Destination Earth

One of the graphics titles screens from the
Jenni's Angels short film, Destination Earth.
Without giving too much away, I think this
gives you an idea of what it was about...

Well, Monday has arrived and we survived the 48 hour film project! What a blast. Yes, it was hard work, and we had some nail-biting moments at the end there, but it was a lot of fun.

Here's a very condensed version of events:

We found out on Friday night that our randomly selected film genre was "monster / sci-fi movie". My jaw about hit the floor. Those of you who know me know this was both the most exciting genre we could have gotten (in my eyes) and the most terrifying. All along I was thinking how awesome it would be to get Sci-fi, and yet I knew that it would be one of the toughest to do properly.

Our team, named Jenni's Angels, got off to a good start. We began with a brainstorming session at Indigo City (home base for the production) where everyone got to toss out ideas of all kinds. We then narrowed in on the concept, compared it against our resources (like shooting locations and F/X), and the writing team then went off to create the script. Friday night, Stacey and I came home and got a decent rest. It was in the hands of the writers, and there was not much we could do but wait.

We received our rough draft of the script via e-mail early the next morning, and hit the ground running. The team re-convened for a reading and tweaking of the script, shoot locations were confirmed, actors prepped, costumes described, special effects, music and graphics projects assigned, and everyone took off. The race was on. Except for an oh-so-brief snippet of sleep on Saturday night, it really did not slow down again until Sunday evening.

The Jimmy Cafe (where Stacey works) was one of the six shooting locations. Other spots included the Carter Observatory, the Botanical Gardens, Majestic Centre, and Courteney Place (for some street shots). The parents of one of our team members had their central city apartment invaded for the purpose of filming as well! Despite running all over town, they managed to get 95% of the location shooting done on Saturday. An absolute miracle was the fact that we had gorgeous weather on Saturday for the shoots. No wind & sunny. Very rare for Wellington this time of year.

My role, not surprisingly, was graphics and artwork for the film. We were quite ambitious about the number of graphics elements, considering how much time we had. Thank goodness for stock photos and clip art! Oh, and one publicly licensed photo of President W, which also made it into the final cut. Post-production was done in a whirlwind. Watching the editing process happen and seeing the graphics turned into animation by the F/X wizards in post-production was terrific! As a result, I am now fixated on learning how to use Adobe After Effects...

Our team turned in our film at 6:49:30 p.m., just 10 minutes away from the deadline. Mild drama involving last-minute renderings of the film, a "safety tape" being sent ahead of time, with the real tape being sent over at the last moment. The final product was literally being watched on a playback device in the car on the way to the drop-off, just to make sure it was OK.

48 Hours was both exactly what I expected and very surprising at the same time. Incidentally, we met a lot of really fun people as a result of working on this, and it was a terrific experience both professionally and personally. Thanks go out to Jenni's Angels for letting us in on the fun.

I will put up a link when Destination Earth has been posted to the Internet for those who wish to see it.

Kiwiburgers are back!

This week's post is going to be concise, but fun! In the interest of saving me heaps of typing, and because things are pretty full-on (kiwispeak for intense) this week, there are going to be lots of hyperlinks in this post. They are there for you, so use 'em people!

The Kiwiburger is back! As I speak these words, I am reminded of an episode of the Osbournes where Jack sees a McDonald's billboard and gleefully exlaims, "The McRib is back!" His sister Kelly proceeded to commit verbal abuse on him for being excited about processed meat-food packed loosely into the shape of a rib cage. I am not certain that New Zealanders are as excited about the return of the Kiwiburger. This is even with McDonald's attempt at convincing them via a happy little song where their product is listed among the things that "Kiwis love". For you guys back home, the Kiwiburger's ingredients list might give you pause...it's a burger, yes, but it also features an egg patty and beets. It may look like the McDonald's you are used to, but the menu has several unusual twists when you look closely. Sweet Chilli Chicken, for instance... I don't remember that one.

When I took the photos (above) of the McDonald's, I was suddenly accosted by the store manager who wanted to know what I was doing and if I had permission to take photos. I declared my harmless intentions, and offered to delete the photos if it was such a huge problem. To his credit, he calmed down and said it was OK, then explained that the reason he was so quick to react was that there had been tons of press taking unauthorised photos of the restaurant in recent days. Unknown to me, this was the McDonald's that unwittingly gave away a condom in a happy meal, making headlines recently in New Zealand.

The photos above are of the St. James Theatre, and the Jimmy Cafe which is inside and where Stacey works. You can just barely make her out in the photo top right--unfortunately it came out kinda blurry. Last Saturday, a group of friends met up at the Jimmy for breakfast (which was quite good). It was a really nice morning. Stacey was working, so she could only come over periodically (it did not help that one of her co-workers called in sick) but she did make the coffees for us and they were top notch! For those of you who have been following her Barista training, she's gotten pretty good at running the espresso machine, and quite fast. You have to be really fast to keep up with all the drink orders.

I mentioned the week is full-on, and here's why. In addition to all the usual work stuff, and some freelance work that I have picked up, we are are going to be participating in the 48 Hour Film Project. Check out the link, it explains all about the event. The gist of it is that we have 48 hours to produce a film from scratch. To keep people from pre-planning too much, the genres are drawn randomly. We could get anything from a Horror film to a Musical! We're pretty excited about our team. We've got at least a couple WETA Workshop peeps with us who have done this before, so that is brilliant. We fully expect it to be a roller-coaster ride of a weekend with no sleep in the forecast. I will post early next week and let you know if we survived (and just how our film came out!)

I am Yoda...

According to Matt's Star Wars Personality quiz.



However, according to the
"Which Star Wars Character are You?" page, I am...

Qui-Gon Jinn

Qui-Gon Jinn 69% Chewbacca 64% Obi-Wan Kenobi 64% Mace Windu 60% Yoda 59% Luke Skywalker 58% Princess Leia 57% R2-D2 57% Lando Calrissian 55% Padme 52%	Overall, you're a pretty well balanced person. But maybe you focus a little too much on the here and now. Think about the future before its too late.
Hmmm....I think I preferred Yoda...