(R)ADELAIDE pt2

While in Adelaide I saw the premiere of four upcoming Australian features, all of them worthwhile in their own unique way. Mrs Clareys Concert, Here I Am by Bec Cole (couldn't find a web link), Snowtown by Justin Kurzel (more on this later perhaps) and Hail a film by my friend Amiel Courtin-Wilson. I was lucky to be on set a few times taking photographs and I really loved seeing the way Amiel worked with a very small crew in an intimate and inspiring way. Despite the fact the film was shown as a 'work in progress', with some work still to do, it was still an amazingly pure piece of cinema. On this night it was such a pleasure to watch Amiel and crew celebrate what has been a difficult and all consuming process for them all. As we all clambered into the wee small hours it reminded me of the extreme sense of accomplishment that comes from just completing a film. Well before and regardless of the real world markers of box office, reviews, festivals and awards. Just getting it 'finished', with credits tacked on the front and back and flickering on a big screen in the dark is enough and worth celebrating in itself.

Congrats Amiel!

(r)ADELAIDE pt1

Have just returned from a week in Adelaide where I was invited to be part of The Hive, which is a bit like a creative think tank encouraging the 'cross pollination' of ideas amongst artists from different creative disciplines. For five days I was in the 'lab' with a bunch of really inspiring people. Film directors, theatre directors, choreographers, artists, actors and musicians. I felt very lucky to part of the talent pool but perhaps the greatest thing was the time that we were given to just talk about ideas, with no real quantative outcome in mind. To see how for example choregrpahers Meryl Tankard or Gideon Obarzenak would approach a story idea or just ideas in general. It was a great amount of time very well spent. I went in with a film idea and came out with an idea for exhibition, one that I had been thinking about for a while but it was only half an idea, now I have a full idea and I'm very keen to develop it further. It was so nice to be in a development based workshop that was about 'ideas' and not funding or structure or distribution strategies.

It was held in conjunction with the Adelaide Film Festival, which has fast become the best and most progressive film festivals in Australia. We launched Last Ride there two years ago this week. Festival Director Katrina Sedgwick is one of the coolest people I know. I saw her introduce world premieres, launch programmes and funding initiatives, drive guests around and hug the caterers. Katrina has a the very special quality that I have tried to implement in my own life where when she is talking with you, it feels as though you are the most important thing at that time, regardless of the room full of people around her, or the hundred other things that might be taking up her headspace. She is very present in this way and I find it a most generous quality in her and in people in general.

Beautiful light in Adelaide at this time of year...

MIGHT BE TIME TO GET ADDICTED, AGAIN!

For about 6 months of my life when I was about 24, I was obsessed, no, addicted, to a computer game called Marathon. It might look super clunky by todays standards but believe it or not, it had very immersive gameplay. I played my way through Marathon, Marathon 2 and then one day when I was about two thirds of the way Marathon Infinity, mid game, I just quit. I'd had enough. Like an alcoholic who had lost the thirst. I never felt like going back to it, it was just finsihed and I was done with the screen. I never really played another game like I did Marathon. I mucked around with Doom and Quake a bit, I really got into Tony Hawk on the PS2 with some housemates for a while and I love playing Little Big Planet with my son (when he's not banned from it). But I've mostly avoided video games mostly because I know how they can take hold of my every waking moment. And I've got other things I'd rather be consumed by. But... that might all change with this incredible 'trailer'... which looks SO freaking amazing!

Sometimes, when I'm in the edit suite for a commercial and we are having trouble making the cut work, I always joke about just cutting it so everything is in reverse, and then it will appear that it was meant to be confusing and tricky. But I doubt that was the case with this. It makes me really want to kill a ton of zombies!

