we're not in it for the wildlife

Where its at!

2006-12-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

Ahh haaa, I tricked you all, I"m back, for a limited time only.

It's an addiction, well if it is , i've done a serious cold turkey rehab programme.

Anyhooo so i've been missing for while, you know , cat stuff and action. I'm just going to tell you through image now.

It's an addiction.

2006-10-08T17:36:00.000-07:00

Technically today is the last day of blog entry. Now hands up how many of you are going to continue this! Come on, I know you lot are. As much as you deny that you check your comments each day, you really do just as frequently as your emails. I admit that it is rather addictive. I can’t help putting comments on your blogs and laughing my arse of at the silly photos.
So we will see who’s in it for the long run.
I really wanted more angsty feedback from global randoms. They are always a laugh. Maybe I need to be a lot more controversial and up with the play. Really the goal is to appeal to a wider audience. I guess appealing to 11 of you doesn’t quite make the global grade. It's a lot of effort to be constantly out there and in your face. I'm far to much of a back of the bus rider for that. Oh well who knows what direction to take next. I guess you will have to read and see.

Naaahhhh-ration

2006-10-08T16:18:00.000-07:00

I truly hate narration with a vengeance. I know what your thinking, 'what the chick who has the never ending external monologue, the one chick radio show', no way, she never shuts up!
Well after spending 2 whole days writing narration and losing it off the computer this morning, I never ever want to attempt it again. Dam you vulture culture.

Now if the task was to have a free running commentary on ‘the dog race’ like a sports event, well that’s right up my alley. Me and Draino had some great lines for it ready and waiting. I hate how every word is preconceived and calculated, hence that is what narration is, but I prefer more free styled, sporadic comments with some cheese, bad puns and one liners chucked in for effect, finished off with a quick pointless personal reflection to end. Or the classic "In a world , where one man must over come all odds to save the only thing he loves....." Ahhhh thats definately how I'm going to open a natural history film.

Narration….. naaahhh.

Go Team Go!!

2006-10-03T00:49:00.000-07:00

Ahhh tomorrow is the finale for our great little team of champs. I really love Jinty's blog about us. Even though we might not have that killer mind set, we make up for it in determination and positivity. Yeah Go Team Go! Muppets feel our rath tomorrow.

What makes us such a unique team is that we are a super-multisport team who can rise to any sporting challenge. Sure we will start off crap but we eventually get it together and work out some sort of strategic plan, just like the old 1-2 aye coach Marshall! That's what I'm talking about , 'It's Technique'.

Full circle back to those bees again!!!

2006-10-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

Ok so why has it taken me so long to get the hint that there's something major going on with this idea. Mark can see potential and I guess you others can, so it sounds like a go-er. But we haven't throwen away those cats just yet. There's always room for expansion and those cats might just come back with a vengance. We are still mapping our characters out and it could go either way at this point. The task is finding out how it is all going to piece together, do you stick with one or do you find a common thread in all three and string it into one? Taking into account that you only have 24mins. Is this possible? Back to the white board Marky Mark.

Cheers for all your lovely honey reviews. I will pass them onto the Bee man himself, Blair. That little honey shed is a perfect film set/studio, very sticky but dam it smells great and i can't keep my fingers out of those honey vats.

Teams Teams Teams.

2006-09-27T23:21:00.000-07:00

My problem is that I commit to too many teams and never really totally devote myself to one (with the exemption of Frisbee Golf which was a 3 year love affair). Ok so far we have a ping pong, badminton, soccer, D&D group and now that summer is coming i will have to commit to the Lawn Bowls team. Where is the time for all these, hence skool rules my life and i have a film to deliver, well to start really.

Great to see the other night that NZ destroyed Wales in the lawn bowls finals. . Indeed the profile of players in lawn bowls these days has stepped up more than a few notches. There are wanna be Beckhams strutting their stuff with low-riding trousers and mowhaks, Lawn bowls is becoming streetwise.Don't worry Laura, Scotland is still the hottest team. Wales however is still giving the sport bad press with their daggy outfits and balding men. NZ, AUS and Scotland have the package.

These undervalued teams are great entertainment with added perve value just like tennis, even the olympic curling teams had hotties (again Scotland is at the top). Last night Morris said that Russia's womens curling team had great.... technique.

