The foley recording today did not really happen for all purposes as we did not really have enough time and the location we chose had low traffic noise in the background + the area was wet and squishy from the rain over the past couple of days. So we will be doing another session sometime soon.
I rejoined swimming classes but at a different location as the swimming trainer at the previous location was not really that great and looking back I did not make much progress under him. And funnily enough the classes start from tomorrow evening. So that should be an interesting evening getting back to swimming after 6 months. Scary but exciting.
It is amazing the amount of time emails consume - personal and professional. Over the past couple of weeks I have been in email contact with various US distribution companies talking about international sales rights to FIVE and the amount of time it takes to write a single email still amazes me. On an average it takes me atleast 30 minutes to write a 2-3 paragraph email. You don't want to write something casually and end up regretting it later, so a lot of thought process does go into it and thus the amount of time taken. At this point I am just talking to various distributors and sales agents and I will update on that front when something happens.
Other than that just bits and bobs here and there - nothing too significant for me to write about. Before I sign off here is an interesting article about Facebook.
Most of the stuff for the following weekends shoot have been sorted out. Just one more element and it is all set. I added the aerial footage into the cut and thankfully it works. I had earlier identified some key points where I needed some scenic shots to help with the transition between scenes and adding the aerial footage has eased off that problem without spoiling the pacing.
A big thanks to Maraea Davis - my ex-classmate at South Seas - without whose generous support 'Five' wouldn't have been made. She was the one who lent us the second camera and now as the case is - our primary camera for pickups. I am fortunate to have had that kind of support with 'Five'.
My swimming lessons are shaping up good. Major improvements with each lesson and the new tutor definitely keeps pushing for more. I will probably get started on my breathing exercises from next week but for now I can swim the 25m pool with 2 breaks in between to take in some air.
I caught up with David, Christina and Mary for a couple of drinks and it was a great evening. I have had a couple of nights with restless sleep but I still feel so relaxed. I am on a different planet altogether and I think I will go to bed for now.
Till later, Amit
[Currently listening to 'Let Go' from Frou Frou' which is where the title for this blog comes from]
I forgot to go to my first swimming lesson this season and I am justifying it by thinking I am not feeling too well anyway (which I am not). I am still feeling a little bit woozy - easiest way to explain it would be I am feeling light-headed from time to time. Let's hope that this passes through quick.
Spent the better part of the day doing paperwork and trying to sort out pickup shoot for 'Five' - so much for trying to have a day off. I better get back to it.
I went and saw the new James Bond flick with Julia and Barbara on Thursday evening. It was great catching up with them after almost a month and a half. The new Bond rocks but the movie get extremely tedious and flawed towards the end. Daniel Craig is unpredictable as Bond and it makes the proceedings a lot more interesting plus it is a great change not having all those gimmicky super gadgets. The movie instead relies on brutal hand to hand combats for most of the time. If they had trimmed out about 15-20 minutes from the end it would have been the best ever all time Bond movie but alas - the last 30 minutes just dragged on and on and on...
The swimming lesson this week was awesome because my learning curve accelerated a fair bit and I can now actually do freestyle swimming without relying on a floating board but I am yet to practice the breathing technique while swimming. Thats the next major thing I have to start practicing but it overall it was a great feeling having made that progress.
Another week gone screaming past and heaps of stuff has happened in the meantime. I am tired from today, so the order of things might be jumbled or sometimes incomplete or both.
I met up with some family friends who were traveling through Australia and New Zealand and had a few days stop over at Auckland. It was good catching up with them.
My swimming lessons are going well and I have 2 more classes left for the year and then will restart next year sometime. School is as hectic as ever. I am glad that I am leaving at the end of this year. I definitely need more time to myself.
I have finished digitizing all the 24 tapes and I have also digitized 2 of the 3 'Behind the Scenes' tapes. I have decided not to use the group clip/multi-cam edit mode in Avid for editing as it will slow the whole thing down and also give less creative movement with the edit. I will be treating it as a single cam edit (even though we shot with 2 cameras). I won't be sub-clipping the footage either as it is another time consuming process instead I will be using locators on the source footage to make the notes I need to edit.
I went and watched a Korean movie called 'The Host' yesterday evening. I didn't particularly like the movie - it is well made and executed but the Koreans have a weird story telling technique. I was constantly frustrated by the build-up of crucial scenes not coming to fruitation and the whole experience wasn't getting any better when the projector in the cinema kept going out of focus from time to time. The movie is well-made - very melodramatic and funny for a horror movie and the special effects are good but the movie just didn't do it for me. Benji on the other hand loves the movie - so you have to decide for yourself.
I had ordered 'The Fountain' from amazon a few weeks back and the book arrived on my doorstep this Saturday but I was dismayed to find that what I got wasn't a graphic novel but a movie tie-in book which had photos from the movie and the original screenplay of the movie. I was very disappointed and I gave amazon customer care a ring later in the evening to explain how I thought I was ordering the graphic novel but instead ended up ordering the movie tie-in book since both have the same description. They were understanding and sorted the stuff out for me. I get to keep the book I have and they will be sending me the graphic novel straight away - so am happy with their customer service.
My desk is almost tidied up and need to sort out the bunch of DVD's/CD's sitting there. My room isn't in too bad a shape - I just need to tidy up small bits and bobs. The next mission is tidying up the house - which has suffered from lack of attention through November because we were filming 'Five'. The 'To Do' list is currently sitting at 6 major things and I think this coming week will be focussed on reducing or completely crossing off the list (if I am lucky).
On a sign-off note I am amazed by articles like this "Single women ask' Where have the good fells gone?'"[and the supplementary article to it..]. Well I think if those single women get off their high horses and stopped being judgmental then they will find all the single guys they need. Typical female way of questioning things when things aren't going their way (shrugs his shoulder in disbelief and dismay).
Man..the weather is so crap right now - feels like the middle of a bad winter. I hope it clears up for the weekend otherwise our rate of filming will slow down considerably. Most of the things are set for this weekend's filming - hopefully the weather Gods will be favorable to us.
I have just gotten back from swimming lesson #3 and today got into the deep end of the pool. water confidence is building up slowly, so thats always a good thing.
Off to learn the script for this weekend's filming. Till later, Amit
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.
