Setting Dates and the John Goodman way:
If procrastinating was an Olympic sport I’d be a Gold Medalist. Come to think of it, if eating was an Olympic sport I’m sure I’d get the “John Goodman Lifetime Achievement Award”. Recently I’ve upped the intake of fried foods and what I have dubbed “Unplanned Diet Outages”. I put this down to the fact the that I have set a date for the first day of shooting. I’ve set the date and begun going through the last pieces of pre-production. I’ve likened the final stages of pre-production to getting “my affairs in order” for my reputation. This coupled with buying our first house and moving has put a tiny bit of pressure on me and therefore we’ve experienced the aforementioned “Unplanned Diet Outages”.

All the same we’re moving forward and on the 16th of May I will call “Action” on my first flick. Through a strange series of events someone had pointed out the fact that this is something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember, that’s when I came to the realization that, on my own back, I’ve decided I’m going to follow a dream. I’m going to check it off the list. I’m…probably going to have change my surname and move interstate to escape this one if it goes south on me.

Buying Microphones:

The last bit of kit I needed to sort out for the first part of the flick was the boom mic setup. After looking around and reading various reviews and forums a microphone was suggested to me by a friend. The Rode Stereo XY Video Mic looks, and more importantly, sounds awesome. The Microphone itself is built out of robust Aluminium, runs on a 9V battery, boasts studio and broadcast quality sound and has recently seen a price drop reducing the RRP from anywhere between $400 - $450 to the far more palatable $255. Indoor and outdoor performance is astounding as demonstrated in the video below. I’ll have a full review on the gear once I’ve received it from the vendor and shot a couple of hours on it.

There’s nothing like making a movie to help undermine your confidence. As I get closer to the first part of the shoot I’m constantly questioning if I’m doing this right, or doing that right. In one of my recent questions for reassurance I found this interesting little four part doco on youtube outlining Tarantino’s making of Pulp Fiction and now I present it to you.

There’s great retrospective points of view from Actors on why rehearsing everything like a stage play is great and helps build a safe and comfortable environment to be creative in. A technique which I have adopted and am hoping will pay off.

The Camera:

The plan: make a movie for 10,000 dollars. That’s 10,000 Australian dollars, which equates to around 20 American dollars, what with the current world economy. When I set out to make a fool of myself movie, there was no economic crisis. Everything was sweet, the banks gave me the money. Hell, they were throwing gobs of cash away at anyone who would take it. I was one of those idiots. I gladly took it. The only thing I had to worry about was flitting away the money on Mars Bars, Hookers and DVD’s. Now with the economic hideousness in full effect I feel almost irresponsible spending the money on the movie… But…

Fuck it.

That flippant comment said, I recently delved deep into the heady world of spending money that wasn’t mine. I bought the first piece of kit for the flick. The camera. There are two ways I could do this movie. One, hire a nice Sony Z1 (the camera used for the first couple of Mythbuster seasons among many, many others) for a total of one week and make the movie. The guys that made “The Castle” made it in a week. The second option was to buy a camera and take my sweet time making this bad boy right. The choice was easy. I would have been crazy to try to shoot this thing in a week. The cast and crew of “The Castle” was filled to the brim with professionals and all I have is a handful of talented friends and me. And up until yesterday I thought the word “Flatulent” was the scientific name for a certain type of Grasshopper.

After the decision was made, the next few weeks was spent fondling Google for the answers I sorely desired as well as hitting forums and speaking with people who were in the know with this sort of thing. In the end it was my Dad who mentioned he found something that might fit the requirements. Soon after he sent me some links and I read up some more. It sounded good. I hit Vimeo and started checking out demo footage. It looked good. The best part of all the price was right. After a few more days of shopping around I had taken a leap of faith and blindly dumped a couple of grand into the bank account of some New Zealand online camera store. Hoping for the best I played the waiting game. Soon the camera arrived and I was happier than a pig in sh… Mud.

Pertinent Information:

- The camera was bought from globalmediapro.com (Note: that even though you will pay into an Australian bank account any equipment bought from these guys will be an import subject to the standard duties/taxes and customs fees)

- To read the camera specs hit here.

Looking around the Interwebs for inspiration and well, anything that will help settle my nerves… The work that’s coming up in the next few weeks is both exciting and nerve wracking, and as such I’ve turned to the internet to provide me with advise from the masters. And what better person to give advise about movie making then Ridley Scott? Director of Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator and Hannibal (to name but a few)… I was lucky enough to stumble across this Q and A with him and can’t even begin to tell you how good it is.

If you’re remotely creative you will get something out of this. Enjoy.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Rodney Fickle, revision five done and dusted.

Today marks the first day in nearly twelve months that I haven’t had to write anything for the script. Last night I finished going through all the proof reading edits of what turned out to be Rodney Fickle Online Athlete - Revision five. It’ gone to print, we’re in full rehearsal and Pre-Production mode…

It’s only a matter of time now.

More soon,
Best
S