Nothing like a bit of healthy competition to get you all hot under the collar with a bit of verbal ref abuse on the side. I'm learning the art of this gradually.

jelly wrestling in leotards.

2006-09-27T23:17:00.000-07:00

great to hear you all want me and Mark to jelly wrestle, and in leotards too, great request. It will be kicking off this weekend, so book tickets NOW!

Ahh so the pitches huh, well they weren't to bad really. Me and Mark were going to bring the house down with our 'Stray Cats' dance routiene in leopard leotards, but unfortunately at the last minute Mark suffered a groin injury while rehearsing the 'swazey' leap into the audience. I think it was the tension of his tights that were to blame. Ahh Mark you are a man of many talents.

Alround the pitches were great, we have definately improved kids. How about we do another round where we have to improvise each others. Wicked I want to create a music video for Lou and Sarah's Beech tree, (you know what song to use dont you!) and then make an action slaughter short flick of Dywane's. Someone should turn ours into a catfood commercial. Ahhh soo much talent, so many possibilities.

Dear Blog, Sorry!

2006-09-20T22:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog, sorry I have neglected you for so long, yes I have become completely pre-occupied with those two Blokes and other infatuations such as shops, boat sheds, old men and all things mint green. I know I have spent most of my time with them..... yes laughing at their quirks and falling for their charms, but believe me when I say they are finally out of the picture, they are burnt to disc and finished with. I promise I will devote my attention back to you. sorry , forgive me.

Hey! Old Man.

2006-09-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

So the team is all paired up. Yip its me and my character companion Mark. We just need to fall in love with a mutual character, so we don't have to jelly wrestle over it.
How about "Most Extreme Southern Characters". That's bound to excite 4 people in the Southland. Its a countdown of weird and wacky characters who go to extremes just to be.... well, weird and wacky out there chracters.
Like 'Junk Man', 'Cat Lady', 'Old Geeza', 'Bush Wooky', 'Shed Hermit', and many more. A show piece glorifiyng there uniquesness. Its a winner dam it. Why didn't I pitch this. Or a series called 'The Character Hunter', in which we search the country for the most perfect characters for a ridiculous sit com. Come on show ponies, we're hunting you down.

So I was working on this old man idea for my music video, which didn't really work out due to the lack of old men out there willing to let me expoilt them, fair enough, so i packed that idea in and moved onto BLOKES. Yip real good old kiwi blokes. Now they are all super willing to play it up for the camera. So I found two who are brilliant and I barely had to direct due to their natural talent. The scenarios I came up with were actually their daily routienes which consisted of; pub, place bets at the TAB, pool, fill the crates, more TAB, a bit of footy and so on. So they were born for the role. 'Blokes' will be coming your way soon, stay tuned.

Back to the Bees.

2006-08-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

Me and Jinty took a mamoth 420 km round trip excurtion to Middlemarch 'Middle Earth' to see a man about some bees and then to Alexandra to talk to a man about midnight mothing. What a day of charcters.

What started out as an idea for an article ended in an epic pitch idea for the films next week.
Sorry klepto Maurice, your on the back burner now. Big ups to you Mark for the tip off.

I've come back full circle to the bees, but on a much more positve note. This guy Blair is brilliant. He producers organic clover honey from his self owned and operated company, located in an old shed out the back of Middlemarch. Primo spot for an office.

This guy literally oozes passion for his bees and honey. He's like a frame of fresh honey, just lightly break through the exterior wax and the love goo's out. It's infectious. Me and Jinty left feeling as though we had spent a week at a meditation retreat.

The honey boxes and the huge blocks of bees wax all stacked up in the shed smell devine. I wanted to camp out in there.

We opened up some hives in the field without a smoker, Blair says 'You'll be fine if your calm, they can smell fear'. Shit! I try to imagine what fear smells like and try not to emit it.

We leave with an enormous box of honey which i find hard to accept since he has just spent 2 hours saying how hard it is to make a buck these days. So I make a deal in exchange for the pots of pale gold.

We'll be back Blair.

Stuck in the Junk

2006-08-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

I just can't leave it alone. Why am I totally obsessed with finding old stuff? It's not really the object; it’s the thrill of finding it, searching for that nostalgic memory.

