Okay, so some days have past since I last posted and since the shoot, which (if you saw the lookout blog) will know that as far as shoots go and being my first as a director, it went okay.
I've sat through, not all, but most of the rushes, started to drop scenes together to see what I've actually got and not got (soon realising that it's gonna be a hard cut), thinking about where the hell I can find a decent bathroom, and now..when the hell I'm gonna get that shot, as this weekend was the best one for it and after that, god knows on people's availability!?!? :/
I digi'd all the tapes into FCP with my iBook, on the weekend, I've now rigged the hdd back up to my powermac G4 for cutting.
One extra thing I've done is picked up a pair of cheap (and surprisingly good), £14.99 Sony 
So I'm currently flipping between, editing, sound syncing, sorting paperwork, generally procrastinating, thinking about installing ubuntu on my PC and thinking about doing some revision for my driving theory which I have 2moro.
I have to say, I've learnt a hell of a lot from this project (and still learning), knowing my limitations, knowing my abilities, realising how to think differently when you're a director from all the other shoots I've been on.
Learning about compromise on a shoot of this scale, realising how much more time I would've liked to shoot, I don't think I'm gonna love the finished product, but I think I'll like it, yesterday I hated it, but then that was just me getting tired and frustrated.
Sound syncing.
AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!! yes that's right... AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
I HATE IT!, first off I tried doing it in FCP (Final Cut Pro btw, thought about using Avid for this one, but went the FCP route anyway), my sound was 1/3 of a frame out, and I couldn't move it in anything but 1 whole frame incrememtents (first head in hands moment), so I bunged the shot into Soundtrack, which proved the business (despite crashing a fair few times on my PM), it allowed me to zoom further in and properly sync.
So a few hours and 2 shots synced. Onto the next one..bung it to Soundtrack, sync the clap, done. NOPE, the clap is synced but the pre-take voices are out!?!? Sync the voices, the claps out (and the voices still aren't fully synced!) at that point I went to bed.
I haven't tried syncing any more yet, instead choosing to drop an assembly together to see if the shots I've got actually work, why? because a) I need to, and b) I'm dreading getting to the dialogue and finding that it's all out of sync :/ fingers crossed tho!!
Anyway...back to the grind...
It's the headache. The constant, persistant dull headache.
Yeah and my printer's just ran out of black ink. Cheers. God I'm a grumpy bastard at the moment.
Anyway, getting stuff sorted, managing to make it through a day without being sick from nerves, and yay, soon get to make a "proper" film. :)
Got confirmed delivery times, got booked kit, still outstanding on a couple of things, a loc, an actor, but hey, that's all part and parcel of low budget, slightly poorly prepped, filmmaking ;)
Big kudos and cheers to Sally Reynolds, who's Producing, came on board late in the game (my bad) and has really pulled it together. CHEERS :)
You'd think by now, i would be able to deal with stress a bit better. I mean, I've been a manager, I've dealth with countless pressured situations, I have some shit go on in my personal life that I've had to deal with, u know the usual "makes you stronger" stuff.
No.
I'm a wreck, I'm worrying about getting another Job, (have 2 weeks work @ sqd now, which is cool), I'm worrying a lot about the shoot this weekend!! Will it come together ok? Can I direct it ok, get my vision across, get the performance I need from the actors, can I explain my ideas clear enough???
Will it look and sound okay? Will I make a [rather expensive] complete hash of it? Will I unwillingly let someone else take over and it end up not really being my vision? Can I get anywhere near my vision???
Damn my worry, damn the world, I'm gonna be grumpy for a while, I just need to make sure that I'm not grumpy on the shoot and that I don't vomit.
MYSPACE!!! it's soo crap, Kevin Rose slagged it off on one of the recent diggnation episodes I watched and he's right, it's so crap.
"I'm sorry cuntspace had unexpectedly shat out it's own internal organs"
AAAARRRGH, I just want to post a damn comment! is that so fucking hard?!?!? Apparently so.
Anyway, short trip to London today, had some top garlic bread mit mozzarella in Pizza Express, cheers :)
How crap is it, really? I've tried all day to log in to deny yet another band's gay-myspace-friend-request and all I'm getting when I click the little login button is..
