(no subject)
That was a fun, if utterly knackering weekend...
Started off with meeting Amberle out at PC World on Friday night - she was buying a laptop asnd wanted help setting it up (and yes, she'd heard all the advice about buying from PC World and its ilk, but unfortunately the one she wanted was *only* available from the Dixons Group). Anyway, she bought this sweet little Sharp Centrino subnotebook - 2 kilos with optical drive and battery installed. While I set up the machine and applications for her she made us some dinner, and then we got to watch Big Brother. Yay. Was a fun night though, as I don't get to see Amberle much these days.
Saturday came the main event though - gourou's 48-hour film project. The main synopsis: At 7pm on Friday night he was given a genre, line of dialog and a prop that he had to use, and he had til 7pm on Sunday to submit a film of between 4 and 5 minutes length. Obviously because of my prior engagement I couldn't make the Friday section, and then proceeded to oversleep on the Saturday (ickle_snarfles had an early as hell start so all the alarms went off at some obscene hour. Naturally me being a big dumb bastard, it didn't occur to me that it might be smart to reset them to my needs before falling back asleep). Anyway, thanks to arminh and his marvellous car I was up there for about 10:30, where the creative team were just finishing off the final draft of the script. I read through it and offered my opinion (which was pretty much limited to 'its great, there are definite shades of film x and film y here - thats cool, wait, what - I'm in it? why the hell am I in it? gell me the hell out of it!') and then we were off to start filming...
Mostly my role was behind the camera - I was mostly doing lighting stuff and donkey work, with a few other odd jobs here and there - such as dealing with the comms stuff that was never used although I did get dragged on camera twice briefly - once as a looming police officer and again as a lightsaber-toting Sithlord - don't ask :) Oh yeah, also my comp got commandeered as the editing and cutting station :)
I was up most of Saturday night helping with the editing, and flaked at about six am for an hour or so before drinking a *lot* of coffee and eating the worlds biggest bacon and egg sandwich in an attempt to get me somewhere approaching human before carrying on with filming. We got everything finished off around 4-5pm and gourou got on with the final cut of the film at which point I decided to head home for a bit and ended up crashing for three hours. And boy did I feel rough after that...
Anyway, headed back up to gourou's to watch the finished film and I was *really* impressed - it came out far better than I was hoping and I think everyone involved did a great job. Hopefully there will be a smallish version available for download ASAP and will link it as soon as its available.
Anyway, I had a really good time, it was a completely new experience for me - despite being a film nut I've never actually tried making a film before so it was fascinating to be a part of - I'd definitely like to do it again sometime too so thanks to gourou for being the driving force behind the project - it was totally worth the time and effort :)
I've got this week off so hopefully I'll have some spare time to work on those photos I took on sat...
Started off with meeting Amberle out at PC World on Friday night - she was buying a laptop asnd wanted help setting it up (and yes, she'd heard all the advice about buying from PC World and its ilk, but unfortunately the one she wanted was *only* available from the Dixons Group). Anyway, she bought this sweet little Sharp Centrino subnotebook - 2 kilos with optical drive and battery installed. While I set up the machine and applications for her she made us some dinner, and then we got to watch Big Brother. Yay. Was a fun night though, as I don't get to see Amberle much these days.
Saturday came the main event though - gourou's 48-hour film project. The main synopsis: At 7pm on Friday night he was given a genre, line of dialog and a prop that he had to use, and he had til 7pm on Sunday to submit a film of between 4 and 5 minutes length. Obviously because of my prior engagement I couldn't make the Friday section, and then proceeded to oversleep on the Saturday (ickle_snarfles had an early as hell start so all the alarms went off at some obscene hour. Naturally me being a big dumb bastard, it didn't occur to me that it might be smart to reset them to my needs before falling back asleep). Anyway, thanks to arminh and his marvellous car I was up there for about 10:30, where the creative team were just finishing off the final draft of the script. I read through it and offered my opinion (which was pretty much limited to 'its great, there are definite shades of film x and film y here - thats cool, wait, what - I'm in it? why the hell am I in it? gell me the hell out of it!') and then we were off to start filming...
Mostly my role was behind the camera - I was mostly doing lighting stuff and donkey work, with a few other odd jobs here and there - such as dealing with the comms stuff that was never used although I did get dragged on camera twice briefly - once as a looming police officer and again as a lightsaber-toting Sithlord - don't ask :) Oh yeah, also my comp got commandeered as the editing and cutting station :)
I was up most of Saturday night helping with the editing, and flaked at about six am for an hour or so before drinking a *lot* of coffee and eating the worlds biggest bacon and egg sandwich in an attempt to get me somewhere approaching human before carrying on with filming. We got everything finished off around 4-5pm and gourou got on with the final cut of the film at which point I decided to head home for a bit and ended up crashing for three hours. And boy did I feel rough after that...
Anyway, headed back up to gourou's to watch the finished film and I was *really* impressed - it came out far better than I was hoping and I think everyone involved did a great job. Hopefully there will be a smallish version available for download ASAP and will link it as soon as its available.
Anyway, I had a really good time, it was a completely new experience for me - despite being a film nut I've never actually tried making a film before so it was fascinating to be a part of - I'd definitely like to do it again sometime too so thanks to gourou for being the driving force behind the project - it was totally worth the time and effort :)
I've got this week off so hopefully I'll have some spare time to work on those photos I took on sat...