Category Archives: Film & TV

Too many films

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I spent my evenings last week at the Civic theatre with James and Faith watching all 177 films in the heats of the 48Hour film competition.

We took one heat each per evening where we paid attention and furiously scribbled notes in the dark, which we attempted to decipher and next day and guide us to writing concise and insightful reviews for the masses.

Interested parties can find them here: Heats 1-3, heats 4-6, heats 7-9, heats 10-12, and heats 13-15.

The competition requires that each team is given a character name and trait (Jerry Reed, a hypochondriac), a prop (rope) and a line of dialogue (“What do you call that”) that must be used in the film. It’s interesting how many teams uses those to build their entire film around.

This might not seem like much, but after you’ve seen a dozen films where Jerry Reed is a perpetually sniffling, pill-popping sickie who thinks he has “the Aids”, you start to switch off. And it’s the ones who make Jerry a minor character and do something more original with their main character that really stand out.

As for my team’s film, well, it wasn’t our best effort. We didn’t take our own advice and filled it with too many in-jokes that most audience members didn’t get (and probably were annoyed that they didn’t get), and the film’s ending was really insubstantial, which is another way to annoy viewers. But having said that, the stuff in the middle got a good reaction, particularly Jimmy Can’t-Face’s urgent message. (Coming soon to YouTube!)

What I like best about the 48Hours heats is seeing how teams grow from year to year. Case in point, teen team Halcyon Entertainment, who in 2005 gave us the worst film ever, the notorious Graduate Massacre. But they came back last year with a competent musical, Next, Please, but this year they surprised us all with a sweet, tender story of a boy who befriends his hospital wardmate, a girl with cancer.

And of course there is the opportunity to see films that would never normally get a screening in the mighty Civic. A puppet penis who’s going to be “sick” on his owner? Two teens dressed up as senile veterans? A group of teens trapped in a shipping container who spend the whole time swearing? It’s all there.

It’s a great way to spend a week.

A big job

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It’s that time of year again. The time where I spend a perfectly good weekend running around making a short film with the Fractured Radius team for the 48Hours film competition.

Director/producer/editor/all-round awesome dude Dylan made a timeline of what we did, claiming “everyone sleeps” on Saturday night. This is a slight lie. I only got about four hours sleep that night, which made Saturday a challenge. But I guess that’s why one of the competition’s sponsors is an energy drink.

While sitting around, waiting for stuff to happen, I started to make up (unnecessary) back stories for characters in the film, like this one:

A corrupt scientist was working for a criminal genius, contracted to clone the criminal genius’ favourite thug. Unfortunately the cloning process was a little impure, meaning that each clone had something slightly wrong with him. One had no hand, one had a permanently clenched fist, and one had something odd growing inside his mouth. Never mind – they could still all be put to work…

We had various industry pros working in post-production – a composer of the musical score (every main character had his or her own theme tune); a graphics guy; a pyrotechnician (but you’ve noted this refers to post-production and are perhaps pondering what a pyrotechnician would be doing in an edit suite – exactly); and a sound mixer.

While these dudes added truly professional-looking and -sounding touches, we kind of worried if the slickness of these effects would make the rest of the film look rubbish in comparison.

But in the end, the usual quality of Fractured Radius’ writing and act0ring skillz shone through. Uh, well, something like that.

I had heaps of fun. In previous years there has always been the thought in the back of my mind, “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to win,” but this year I don’t really care all that much. While it would be nice to win, I don’t think winning would be as cool as the experience of making the film.

Interested parties can see Fractured Radius’ crime flick, “The Big Job”, on Tuesday May 29, 7.30 at the mighty Civic.

Meanwhile, here’s a photo of The Tree Guy in the scene where… Oh, if you want to know what happens, you’ll have to see the film.

The Tree Guy

Music is magic

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After work today, I went downstairs and watched the Magic Numbers play. Their lovely three-part harmonies gave me goosebumps.

I ended up on telly for a little bit, in a fuzzy, background, out of focus sort of way.