Sorry, I've unexpectedly shat my own mum out my arse, but I've told the technical losers about it.
Gee thanks. Well done Tom/Rupert whatever cock runs that site and it's clearly crappy servers. When I do finally get to deny the band, I do hope it shows up their end that I did. Have that in your face you Arctic Monkeys wannabes.
NB, obviously these feelings don't apply to any of my friends bands ;)
Well, it had to happen...my last day @ Square Donkey :( I have to say it's been great working here, it's been a fun job and the people are great (no, I'm not just saying that!)
So, today, make sure all the paperwork is up to date and kosher, then drinks :)
Had a fun evening last night, went to a pub quiz with Vicky, down at The Crescent pub, just around the corner from where she lives.
General knowledge, 30 questions, the winning team got a respectable 27, well done them, we scored 9.
Yes 9. We're shit, I'm not doing another pub quiz with just the two of us. It's too embarrasing! :/
I heartily recommend scooting over to scifi.com and watching the full pilot episodes of Eureka and The Amazing Screw On Head.
The first being a bog standard little sci-fi channel series, much like all the other series that are cropping up, like Invasion, Surface etc, but it's really funny, quirky and..well kinda like a grown up Eerie Indiana, which can't be a bad thing!
The ASOHead is an animated series from Mike Mignola...The creator of Hellboy you damn snotwheeze!
Watch them both! And if you feel like it also check out the first episode of Garth Mareghi's Dark Place, proper british lunacy that for some reason wasn't re-commissioned!?!?! Wankers.
No that wasn't my Steve Ballmer impression, although it was pretty close, that was my elatedness (?) at having broadband at home once more! :)
Thankfully, my Orange freebie package is now active and although only 2meg when apparently the line supports 6.5, it's better than dial-up and then nothing which is what I had for the past couple of weeks. Plus I only had 2meg on AOL (if that!)
Not so WOO! is the damn passport service >:/, they've severely pissed me off this week by messing me about something chronic with the delivery of my renewed passport. Now renewing a passport should be an easy (if expensive) process, you fill out the form, pay the money (£58 bleurgh!) and a couple of weeks later they send you a spanking new passport. Not if you move house after you've applied.
Now I didn't think anything of it, mum put a re-direct on the post, so I assumed (yes) that everything would get to me. Of course I didn't count on the fact that the IPS use a specialist courier service called Secure Mail Services (SMS) to deliver their stuff, they tried to deliver my passport to the old house, obviously we weren't there, so I got a letter through the post saying to ring a number and arrange for redelivery. I rang it, got a computer who told me they could send it to my work address. I hung up and got my work addy, phoned back, got a person this time, said could I re-direct to my work addy, they said sure no probs, i gave them the details, they said..
"That's in London yes?"
I said..
"Yup"
"We can't deliver there."
"Um...why?"
"Because your passport is in Brighton"
"Right?"
"So we can't track it to London"
Great..thanks :/
"Okay, can I give you my new home address then?"
"No we can't take that I'm afraid"
"Why not?"
"We can't we can only deliver it to the address on the system"
"But I just gave you my work address to deliver it to"
"We can't do it, you have to phone the passport service and get them to send a fax to us"
And so it begins...4 days of phoning the passport service, in the end to be told that I had to send a fax, which had I been given the right number would have been a hell of a lot easier and would have saved a lot of aggrivation for a little old lady.
That was sent on Monday. I still haven't got my passport and consequentially I couldn't take my theory test (driving) and have lost £21 for my trouble.
THANKS THE BASTARD PASSPORT SERVICE
Just gone a whole weekend with no net access whatsoever! :/
Cancelled my AOL account on Saturday morning, registered for broadband thru Orange, but in the mean time...no access at all! And of course being in Henfield, no wireless either, not even any of my neighbours have an unprotected wireless router. Dammit.
>:/
Dammit! We move, house and I have no broadband. I phone BT, they say the line *is* enabled and it's and AOL issue.
I phone AOL, tell them I've moved and they say sure give us your new address, right it'll take 20 DAYS to transfer your account, but you can have dial-up in the mean time.