Valentine

I have quite a few childhood memories of sitting bored in the back seat of Dads car, pulled over on the side of the road, with the emergency lights 'ticking'. And Dad off in the trees trying to get a photo of something he had just seen. "You cant go past a 'white wooden bridge' if you want a good photo!" I think that may have been my fathers only aesthetic advice passed onto me over the years. Dad would also often stop along side countless rose gardens and squint into his heavy chrome Minolta and 'click' for what felt like hours. I'm worried some of it has rubbed off though. As I scan through my aperture folders and see how many random shots I have taken of roses and flowers, some of which you'll see on these pages. All the old school roses are in full bloom in and around Brunswick where I live, I'm so tempted to pull over and photograph them all, but resist through the fear of becoming too much like my Dad.

I did take a few snaps of these ones though...

Happy Valentines Natalie!

AT MIKES

LIKE, LIKE.

I really like the short films of Everynone (I put up 'Words' a while back) The films have such a nice tone to them. Warm and affirming but still very human and understated.

UP NORTH

Tamworth and Nambucca (and a single cloud below from Morewell)

Amazing Story, Amazing Photos

Very little is know about the photography of Vivian Maier, a street photographer who took photos from 1950 through to the early 90's. She was a Nanny but took a camera out on her days off. It wasn't until she died and her things were sold at auction that thousands of medium format negatives and undeveloped rolls of film were discovered.

Observed, playful and with an unique eye for unusual characters and details. It's hard to believe if her whork had not been discovered by accident this incredible catalogue of photographs may have remained unseen.

The story below reveals some details of her life, but essentially she remains a mystery.

Alot more info and photographs at this blog.

She and her photographs remind a little of what Chuck Close is saying in the post below. I don't think she was bundled up waiting for inspiration to strike. She was out there 'doing it'.

Thanks Chuck

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case." Chuck Close

(via JMc's FB status update)

Best Writing Software. Ever.

Like most of you, I procrastinate. Otherwise, why am I writing this and why are you reading this? No doubt, a part of my motivation to have a blog is to somehow legitimise the amount of time I spend fucking around on the internet, and not doing the things I actually want and need to do. While I love the internet and all the great things it has brought us, I hate the way my already gnat like concentration span can be even further reduced by the constant and nagging promise of something awesome that might be just a few simple clicks away. But... I have found some heavy duty artillery in the war against time wasting. A little bit of 'free' software called Self Control.

It essentially does what I can not. It cuts me off from the endless stream of distraction that the interwebs provides. Sure you could unplug yourself, or switch off your wi-fi. But as I have found there will always be a valid reason (best cat youtube clip ever) for you to 're-connect'.

The genius of Self Control is that once you start it up and you bar yourself from the internet for the allotted time you have set, there is NO WAY of unblocking it. You will get no email, no web, no nothing, not even if you quit the software, not even of you restart your computer!!! Once you are offline, you stay offline until your time is up. So be really careful before you start off with setting the time limit to the maximum of 24 hours!

It works!

There's a story on every corner

This clip has been doing the rounds a bit, but I think it's a great reminder that stories (and characters for those stories) are found in the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times. I wonder if this guys '15 minutes' will help him get off the street and into a recording booth somewhere. I hope so.

THIS WEEK

Finished the offline with Pete at The Butchery for the commercial we shot last week...

Then jumped in the car for a two day solo road trip through country Victoria and New South Wales to my home town of Tamworth...

More photos after the break...

Arrived to find my father in-law Keith, waiting patiently for Santa.

And Super Natalie and the kids who flew up a few days before.

Three weeks holidays! yipeee!

LAST WEEK

SUMMER MOVIE GUIDE

THE QUEEN OF COOL

I think I have contributed to a hundred or so hits to the you tube clip below over the past few days. It's one of the coolest live performance clips I've seen. I saw Blondie last week on tour with the Pretenders and my friend Adalita supporting (who by the way is releasing her debut solo album early next year and it's amazing! More on that later though...)

Blondie may look a little different these days, but man she is still the Queen of Cool!

I want this song in Cherry Bomb!