(FAMILY) ROAD TRIPPIN'

Back from 3500kms of family road trip fun. Xmas good. New Years good. Country air, ocean air, afternoon naps and eating and drinking way to much with family and friends.

"Are we there yet... Are we there yet...?"

There will be research

When I first saw the clip below, my first thought was how useful this would be to see if how effective your visual storytelling is, to asses composition and to study how an audience views a sequence. My second thought was how all the marketing folk will use it to asses if an audience is staring at their hamburger/cereal box/car long enough.

And my third thought was how incredible Paul Thomas Anderson's  has 'blocked' this scene! The way the camera leads you to reveal the other characters and open up the dialgogue between those characters.

Either way this is pretty bloody fascinating!

'This is an excerpt from There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007). 11 adult viewers were shown the video and their eye movements recorded using an Eyelink 1000 (SR Research) infra-red camera-based eyetracker. Each dot represents the center of one viewer's gaze. The size of each dot represents the length of time they have held fixation.'

More info and research examples from TheDIEMProject here.

Thanks John Brawley!

Queanbeyan

Canberra

Travelled to Canberra this weekend to see my wife Natalie dance in a show, which was great. Arrived after the seven hour drive from Melbourne at the venue to find a metal kid, an 80's thrash kid and a skin head kid drinking beer together directly in front of where I parked. I looked around thinking there must have been a photo shoot taking place or a film being made near by. These kids were styled so perfectly. Got to love Canberra!

BEACONSFIELD. Again, Again.

Spent the weekend back down in Beaconsfield shooting pick-ups for the film. Locking off the cut this week...

BOBBY D

Thanks to the cool guys who stuck these B/W photos of Bob up in their front windows in Carlton. I saw them as I walked past and they made me go home and listen to Dylan records.

HAIL RAISER

Congratulations to Amiel and team for their film Hail has been selected to screen at the Venice Film Festival next month. To help raise some much needed funds to get some of the essential cast and crew over to the festival they have organised an exhibition and fundraiser to be held in Melbourne this Friday night at Goodtime Studios from 6pm.

Photographs by me and Director of Photography Germain McMicking taken on set during the shoot will be on sale. (The prints look beautiful, are 30x20 inches and printed on archival paper. Limited to 5 editions each at $350 each. Bargain!) There will also be some poetry readings by star of the film Daniel P. Jones and music by The Midnight Juggernauts. Full details of the night are here...

GHOSTS FOR SALE

Saw these baby ghosts for sale during the week...

TUESDAY

MONDAY

ACTORS! TAKE FUCKIN' NOTE!

This is hows it's done in NY-FK'N-C! Snapped this great poster in a subway station.

WHAT A WONDERFUL (google) WORLD

At first glance these images could be mistaken for great fine art or street photography. But they are sourced from an altogether different type of documentation. Similar to this other guy I blogged about a while ago, Jon Rafman who has created 9-Eyes must spend hours (months?) traversing Google Maps discovering the beautiful, bizarre, surreal and spontaneous moments of poetry and drama that daily life brings with it. All these 'scenes' are captured by the nine lenses perched on top of the Google vehicles as they drive around the world collecting data for Googles street view. It's well worth taking the 15 minutes or so it takes to scroll through the collection.

LAST WEEK IN VAN DIEMEN'S LAND

NYC pt2

The owner / hoarder (pictured) of the 'record store' assured me at least five times in the three minutes I was in there, that he was coming in "tomorrow to clean up and organise everything...". Definitely the strangest record store I have ever been in.

MURUNDAK, SONGS OF FREEDOM

My friends Rhys and Tash over at Daybreak Films have recently released their latest feature documentary 'Murundak'. The film tells the story of the 'Black Arm Band' a super-group of legendary Aboriginal musicians from the past and present.  In showcasing the talents of the individuals the film charts the history of the Aboriginal protest movement and it's unique and very defined relationship to music.

I really didnt know what to expect from the film, I have no special interest in Aboriginal protest music nor is it something I would actively seek out. But Rhys and Tash have created a film that is so rich with the spirit of 'music' in general and not just a particular genre that I was soon swept away into a world I knew nothing of, but was really keen to explore and learn much more about.

The surprising thing for me and I'm sure for others, is even though I know very little about Aboriginal protest music, I have actually been quite happily exposed to it through far more popular music over the years. For example, I knew some of what the song Solid Rock was about. As a kid growing up in the 80's I loved it, but the film showed me the song in a new and very different light. It's way more than a forgotten mega hit of the 80's. It's relevance and power is just as significant now, perhaps even more so. The live version of that song that is performed in the film will stay with me for some time. Another song I'm quite familiar with is 'From Little Things Big Things Grow' which forms one of the centre pieces of the film, again I really like that song, and who doesn't, but never knew of it's history and it's significance to Aboriginal people. I like how these songs and more, exist in the mainstream and yet are very powerful political messages. I can't imagine a song like Solid Rock making it to the top 10 these days.

Having followed the making of the film from afar over the years it took to make, I know the guys really struggled in particular with the editing of the film. I think Rhys nd Tash were stuck in the edit suite for over a year (!) Trying to find the right balance of performance, interviews, historical footage, the history etc. And perhaps most importantly trying to shape a film which welcomes you in a way so you want to learn more (as apposed to a lot of films which become just advocacy for an 'issue') But watching it I could see no evidence of this creative struggle, in fact to their credit the film feels effortless in the way it flows. In this way the film actually feels like one whole piece of music.And making something so hard, look so easy is part of the filmmaking process these guys have nailed.

Murundak is currently in cinemas, check here to see if it's playing near you.