Bonus day of filming - extra special win.

This was my view for the majority of the day. Standing next to David McKenzie, the Director and just being around the higher up crew, like DOP and grips and gaffers and fpuller and not making an ass of myself in front of the locatioins manager like I did last week... and occasionally checking out the shot from the cinedisplay:

It was awesome! The way the kids were directed was hilarious (we were filming a classroom) and watching the camera tracking and the focus puller remotely focusing was so cool I almost passed out with happiness. You know when you get that rush of blood to your head and start to black out? But in a good way.

It was just Ally and I that were running, because it was all indoor shoots so no crowd control was necessary. Only down side was that the 1st AD. Barrie (McCulloch ?) was ill and so wasn't there, which is bad because he's awesome. However, on the up side Zoe the 3rd got to act as 1st and call the shots for the day, which I'm sure she enjoyed. OO and I got to use a covert radio for the first time. It was really awkward and really hard to keep in your ear without it falling out once in a while. It felt like I was an agent :D.

At one point I was being called on radio at the same time my mobile was ringing at the same time I was determining whether to stay on the minibus or not. It was terribly confusing and difficult, but became fairly easy as I realised that they were all trying to tell me the same thing and that had I just ignored radio I would have been fine. I finally got phone signal and Chris sorted me out.

All was well as teas, coffees and cakes were made abundantly available by Chris' handiwork, and I got to steal some credit by holding the box until wrap.

After being swooped over to film city (sigmaville) on the south side, Ally and I got paid and decided to walk back home. Or in my case, run to Kung Fu Fitness arriving 2 hours late, soon realising that my kit bag (which I packed in the morning, and was lovingly delivered to the GUST office by my one and only Laurpy) was void of any actual kit bar my trainers and hoody. FAIL. However, I still managed to learn some awesome new single handed blocks which would kung-fwin against any particularly boisterous hoodlums on the way home that night.

This morning I woke up (thankfully) and I've just remembered my dream. I actually dreamt about touching a Sony F900, and it wasn't inappropriate because someone else wanted to do so and I just joined in. Strange dream.

Good good times. Now for some programming. Good bye :D

You have to be joking...

This is probably the coolest thing I have seen since discovering Red Digital Cinema. Click the title of this post to visit their web page. That's just insane. XD

Dream Theater

We missed the first band... which is no doubt a good thing. However, the second band involved Jesus Christ simultaneously playing two keyboards placed either side of him whilst screaming into the microphone. It wasn't particularly nice to listen to, but it was hilarious.


Even more hilarious, if somewhat annoying, was the drunk ratty fellow headbanging like an idiot who occasionally ruined everyone's hour by choosing to stand near them before buggering off for another pint. Poor Innes got the worst of the lashings, as the hair spun round the guy's head like a mace. Mitch and I quickly learnt to adopt the steady elbow technique to allow the nutter to injure himself if he got too close. Unfortunately his girlfriend hadn't figured that one out yet and got a nasty clock on the head half way through the third band.


Anyway...

Thankfully we managed to get a people buffer in time for the real deal. Innes did point out that the drum kit wasn't big enough for it to be Mike's... and he was right. This huge curtain was dropped after the building classical music and they were revealed in their full awesomeness. It felt like the intro to "Kung Fu Panda"  - I was blinded by pure awesomeness. I can't remember which song they started with. But it was from their new album. The one that goes "Den dundun den dun dun den dun dun duen dun." Stragengerai or something.



Petrucci played some PHace melters that's for sure.He sounded just like Santana during one with slow expressive notes. Beautiful playing. The guy's a chunk too, I've never noticed before. Jordan Rudess was equally mind blowing with his wizardry on the iphone continuum and wizard hat/realtime midi controlled animation. Mike's stuff was lazily perfect and rhythmic to the extent that I wanted to dance round a fire shouting out like a tribesman. Bass-man was ripping it to shreads. At one point he pulled this note that left the whole place vibrating at some resonance frequency, my chest nearly disintegrated. I loved it. But hang on...


LaBrei (singer) gets loads of hassle from fans (including me in a gust documentary a few years ago) about how he isn't as good as the rest of em. Okay so he's not the best singer in the world. However, on hearing live I am proud to say with full confidence that I think he is bloody amazing! His stage presence just grabs you by the throat. i never thought I'd say this but... He's a freakin genius. He sang incredibly well, and didn't even seem awkward during the instrumentals, he just snuck off until his next section came in. How he can follow the timing I don't know. He is incredibly rock and incredibly metal, and it totally completes the band.


Dream Theater are, without a single doubt, the best progrock band there will ever be. I may not ever see a better set of musicians in my life.


If you have never listened to Dream Theater before, please please do so. Right now, they're on Spotify (free). Listen long enough to look past the metal image, the often silly lyrics, and their age (their average age is about 45 now but who cares!?) and you will see them for what they really are. A group of talented musicians that have come together to form the greatest band of all time.


You have been learned.

Last Days on LW

That was an awesome day. Last Sunday we shot on Blythswood st. and in Kelvingrove Park and in "Stereo" on Renfield Lane.

I have finally become confident in what I'm doing there. Reasoning with pedestrians and asking them how I can help them get past, instead of bluntly telling them they can't go there. It was far less stressful and made me all warm and fuzzy inside. Another thing that made me warm inside was the coffee Chris got me. Gotta love that man. Apparently there was a coffee getting surplus and I ended up consuming David McKenzie's redundant coffee. Win.

I did get to see an SI2K, and I nearly touched it - but that would have been weird, so I didn't. I even managed to help carry stuff and talk to several members of the camera department without embarrassing myself.

Lets see if I can remember the names (list for future reference here):

Murray

Ally

Loraine

Rory

Michelle

another Michelle

Catrina

Christie

Andy

Matt (how could I forget)

Morven

Ross

Virginia

Zoe

(Suzi on first day)

Catherine

Barrie

David McKenzie

Giles

Danny/ Derreck

Wow... okay I have to go to uni now.

Dream Theater were FREAKING AWESOME. 

More on that later though...

Something SCHWEET This Way Comes...

 WOOOEEEW.

Tomorrow I might get my first ever look at a UHD (larger than 1080) camera. Win! Above is Silicon Imaging's SI 2K and it appears to be fairly cool. It's prog scan and even has an optical viewfinder. It also fits standard 35mm film lenses apparently, which is always a good thing.

Just to clarify:

It probably isn't better than a Red One.

However, It does shoot 2K (half Red) which is what most digital screens in cinemas project anyway as far as I'm aware. But the feature I've been doing running for has just hired one in for Sunday.. which suggests it's better than the F900 Cinealta they were using before (I think) ...at something. Perhaps better in low light conditions, although Sony have always been awesome at that. Maybe they just need it so they can crop it in post because there's gunna be like 60 extras who could potentially fail the shot for them.

So yeah - I'll try get a photo to blog up here of the actual camera.

Hmm... intriguing.