Here is me and Romeo from the Magic Numbers on the telly:

(I was smirking because Romeo was talking about the song they were about to play, and I realised that it’s totally true what James said, that while the Magic Numbers have this image as cuddly, lovely hippies, their songs are rather quite dark.)

Here is me and the Magic Numbers and Sainso and other fans:

This is probably the most I’ve been on TV. The second most was my brief background appearance on Tonight in 2004 in an item about Idol Blog, and the third was an even briefer appearance in the audience at an Idol taping also that year.

Those were pretty rad experiences, but weren’t as rad as the Magic Numbers.

Laundry day

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One laundry day, a few months ago, I was wearing the polarfleece with my employer’s logo on it. The lady at the Chinese laundry saw it and got rather excited.

She asked me if I was on television or… you know, the other sort of television job. I think I disappointed her when I revealed that I was not a glamorous TV star.

But since then, she’s sort of eager to talk with me about the telly.

Today she told me that she’d seen the John man at Mt Roskill interviewing Don Brash. The John man is taller and much more handsome in person than he is on the telly. I said that once I saw him at the supermarket pushing a trolley around.

She also said that about a year ago, she’d seen the lady who sits with John sometimes (the Carol), and that this lady was much slimmer and more beautiful than she looked on TV.

“Aye,” I said, in my head. “Television is a cruel mistress.”

Back

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It turns out that all the snow I’d seen in the central North Island was actually, like, the result of a major snowfall, not just normal winter conditions. It looks like my trip back north was coincidentally timed in between two closures of Desert Road.

So I’m back in old Mt Eden. In my absence, my landlord managed to evict the noisy couple in the flat next door, so there’ll be no more booming TV or full-on cooking at 2am.

I’ve spent the weekend mostly sitting on the couch, watching DVDs. I’ve discovered the magical world of audio description, sort of like spoken subtitles for blind viewers so they don’t miss out in visual action. It sounds potentially lame, but the audio description track for “Kinky Boots” was poetry. Read by a lady with a sultry English accent, it succinctly summed up the important visual action with language that matched the playfulness of the film. In fact, it was more interesting than the film itself.

I can also report that the subtitles for “Sione’s Wedding” were disappointing. They claimed to be for deaf and hearing-impaired viewers, but they weren’t, as there was no music or sound effects subtitled, and both those had an important role to play in the humour and feeling of the film. Plus the subtitles themselves were poorly punctuated. It is good to see a New Zealand DVD with subtitles, but the standard should be higher.

Anyway, like The Monkey wrote in a recent entry, “It’s good to go away, but it’s also good to come home again.”

The finals, finally

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I’ve spent the last few day on the couch with a box of Kleenex aloe vera tissues, sneezing and coughing and generally feeling awful. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it to the 48Hours Auckland final, but I decided that it wouldn’t really be much different from sitting on the couch watching DVDs, and after all, laughter is the best medicine.

So with pseudoephedrine, antibiotics, cough syrup and cough lozenges a go-go, made it to the Civic, and managed to horrify Andy who is germphobic. He refused to sit next to me, but Jeremy, F:Rad’s director of photography offered to swap places. “Thanks for making me feel like a lepper, Andy,” I said.

The evening got underway and the 12 finalists were shown, and then the winners were announced. The runner-up was Arthaus, which I love so much, so I’m really glad it was recognised. The winner was Brown Peril: The Tim Porch Story, which was so funny and clever that it shocked many teams.

But what about Fractured Radius? Did team F:Rad win anything? Actually, we did. We won the award for Best Use of Line, which honours the team who most skilfully incorporated the compulsory line, “That is what I’m talking about,” into their film. We do pride ourselves on innovative use of the compulsory elements. While most teams used the line to mean the same as “Hell yeah!”, we came up with this award-winning gem:

Julia: You’ll never get away with this. Robin and Bruce will rescue me.
General: I’m counting on it. It’ll be the end of Three Heroes Against Terror.
Donna Matrix: As well as the end of T.H.A.T.
General: You fool! T.H.A.T is what I’m talking about!

It’s been a really fun fortnight. I can’t wait till 48Hours 2007.