Killer Jellyfish and Dracula Skies

I'm sitting here over at Emerald City, a post-production facility in Darlinghurst, where they are finishing the Nokia China spots. The ads are looking good, they have done heaps of work, but there's heaps more to do! Jon says the client in China has been a nightmare, coming back with these crazy comments when they've emailed them mpegs of works-in-progress.

She's said things like "The jellyfish look too dangerous, like they could kill" and "The skies are too Dracula-like". Like WTF????

Client feedback is always great fun to hear......*laugh*

I am the Idol Slut

Just got word that i might be editing yet another Oz Idol music clip soon....after my efforts on Levi and Guy this past year...

This time it's for Paulini, the beautiful Fijian-Australian singer who copped the infamous "You should lose some pounds or wear more appropriate outfits" remark from Dicko. I hope she comes into my edit suite at some point, as she was a fave of mine from series 1.

When Guy was going to come in, the young girlies at work all got dressed up to impress.....unfortunately, he didn't make an appearance, as he had um "touring duties", in Newcastle!!!!

Grade Entry

Well I am sitting here at a grading session. It's Friday afternoon, the weekend is on the horizon. Yay!

Now attending the colour grade is one of the more boring aspects of my job. For those that do not know - and I imagine there's many of you - a grading session involves transferring the film negative back onto videotape again, but manipulating/accentuating the colours of the image for the final product. Prior to this process, when I begin the edit, the footage is transferred without any colour grading, so I am pretty much working with flat images that look like shit! The reason being that the transfer process from film to videotape is bloody expensive, and requires our company to outsource another company who has the specialist equipment (named a telecine chain) to do this.

So this Nokia China commercial I edited has been approved yesterday, and now we are colour grading the shots that are used, one by one to the director's artistic vision, so that it all looks good. The company we are at is called Cutting Edge, in Chippendale, and I'm going to be here for a few more hours, as this process is time-consuming!!! I suppose my role is both creative and technical. Creative in the sense that I also have some input into the look of the images, and can drop my 2 cents worth into the discussion about the colour grade. Technical, in that I need to make sure that all the shots we chose in the edit are all there (!), and to oversee any issues that might affect the next process, which is the online session (finishing the commercial at high resolution).

This ad is looking good so far. It was shot day-for-night, and some of the shoots you would swear were shot at nighttime. Stunning images on a lake....I'll have to post some frames up when we are finished....

Plug

My mate Bill is a t-shirt designer, and one of his t-shirts was worn by Cate Blanchett in the film "Little Fish". She wears the "Pisces" design...check out his website www.meettyrone.com

Wo hen hao....

(I am very busy).

Seems like I am flavour of the month with the Chinese clients (surprise, surprise)!!!!!

I am just in the middle of a Nokia mobile phone job for China, waiting for the agency to arrive this afternoon to check out the edits. It's a very sweet commercial, set on a lake at night with a young couple swapping text messages on their shiny new Nokia mobile phones, so as not to disturb the glowing jellyfish in the water. There's a few visual effects, some 3D jellyfish to be created. It's all shot day-for-night by the same cinematographer who shot "Little Fish. They had a horrible wet and rainy shoot day last Friday, so we will have to fix up quite a few shots as far as the look goes....Anyway, I think the ad is going to turn out very nicely, and I am hoping to put it on my showreel, as it won't air in Oz........

Jonathan (Director) and Brooke (Producer) are absolutely delightful to work with (and nooooooo I am not sucking up, they will not be reading this as I did not send them my blog details). It's so nice to work with creative people who are polite and appreciative, and are heaps of fun to work with. Jonathan, Brooke and myself all like the same TV shows *laugh*, so it's always fun to catch up and have a laugh over a job...

Little Fish

I watched the new aussie film "Little Fish" yesterday and it just blew me away. It's been a LONG time I have seen an Australian film which tugged at my emotions like that did. It's a very impressive film, very heartbreaking and sad.

There are soooo many excellent scenes in this film. One scene in particular, in the middle of the film, is very powerful. What impressed me was how simple this scene is executed - brilliantly performed by Cate Blanchett, simple coverage, and a perfectly chosen song in "Flame Trees". I suppose this all comes down to very intelligent direction by Rowan Woods. I don't want to spoil anymore about this scene!

The rest of the cast is good, except for Sam Neil - I can't stand him! He is so overrated! How he has found success is beyond me! I don't find him particularly convincing in ANYTHING. He is like Nicole Kidman *laugh*

I went with Angela to see the movie in Leichhardt, and as always we had a good time :) But Ang, if you're reading this, why the hell did you have to bring up "Weekend at Bernie's"???????? You know what I'm talking about ;P. Ang and I also wandered down to the JB Hifi, and omigod it has a fantastic collection of DVDs, and some good sales too....

Do yourself a favour, and go see "Little Fish" asap.