For example my retro mint green obsession. I saw the most perfect mint green Morris Miner today, I almost cried. I think its something to do with the wanting to live in that time. The present icononic infulences just ain't cutting the mustard for me.

Here is my latest obsession, this fantastic shop 'Dig a deal'. I had a fossick around in there the other day and went back this week to shoot it. Some real gems in there. This could work into my film pitch idea about a crazy kleptomaniac man and his obsession with other people’s junk. No it’s not my alter ego, although I do wonder at times. I just can’t get the junk idea out of my mind. It’s fascinating to see what people think is valuable and what’s viewed as trash.

Now Trade Me for example is hilarious. There are so many strategies and theories on how to sell your items. For example:

A) Don’t place too much value on the item
B) Pretend you have no idea what its worth
C) State that you urgently need to get rid of it.
D) Start with a ridiculously low reserve like $1.

These tactics make the bidder think they have found a bargain; they will meticulously watch that item and then bid to hell on it in the final few minutes. The only reason I can think of is that your trash is always someone’s treasure.
Never doubt that there is someone lying at home awake, wondering how to get their hands on that item.
I have been known to drive all the way to Hamilton just to drool over the possibility of purchasing a mint green Hamilton Beach 3 prong milkshake maker. Final bidding on it was $1400. Lucky them.

Anyhooo I haven’t finished with ‘Dig a Deal’, there’s more to come.

Interior / Exterior.

2006-08-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

The caravan is the quintessential kiwi motor home that showed you all those good times over summer. A road trip round the Coromandle peninsula is never complete without your portable indoor-outdoor cruising companion. No need to rough it when you can travel in style with all your home comforts.
It symbolised freedom in the outdoors with a modern advantage. The ability to explore the country with the security of a comfortable camp out.
What I love most about the caravan is its interior, which is usually coloured co-ordinated with the exterior. The 60's-70's retro printed upholstery that matched the Maltica/Formica table tops. With clashing paisley printed curtains to set it all off. With the uniquely designed storage units to fit in all manner of house hold appliances. Wherever you could squeeze in a cupboard or fold out table, your bound to find one. Sadly these iconic travelling homes have become unpopular and are the bane of motorists in a hurry to get places.
I would personally kill to do a doco on the design features of these beauties.

But I have discovered the next generation of indoor/outdoor-personalised living. Behold the ‘Wagon Station’.
When I was in NY I went to the Whitney Museum and saw this fantastic exhibition by Andrea Zittel. She organised a collective of artists to each customise a wagon station (which is usually a small, portable right angled structure), to suit the needs of their desired lifestyle. Each represented an expression of personal freedom. Some wagons had multiple levels or mezzanines with skylights and solar panels. One had cooker stored beneath the floorboards. Zittel joined two separate wagons back-to-back forming a semicircle formation with two separate living spaces resulting in a deluxe, spacious styled wagon.
The wagons were placed in the Joshua tree desert and lived in by the artists or volunteers. Rock climbers climbing in the area or for people wanting a retreat or an alternative work/recreation space.

Zittel’s sculptural works are about transforming everything necessary for life such as eating, sleeping, bathing, and socializing into artful experiments in living. These wagons encompass all those factors expressing a new way of living in a personalised lifestyle. Much the same as what the caravan represented in its glory days.

Natural History Vs High Art Wank

2006-08-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

Now there is a place and time for high art wank, like today for example. I just watched 'Drawing Restraint 9' another visual epic from Mathew Barney. Yip this one was the best so far. It was quite indescribable. I will have to act it out for you and elaborate on all the wonderfully texturalised scenes. Plus costuming to kill for with Bjork chucked into the mix.
I came out of the cinema with very little feeling in my body, almost like an out of body experience. That’s my gauge as to whether the film is any good or not. Seems to work.
The only other film I saw from the fest that did this was Michael Gondry's ‘The Science of Sleep’. What A genius idea, the art direction in that was superb. Did i mention how fricken wicked the website is!! Hours of fun and entertainment. My kind of site, ahhhhhh Parallel Synchronized Randomness! Fascinating!!!!

http://wip.warnerbros.com/scienceofsleep/

So how can we merge both natural history and extreme artistic expressionism into a cohesive entertaining unpretentious story? Dwayne suggested doing all the CGI sequences as stop animation. Yeah cool idea Dwayne. How about we make all the background scenes as pop art which pop up. Or re-enact some action sequences with claymation or, and on and on it goes, but how far can you push it before it becomes fiction?

