes it does. You click here...and here...and there they are.
Him - Oh yeah, I knew that already. (loud sigh of frustrated exasperation at this point)

Been the same all along the line, alas...and it really, really hurts that the guy is being paid a pretty decent whack to be so wilfully obstructive. Egos & their clashing, truly the bane of my existence. And politics :-)

It's been an odd revelation - comparing my experiences on "Bad Day" & "Cold Earth", it appears to be the rule that if you don't pay people you get a professional job done, but if you do pay them they screw you around & generally fuck up. How does that work in the real world!? Still, my beleaguered director chum has had one glimmer of joyful schadenfreude this week - one of the bell-end 'producers' who've messed him around from day one has asked for a reference - to get a job as a hotel porter. Ha-ha-ha, now who's the bitch!!

It also looks like we might be getting a mention in the next edition of High Definition magazine, which is nice. Showreel have also asked for something, so I'm sitting here trying to think like a journalist. The nice man at High Definition also put us onto an upload site called veoh (ww.veoh.com), so we could post up the trailer. I'm quite impressed; it's done a very good Flash encode compared to You Tube, and the site also gives you the option to syndicate the clip to You Tube, Google Video & My Space. And it keeps track of hits & posted comments across all four sites as well. And it's free!

And so the whispering campaign for "Bad Day" begins...

Another film down...

It's been a ragged couple of weeks as I put my latest low-budget film epic to bed. Bit of a bumpy start to the proceedings with various camera problems, but all in all it's gone smoothly. We were shooting with the new Panasonic HVX200 tapeless HDV camera and I've been quite impressed with its performance - quite flexible & easy to use. Had a few ongoing foibles however with the Firestore hard drive onto which our 'rushes' are recorded. The little bugger doesn't like things getting too warm - it then has tendency to kick in its cooling fan (making a helluva racket) and more scarily stop recording without giving any warning bells or whistles that it's done so! Ah, the joys of breaking in cutting-edge technology...

The crew worked out surprisingly well, given the relative level of inexperience. You get the usual wastes of space, but you also find a few gems along the way who you know will go far if they persevere in this capricious business. We've had a similar experience with the cast as well - some of the performances are truly shite, a couple are wildly variable, but two of our leads in particular were brilliant. Thoroughly professional, courteous, passionate about their craft & bloody good actors to boot. A real (and rare in mt experience) pleasure to work with them, so mucho kudos & a big thnk you to Claire and George.

We're still to sort out our post-production schedule, so here's hoping there aren't too many nasty surprises waiting around the edit suite door. Part of the problem with doing a feature film in such a tight turnaround is the total lack of time to do any sort of testing - we're kinda flying by the seat of our pants here as we seem to be about the first people in Great Britain to tackle a feature-length project using this particular camera. The advice has been flying thick and fast, and strangely enough (note the sarcasm in my tone) much of it has been contradictory. Who do you believe? End of the day, a man has to read the manuals & specs, trust in his own judgement & take a leap of faith.

If you're bored;
www.baddaythemovie.co.uk

Guess it's time for me to take a razor to my two-week stubble...

The film fun kicks off...

It's been a long hot summer here, and I've had so much fun working in unairconditioned edit suites. But luckily the prospect of some DoP work looms on the film front :-)

Just spent a day blowing up sparky pyros on FF's ongoing mini-epic. Very odd mix of crew he's ended up with - he and his financier seem to be about the only middle-aged guys there i.e. the only people with their heads screwed on straight. As we'd anticipated the producers, location manager & art department have all proved to be utterly useless if not totally obstructive on set, which has proved a real hindrance. FF has luckily managed to contain his going-Krakatoa urges...so far (really don't wanna be on set for the last day though!). Apparently tho they have had the luck of the devil elsewhere and things have been dropping into place pretty much as needed at the last minute, day in day out!

