Spam and Beans

Spam is the bane of the internet. It's worse than viruses, kiddie porn, and goatse all rolled into one. It, to put it mildly, sucks shit, and all perpetrators should die by firing squad.

Every so often I check my spam filter to make sure no legitimate email got caught in it, and I need to tread carefully, so as not to open up anything nefarious, or annoying, or just plain sad. I fear that the sight of the bad spelling, shitty typography, and absence of any truths, will drive me to crazed anger for the rest of the day.

Instead what I found was this:


The whole list of emails I got on October 27th all came from fake (or stolen) names that began with the letter 'A'. I mean, what's up with that? Is this a strange coincidence that goes against all known statistical probability? Did their evil name spoofing algorithm crap out on them causing it to spit out this bizarre list? Was it the fault of some lackey in their office (HA! Like they have offices! Or lackeys!)?

It's pretty bloody weird, anyway.

Where's a Mediaeval French Village when you need one?

Today I was with Rob, we were looking for a door that was suitable enough to represent a 1940s French Cafe entrance. But when we got to the salvage yard, it was closed up for the day. Damn.

On the way there, we mentioned several times, rather jokingly, that it was amazing that Melbourne, Australia, completely lacked any authentic olde worlde French architecture anywhere. And then later still we talked about ideas for mediaeval movies we want to make, but can't see how we can achieve it in this modernised and young country.

Later this evening, I was randomly wandering across the internet when I stumbled upon mention of an Australian pop band of yesteryear called The Chantoozies, and I thought to myself "I haven't heard their song Witch Queen of New Orleans in a long time, I wonder if that's on YouTube."

It is.

After watching the video, I was enamoured not only by the 80s hair, and how young Tottie Goldsmith and David Reyne looked, but also by the fantastic location. Why, that looks like Mediaeval European Architecture! Holy crap, thought I, is that in Australia? It must be!


I went searching through the web to find some details, and eventually found mention of it on a page about the director of the video, revealing the filming location as being a building called the Montsalvat Chateau, which is one of 12 buildings at the Montsalvat Artists Retreat, where artists of all kinds can live and paint and create to their heart's content in a peaceful, inspirational, beautiful environment.


Well, by crikey o'reilly, take a look at some of these pics - it's a fantastic location, absolutely ideal for a mediaeval film, and perfect for a number of our upcoming (and current) projects. It even has great old doors! Just what we were looking for!


And the most amazing part is, it's about 2km from Rob's house, and we never even knew it was there!

Cruising with Crusoe

When Pirates of the Caribbean was first released, despite widely held expectation of its failure (Pirate movies never succeed) but then its unexpected success, there was then a fear that we would be suddenly inundated with Pirate movies, bringing us right back to the position of having unsuccessful dreck littering the entertainment world again. This didn't happen.

There has, however, been a surprising rise in epic television entertainment, almost cinematic in its scope and quality, with exotic locations, long story arcs, large casts, and spectacular visual effects out the wazoo. Many of these I have come to enjoy very much: Heroes, Lost, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, and lots more (some of which I don't watch, some I do).

Well, now the Pirates of the Caribbean influence has hit TV. A UK show that has been commissioned by the US, based (very very loosely) on the story of Robinson Crusoe, has debuted, and you know what? I like it.

Crusoe is about a man who has been shipwrecked on a tropical island, alone but for a single "local" who he names "Friday". The first episode concerns the island being discovered by Pirates after a buried treasure. That should give you the level of adventure it's going for. Not serious or believable in any way, but still a good adventure action drama, it kept my attention, entertained me to the end, and bode well for a fun series. It's been commissioned for thirteen episodes, guaranteed, which I don't think it will falter over.

Ratings in the US lately have started to yoyo, due partly to crappy scheduling practices, and partly to increased use of downloading as a means to watch a show, bypassing advertising. With torrents, official streaming video, TiVo, and episodes available on iTunes, there is a wider choice publicly available for viewing, and many are taking them up on it. Despite low ratings, the Networks are recognising that these alternative options make up the rest of their audience. They aren't switching off or over, they're remaining loyal to their favourite shows, but in their favourite viewing format. The only problem is, the revenue stream from advertising has to be maintained to keep the shows coming. Here's hoping they can figure out how to handle it so that we can continue to enjoy epic TV.

Checkpoint: Resistance: Cafe Chairs

Now here's something you don't often consider when making a creative production. Chairs.

The addendum film that Rob and I are making is set in WWII France, and it's not like you can just wander around downtown 2008 Melbourne, and find a perfectly set up location matching 1940s France that you can use for your film. Instead you have to create it artificially, with a little of this, and a little of that.