Um... Dial-up? 20 days? £30/month? Um...
Dammit.
Well, I've moved house, still at mum's, still can't afford my own place, but it's a new place nonetheless, it has rather orange carpets and smells funny but it's ok.
The main issue I have is lack of space for the desk and computer setup I wanted, and am reduced to using (most of) my old desk with a single 19" CRT attached to the powermac, not that much of a compromise, as it's still a PM, but if you see my earlier posts u'll understand what I'm getting at.
Well, pretty much all packed now. After I've posted this, checked a couple of other bits and closed down, I'm gonna pack up the router, and then we're pretty much all set to move.
We don't move until tuesday, but as I'm not gonna be here 2moro night, I need to get everything prepped beforehand.
Speaking of prep, pre-production on "Impossible To Get Around" is well underway, check out the production blog for a few more details and ongoing summaries.
Oh yeah and WHERE IS MY WEBSITE?!? >:/ looks like the fasthosts servers are down as I couldn't connect earlier to look at getting some more webspace for lookoutfilm.net, can't get my email and can't pull up my site. Dammit, doub't I'll get a refund for the downtime.
Top day, sun is shining, I'm gradually getting all my stuff packed, although I have to dismantle the desk soon and I've just listened to The Imperial March rather loud, cheers.
saw this on digg, it's bloody amazing, has it's shortcomings when you start to think about it, but run this on one of those interactive tables they've got in development and I'm there! I'd even have it running on a PC and use a mouse!!
Ok that title sounds a bit iffy, it was supposed to sound like proper thesp', but came across a little bit subversive!
Basically (again, I use that word far to often), basically yesterday was the day of the studio shoot for the programme I'm currently working on, and thus my television acting debut!! [wink wink]
Now, i wouldn't like to compare myself to the likes of Min-Sik Choi, or Olivier, but I think I can definitly describe myself as a character actor. This was a very demanding role for me, not that stressful, but a little disorientating at times, and very very warm. There was an element of danger involved and one might say that I was acting blind, although I still had the skills and confidence to do all my own stunt work.
I haven't seen the rushes yet but by all acounts the performance was the best they'd seen for a character of this type and overall I won't win any sort of award but should get 30 seconds (ish) more tv time!
I can't wait to see what the rest of the outfit looks like on cam! ;)
It had to happen, my iBook finally crashed, or to give it the correct terminology had a "Kernal Panic" and it certainly induces panic I can tell you!
Not panic in the sense of
"Oh my God my...my computer...it's...what's that? That's not supposed to be there, oh God what am I gonna do what am I gonna do? I'll have to take it to PC world, maybe it's a virus or..or..a trojan"
more
"Oh! Shit! Bugger! Damn. Okay, restart (twiddles thumbs during reboot) why did that happen disk space the heat in this office hope I haven't buggered something well it's fine now probably for another year or so.
So I am wondering, why exactly that happened. I've googled "causes of kernel panics" a few times to try and find out, all the main ones seem to be permissions and hardware, well as soon as i was back up, I ran MacJanitor & Disk Utility, so hopefully they've cleared any of that up. Hardware; I hope not, cos that'll be a bugger, but it wouldn't surprise me, I've been pushing this little iBook quite hard since I've had it, and what with the ridiculous heat (pah! English! never happy with the weather), it could well get a little frazzled.
Take a trip over to the NME site and take a minute to log a vote & comment for Winteria.
Yes they're friends of mine, they're also really good! You can listen to some of their stuff on the NME page or from their webiste (www.winteria.co.uk) or their MySpace page (www.myspace.com/winteria).
If u like it please vote and also go see them at The Concorde2 in Brighton this Sunday at 3.00PM!
Cheers
the link again http://www.nme.com/newmusic/winteria
Just a quickie, to say to anyone reading this, to be sure to have a butchers at the links lower down on the right, u'll find the joys of Winteria, link to my MySpace...space, and a couple of IMDB pages of mine, such as ratings, and as I've newly discovered the My Movies bit of the site, I'll add the various films I own on VHS and DVD, so if you're really that interested..you can see for yourselves what masterpieces and embarrasing pieces of crap I own.