I only got a day-and-half's notice that Friday last was going to be pyro day - luckily my bods in Wandsworth could get in the Silver Star units I needed in just in time. But hey, no time to test or even pre-rig and no-one had seen the location interior until Thurday night! Wonderful thang having a location manager who plays his cards that close to his chest - no photos, no floor plans, no maps to get there, no nuthin'. Great location though, it's a huge grain silo outside Oxford with 'offshoot' floors on about six levels, not unlike the Acton Power Station interior only more cramped. Lotta fun running around trying to wire up ceiling charges while they were still pickin' their shots & lighting. Strangely enough, since locations have only been dropping into place scant days before they're needed there's been no such luxurious frippery as storyboards or a basic shot list!

Luckily FF's had a real stroke of luck with the camera and lighting team - young, enthusiastic, love doing dolly shots & they are by now holding the production wasters in as much disregard as FF, so they're really on his side. Getting some very nice pictures from what little I saw on the monitor, but being recent gradutes my GOD are they slow...two weeks into principal photography and they've only just hit slate 185. Inside I was silently screaming all day long - I seem to recollect hitting slate 100 early in the morning of day 3 on The Killing Zone (still my personal best, I believe).

IDD's epic also rolls ponderously onwards - we now have Donna Air definitely on-board as one of our female leads, as well as that bloke from Casualty (yeah, I know, they all look the same to me too). Also rumours now of GG getting her mate Sarah Harding (blonde one from Girls Aloud) in for one or two scenes - as Sarah is now seeing the end of her pop career looming imminently she is desperate to get into acting. She's been turned down by both ICM and William Morris apparently, though whether that is because she can't act for toffee or is perceived as a weak draw in the US who knows. Still, the more publicity mileage we can get for nowt the better...

Summer break in LA

Yup, always fun to get out of England around summer time, avoid the worst of Big Brother, World Cup and so on, so I've just got back from a week in Los Angeles. First time on the west coast in nigh on twenty years. It was great to catch up with a few old friends, if ever so briefly. Also snuck in a few meetings with producers with a view to getting some film projects developed - hard to tell how they went, Amercians are all so 'up' they're hard to read. At least we weren't thrown out of any of their offices...

Surprisingly hot weather ever since we got back to England - hotter than it was in LA many days, but with that nice sticky mugginess you get over here. Damn El Nino...

Been working like a maniac so far this summer, which is good as the bills from LA, tax man etc are rolling merrily in this month. Both FF and IDD's epic productions are rolling along, IDD's smoother than FF's at this stage!

FF's been having a nightmare time with his producers, in fact one's just gone to do another film in Austria for a couple of weeks and the other has gone on holidays. Nice one, considering the shoot is supposed to kick off in three weeks. Poor bugger was pretty close to closing the whole thing down last week after this lot accused him of being too pushy/hard-nosed about the project. It's all leaving a pretty ghastly taste at the moment as nothing much is getting done in a suitably expeditious time. Only one location secured so far (and that still subject to contract), some of the cast in place, but not a lot else. Oh, and the DP is on holidays until next week as well, so not much being confirmed on the kit front either. I can only sympathise with him, after the fun we had on the 'Fallen Angels' production all them years back. I'm praying he won't lose it big-time once the lid's down on the pressure cooker of principal photography.

IDD's having better luck with 'Bad Day'. We've now got a cracking production manager on the case, a very enthusiastic young woman who has a day-job at Disney in Chiswick (looks a bit like the blonde Aussi chick in 'Lost', which don't hurt the eyes either ;-) - she's already setting up contact sheets, deal memos etc. More castings this week (still looking for a rugged male lead!), including a couple of almost-famous faces. Donna Air (the blonde presenter infamous for once asking The Corrs 'how they first met' in an interview) and Beth Cordingly (cute blonde who got shot & killed off last year on The Bill after four years). Both going up for the same role, alas, otherwise I'd say take 'em both if only for the publicity value. They're doing their to-camera bits on Saturday so it'll be interesting to see who can cut the mustard acting-wise. Also still looking for a decent location manager, so if there's anyone you can recommend we'd be all ears!

