under blue moon i saw you

technically it's not the start of the year, but for all intensive purposes according to certain AWOL monks & blog party time it is. anyway i'm BACK! happy new year one and all. january was a false start punctuated by bush & bollywood. february is much more focussed. more internet time. so soon you'll take me up in your arms.

what better way to commence 2010 than a piece of tortured nostalgia whilst tenderly nursing a morning after KINO hangover? unwillingly mine.

last night was KINO #33 [with an appearance by my pseudo 24 hour flick "not beautiful enough" now sublimely edited/sound designed by the wonderful star germans, felix and michael & starring the ever lovely muse catherine davies]. the fat32 myth finally debunked... fate up against your will.

heads up to oliver dickens, dan rossi & dave cheng for shooting, sound recording & capturing awesome stills whilst we illegally ran amok amongst the loading containers adjacent to sydney airport before security threw us out as the sun rose and heralded in the day. we were in and out almost within the hour. except we had to break back in in the dead of night to look for missing make-up & head torches. under blue moon i saw you.

anyway that was yesterday. today is echo and the bunnymen. in sydney. if this is what george orwell's 1984 looked like i could easily move in. and stay. forever. your lips a magic world...

the honeymoon is over

so my nihilistic perspective on weddings, marriage & femme fatales hit a couple of sore spots in the last few days. it still hurts when i press them.

it all started with the awards night for the punk monk 48HR film project "hybristo honeymoon" i literally broke my back on & ended with the dissolution/disillusion of the marriage of two of my best friends after almost two decades together.

in the beginning of the end some punk monks rocked up to the awards screening at the paddington RSL on friday night with great anticipation having been advised that we'd been nominated for at least one award but not aware which category/ies. there was much nervous anticipation in the air which we quickly tempered with red wine en masse [as you/we do] & witty banter about farm machinery in the hopes of a nomination in the category "best use of a prop". we had a bunch of inappropriate suggestions for additions...

with a couple of nominations in categories [best music, best sound] we walked away with two awards in the end [best sound & most lame director = most extraordinary team]. huge congratulations to our small hardworking cast/crew on set [ky, mischa, felix, michael, andrew, davey & my much luscious muse cat] for the incredible effort, energy and shared vision, raen & kate behind the scenes & to dermot, michael, felix & mischa for sticking it out to the end in post production mode.

mike's super sound design got us over the line & mithra with the lurkers enigmatic banjo sounds fueled from my deliverance dueling banjo obsession/original story inspiration combined with dan's [from meatpig] captivating accordion got us a large percentage of the way there.

it was quite satisfying to feel partially responsible for the honorable minister's [virgina judge] lipsticked nose throughout the night after i went in for the stage pash following obligatory congratulatory handshake. KINO regular, aidan corrigan's crowd pleasing mockumentary "living with EES" won best film. big electrifying clap for his team.

we were a little disappointed with the structure of the awards & felt sorry that some of the other films apart from ours which displayed excellence in particular fields didn't even make the finalist nominations. it does demonstrate that there is no accounting for taste & film festival competition judging is an entirely subjective & political process. our film was always going to be borderline risqué, so we were ecstatic to get the recognition we did in a fairly conservative forum.

apparently "we're all winners", so now it's time for us to harvest the film & send it out to see if anyone else responds positively to our wicked weekend jaunt in the woods. with 50% of marriages ending in divorce, honeymooners often don't last forever. we just managed to dispense with ours a little quicker than most. now we need to see if we can prop it up posthumously long after the wedding cake has been happily consumed. if we can manage a seventeen year long festival life perhaps that's a significant #lovePASS not #FAIL after all.

[photos by punk monk dave cheng]

not beautiful enough

poor neglected blog... right on the back of making & screening "the unfinished tale of annabel lee" on thursday night this week i made an unplanned drunken promise at the red rattler theatre to shoot another film with my delighful muse, cat, in the following two days [goodbye life]...

after quickly shuffling the rest of my week around, i had an idea on friday morning & rocked up to the KINO KABARET meeting at 10:00 to pitch with a bunch of other crazed filmmakers on a week long 48 hour marathon based in the lab at metroscreen.

friday was spent making friends with oliver from london KINO & bringing him on board to shoot when originally i thought maybe just to shoot myself by mobile phone but realised the imagery i wanted to capture could really benefit from an HD injection.

using the sponsored canon legria on the basis that we aimed for a PG rating in order to relationship build with canon, i ran off to hunt down props. then perhaps knock out a script & secure a fairly specific location... all this whilst celebrating a friend [magali] leaving for paris & another's [amalia] birthday. to the point at 01:00 tipsily running around the cross we made an unscheduled stopover at her shop where she made the best alcohol infused wedding posey ever in the middle of her birthday sojourn between clubs. good friends and passion are irreplaceable.

by 03:00 i was making equipment & shotlists and at 04:00 davey rocked back up after a late night in between film snack where we then drove off into the night to location scout industrial wastelands...

from 05:00 our mini crew [oliver, dan, davey, cat] were starting to arrive at the corner shop to be on set for 06:30 where we set off in pursuit of the magic hour. we have some beautiful footage which sadly has still been somewhat evasive in transfer due to file size limitations regarding .mts to .mov transfer between computers. if anyone can tell us how to xfer files over 4G from one mac to another i will be permanently indebted. at least we have some stunning photos thanks to davey.

we had a screening FAIL last night. but i'm excited that we have a very pretty film here in the can. just as soon as we can use the files... fat32 we're onto you.