Ok send in your suggestions for an inventive artistic idea. !!!!

A must see next month! Hot bitches, yeah actually ‘Real Hot Bitches’, the fringe fest show!

Birds and the Bees.

2006-08-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

This week has been totally devoted to the absorption on honey info. The things I have found out about honey and how we could almost save the world with it is astounding. If only I knew earlier, it would have saved me from losing 12kgs in Cambodia, going grey from the fear of developing dry socket and a helpful handy remedy to a friend with bad gingivitis breath. So where’s my character to drive this honey/bees story.'Where is the stooory' as Richard would say. There could be a possibility of a character in Middlemarch. Need to talk to him and get the scoop. Mavis at the market likes to chat, but I need someone who needs to tell.

Had a very intense interview with my randomly selected research subject. There is a man who is passionate about birds. Even his eyes are as piercing as birds. Need to look into the ways of the Ornithological Society and see what I can uncover for a reserch angle.

Tips not to forget when bird watching.
Tip 1: When waiting to catch a bird, never look them in the eye!
Tip 2: If you aint gonna band it, no point catchin it.

Line of the week: 'I love you but I've chosen darkness'. I can't wait to use that on someone.

Kat Baulu : What about, "Take me to where you cry at night." Does that make it to your top 10 list of best lines?

Afirmatron: 'Ok that by far wins line of the week. I love it. Definately using that one some time soon. You may collect the weekly prize by texting this number 09840980955.

Inspiration over Bacon.

2006-07-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

An idea of sort came to me while eating the most delicious bacon buttie I have ever experianced. Thanks Mark for sharing the wealth of delights at the Dunedin Farmers Markets on saturday mornings. I can see that I am going to become a regular at the bacon buttie stall and will probably gain 10kgs by October, well you have to make scarafices somewhere. Also I sampled the best pie of my lifetime, I highly recommend the red wine and venison pie from 'Who ate all the pies'.

So back the the idea. Well I had bees on the brain all last week but didn't know what angle to take, there are so many possibilities.
Found this little honey stall set up by a lady from Ranfurly. Of course I sampled all her goods before getting into deep conversation. We discussed the variations in colour,texture, flavour such as thyme, lemon, added propolis. Now this wasn't just a bloody great sales pitch although I did feel guilty for eating half her stock and not purchasing any, but she has stirred up some interest on these little buzzy hardworkers. What secrets/surprises do you have for me Ranfurly?

Quote of the week comes from Kat Baulu, 'Creativity is 10% inspiration and 90% persperation'. This chick just keeps popping out the gems.

Desperately seeking inspiration.

2006-07-26T22:34:00.000-07:00

I was a little disheartend that no one replied to my personal profile audtion. Don't be shy, I'm ready willing to listen.
I'm currently searching all avenues for film inspiration. Gotta get out there and amongst it. This week I've bought the Listener, North and South, ODT and The Herald, but nothing of great interst has stood out yet. The walls of public toilets have caught my eye though. You really should take the time out to read what the youth of today have got to say. I've learnt some interesting facts and notions on male behaviour , who's hot and who's not, what bands cater to feminist issues, who I should avoind picking up round town etc. All I need now is 10 minutes in the boys loos to compare and contrast.
So far I've been thinking about birds and bees, not in that way, although spring is in the air. My fellow study buddy Jinty has a great idea about the re-introduction of particular butterfly species which I can't stop thinking about. I think butterflys and bees have a lot going for them. Intersting profiles, habitats, lifecycles, essential in pollination, graceful flyers and a delicious byproduct of their hardwork work.

I wish I existed in your universe.

2006-07-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

I saw a poster today that said 'I wish I existed in your universe'. I felt a little sad for the person who wrote that and it stayed with me all day, but if you turn it around you could read it as ' Who do I want to exist in my universe'? This was a great question to ask for the nautral history film I'm about to make. Ideally I want an outspoken, charasmatic, humouros character to spring out of the woodwork very soon. How am I going to find them? If you fit this description and have a story that will change the way of thinking world over, please reply asap.