Also been sniffing about some more about those new Panasonic P2 cameras which now seem to be infiltrating the hire places - our man at VMI is getting five in by the end of the month and has invited us up to have a play day. Another work colleague has made a very generous offer to help cover camera and editing costs for the project in exchange for profit share, credit etc. Main headache still seems to be the limitations of shooting on P2 cards (max. 8 mins at full quality) on location - a workflow has to be factored in whereby card data can be copied over and backed-up as often as required (to at least two sources seems to be the general advice). I'm still liking the idea of using this option as it does seem to streamline post (the MTF data from the P2's can now be imported/converted directly into Final Cut Pro), will let us do a bit of green screen if required (testing to confirm!) and give a better looking product at the end of the day.

So, busy ol' start to the summer, long may it roll on!

Twixt cup and lip...

You know the story, many a slip'n'all that....

My pal FF is still on a rocky road to getting his film outta the starting blocks. He's found a producer dude to take it on, all very enthused, but last week had a fraught time of things when his sole investor said he 'wasn't sure' he wanted to give him the money to make the film anymore. What is it with middle-class people in this country - they seem to have a real problem with the 'my word is my bond' concept? Heart attack time for my mate, though. After a hairy few days of non-returned phones calls they've just had another big meeting and it looks like it's on the go again.

Potentially nasty bit is that the producer is still insisting on using his own crew, in particular the DoP. And why? He can get HD kit and lights for nothing from a college. Frank still hasn't seen any of his past work, though a DVD of a recent short the guy did fall through the letterbox this Easter...be afraid, be very afraid...

But it all still seems to be sticking to the rails after the shakey start and that's the main thing - the first tranche of readies should be hitting the company account next week, signalling the official start of preproduction. The producer is talking of trying to snare Michael Ironside or Jeff Fahey for a few days week, increasing the marketability of the film. Having worked with them on a past production I hope it comes off - they're both easy to work with and put in good solid performances, handy qualities to have to hand if you're a first-time director.

Currently piling through IDD's script for 'Bad Day', his £8k HDV mini-epic for the summer. Wish I could say it's a refreshingly original departure from the usual TKZ/7th 12th fare, but alas...it is not. I'm trying to par it down and generally give it a much better spin/sharper, less expositional dialogue etc. Yer can only go so far with £8k though, especially with what I'm sure will be some dubious bottom-of-the-casting-barrel acting! Still planning to shoot early July tentatively, so fingers crossed.

A quick schmooze-trip to LA trip in early-mid June is still a vague possibility, kinda depending on other work commitments. I could do with a break on the west coast (haven't been there in nigh on fifteen years), even if it does put a sizeable dent in the wallet.

Enjoy the chocolate eggs!

And so it keeps turning...

Still scares the bewillikers out of me how quickly things can change in this business, often on the turn of a single phone conversation. After years of honing his writing skills, my friend FF had the good fortune to find a wealthy benefactor who wanted an exec producer credit on a feature film, and who subsequently offered him fifty-G's to get the ball rolling. A truly cart-before-the-horse scenario in this game - usually you have the script and some cast/crew in place, then you have to run repeatedly face-first into the brick wall that is finding the money!

Still, even with this tranche of cash in the bank it has taken him nine months to get a producer on board to actually get the project moving. After a couple of good meetings it looks like the juggernaught is slowly rolling out of the blocks. It's looking less and less likely that I'll be getting a look-in as Director of Photography as the producer is pushing to use all his own crew and casting suggestions. All well and good if it gets the film made as envisioned by my friend who actually wrote the darn thing; having seen some of this producer's past work I would have to say watch your back - his output is pretty piss-poor in content, but it has hit the cinemas and has generally got 'out there'.

So where do you draw the line? Compromise your work for the sake of recognition and financial recompense, or fight your corner and risk having the project sunk with all hands still below decks? It'll be a hard, hard call.

By what is becoming a customary stroke of simultaneity, another colleague of mine IDD has also just wrangled some cash from a kind benefactor. A tiny amount to be sure, but he's started cranking out a script this week. Guess we'll be looking to shoot April-May sometime, and it'll have to be fast'n'dirty. Not much lighting, handheld HDV cameras, shoot like the wind! Post-producing should be pretty easy as we have access to a lot of post-facilities, including a couple of music composers who are just dying to get their teeth into a feature film project.

Guess I have to hope for a break in the paid work around then so I can have a pitch at this. Never let it be said I don't rise to a challenge...