Tuesday, March 10, 2009

05_Opportunities


So this week's blog is a late night entry...

Its 11.30pm and I've just gotten home from a long meeting with Max, the director of ABC's Catalyst. We spent the evening scrutinizing  my application for the new tv show with Andrew Denton's production house and Triple J. I've utilised every spare minute of the past two weeks to put my application together, and tonight I had gotten to a stage where I was happy with it. But there's still a bit of a way to go. 
Max had the genius idea of submitting a second application under an alias name, to tick some of the other boxes that my application is avoiding, then filming the entire process right up to the submission, then handing it in with my alias application as my video piece. 
You know... just something to be bold!
So we nutted out what we can  deduce as what they are looking for. Bit of a tough one, but we think we got there.

So a couple more days until its due, then I'm taking the big drive back to Adelaide (thankfully with Sim as some company). 
In between applications and actual work, I've been planning and planning and re-planning for our shoot next week at Concordia College. It's going to be a 7 minute prospectus DVD for new families, covering all the 'new highschool' questions. It'll be a tightly run shoot, but should look fantastic.

I also managed a few crazy things amongst the week. I went along to the Mardi Gras on Saturday night... well actually I missed it because Sim, AJ and I had a late dinner at the Woolwich pub before catching the ferry into the city at 10. 
But the sight of chaotic mess all the way up Oxford St was worth the trip. There's was kilometeres of confetti, coloured plastic chairs, rainbow flags, dancing old men in slinky leather and drunk women with giant angel wings! The aftermath was definitely a lot of fun!

(not my picture... but I'm sure you get the drift!)

El and I went to see the Warratah's play on Friday night (thats rugby for all of you playing along at home). As hesitant as I was, it was a lot of fun - once you get into it that is. You have to yell obscenities at the umpire and shout tactical advice to the players to really embrace the moment!

Once again, Nick and I cooked up a storm in the kitchen tonight. The menu this week was fresh ginger fish with bocchini, followed by rhubarb crumble. The meal was cooked with exact precision; Nick mastering the stop watch for perfect cooking times, and I handled measuring each ingredient down to the mg!
Two fat ladies, suck on that!

So back into the office tomorrow. 
They've started to get me to do some more interesting things for them now, shooting some promo footage, shopping for a cargo barrier, and even some graphic design work for the website... so check out the website soon for some funky new backgrounds!

So not a bad week really!


Take care

Henry
x

Monday, March 2, 2009

04_Out in the big world


Hi all

I didn’t think anyone was reading these, but apparently you are! So I’ll make sure they’re more frequent – each Tuesday I’ll put a new one up.

 

I just got back from a jam-packed 5 days back

 home in Adelaide. I went to the premiere of ‘Coffin Rock’ and ‘Closed for Winter’ (originally ‘Elise’) on Thursday and Friday night. Both looked fantastic, but when Closed for Winter is released in cinemas in April try and get along to it. It looks beautiful, sounds beautiful and Natalie Imbruglia is great throughout. Definitely worth going along to, and you’ll probably recognise parts of Adelaide and a lot of Semaphore.

I also went to ‘Soundwave’ on Saturday – a huge music festival at Bonython Park, and caught up with some great road-tripping friends, before checking out Mike Stewart’s Big Band. Go and check them out during the fringe. They’re playing everywhere and are a lot of fun!


Soundwave


We went out for Matt Kaesler’s birthday on Sunday night – apologies to Jules, I dragged him along to another jazz gig... not really his cup of tea! But we met a couple of Matt’s Uni mates so things balanced out!

 

Last night, Joel and I began planning a corporate video we’re shooting for Concordia – so that’s another trip back to SA very soon! This time however I’ll be daring the big drive over so I can bring all the gear over for the shoot. So if anyone’s in Sydney later this month and wants to share a lift back give me a yell!

 

Filmview have still been keeping me busy at work. We didn’t have many commercials last month but I was kept busy between the office and the warehouse. Always plenty to do there seems! I’ll have to take a photo of the warehouse... it’s a huge old building that has been gutted and filled with hundreds of storage garages. To get into our warehouse its an amazingly narrow rabbits warren of corridor-like driveways.

I worked solely on my first commercial as well a couple of weeks ago. It was a straight forward shoot for sunbeam, advertising irons, coffee machines, mixers and kettles. Very exciting! Even though it was pretty simple, I was pretty chuffed to have started and finished it on my own. So now I’m out in the big wide world, representing our company on shoots.

 

Ive also been looking into some other opportunities to shoot and direct some of my own work. I’m mid-way through applying for a new TV show that Triple J and ABC is putting together. Andrew Denton and his company have asked for applicants aged 18-30 to apply to shoot/direct/host/research/edit the show – the whole she-bang! It looks like a brilliant opportunity to break out into TV as a young cinematographer. The lengthy application is taking plenty of time to complete, as it includes a long written section, a full CV, examples of my work and additionally I must write, shoot and edit a short piece of my choice to demonstrate what I can do with whatever facilities I can get my hands on! Its all coming together quite well.

 

So back to work tomorrow. Ive been looking forward to a run and swim in the morning!

 

Take care

 

Henry