One of those is costume. We have cast our main actor, and will have authentic costumes for all those involved. Another is to use CGI, or Computer Generated Imagery. I have previously detailed some of my attempts in creating the landscape that the story takes place within, including the interior of a Cafe.

Well, it's not enough to just have an interior, you also need things to populate it, give it character and authenticity. Things like chairs. And do you know how easy it is to find authentic chairs for a 1940s French Cafe?

First we went to Springvale and trolled the second hand shops there. Not much to see, it's surprisingly sparse. Then we headed north to Nunawading and managed to accidentally stumble on a second hand store advertising period furniture. They didn't have what we needed, but the owner did suggest another street we could try, and so we zipped way over to Sydney Road in Coburg and we found a couple of shops that were almost useful, but not quite useful enough. Until just as we were leaving them, Rob said "What about that chair?" and indicated one of two chairs that were in the window, which I'd overlooked because they were well hidden under some other items.

Utterly perfect. Completely and exactly what we were looking for.

And that's how you do it.

Wizarding About

What do you do when the biggest family entertainment production of each year is in downtime? What do you make to fill its slot and keep the same demographic entertained? That uses many of the same production team, especially the visual effects company? I am talking, of course, about during Doctor Who's absence from our screens.

The answer is to create another fantastical episodic adventure tale, and cast it with classic British actors as well as a new slew of young up-and-comers. Sprinkle it with fantasy creatures, epic landscapes, and a dash of magic, and you have quite a feast. And so: Merlin.

The story concerns young Merlin, 18 years old, employed as the apprentice to Uther Pendragon's court Physician, and given the honour of being young Prince Arthur's personal servant.

He arrives at the court of Camelot already fully versed in magical abilities, only to find himself in a society that shuns the practice of magic as witchcraft. He must therefore hide his powers from all, and yet he constantly finds himself in situations where he has to use them to save Arthur's life.

With his constant needling from Arthur to be an obedient servant, a budding romance with a young Guinevere, Uther Pendragon being a stubborn pigheaded arrogant bull of a man, the suspiciously ambiguous nature of Uther's ward Morgana, and a constant stream of enchantresses trying to overthrow the kingdom, it is a busy time at Camelot. However can a poor young sorcerer cope?

The show's off to a shaky start. I suppose I can't expect perfection first time out, so I'll give it a chance to find its feet, however it's a hard one for me to get into. If I was fifteen I am sure I would lap this up with wild abandon and it would fast become my favourite show, it certainly has a lot of the ingredients that I love in fantasy. But I'm nearly 40, and it is most certainly not aimed at those my age at all. My expectations may be unrealistically high.

The problems I have with it are many. For one thing, the dialogue is cheesy and clunky. Instead of being inspired by great modern fantasy adventure stories, it seems to be basing itself on simplistic pulp sword-and-sorcery fiction. And I can overlook anachronisms if the characters are compelling, but instead they are like storybook cardboard cut-out versions, and awfully predictable.

The concept of Merlin having to hide his expert telepathic and telekinetic powers is very disappointing. I would have preferred it if the background to his adventures was of him learning new skills, instead of being blessed with immediate knowledge of how to do anything he is called on to do. I think it misses out on some key plot and character developments.

The characters are really not very appealing. They over act, and are portrayed as quite unpleasant people. There's a distinct lack of warmth, with no moments of real connection between the characters. Something any family drama fundamentally needs is appealing characters, and yet it's a glaring omission. Not through lack of awareness, but instead from clumsy writing. Most disappointing.

I expect it to be a popular show - it's better than the awful Robin Hood that is unfeasibly popular amongst teens at the moment, and it has some carefully constructed content that is sure to appeal to a teen audience - so if it continues onto a second season and beyond I have some hope it will improve.

But if it continues on as it currently stands, like a slightly more lavish Sarah Jane Adventures, it won't keep me around for long.

Checkpoint: Resistance: Cafe

Over the past few years, as I've learned more and more 3D and visual effects stuff, I've been lucky to have had the opportunity to work on new things I've never done before. It hasn't all just been light sabres and spaceships.

Interestingly enough, it's never been light sabres.

So I've made robots, and people, and cartoon characters, and spaceships, and vehicles, and aeroplanes, and buildings. But here's something else that's new - an indoor scene.


This will eventually be a Cafe, set in WWII France, and be populated with some patrons at tables and a few other characters, which we'll be filming against greenscreen and compositing in. That in itself is something I haven't really done before, though my job is mostly just the background elements like this, and Rob will probably be handling most of the compositing. Which is fine by me, I think that will work out well.

There are a few extra details I'd like to add, like a menu on the wall, and maybe hang a painting, but I'm pretty happy with the design and implementation so far. The window is especially impressive, it really looks like late evening sunlight or something.

If we go with this light, though, it will need to be rethought a bit, as it took two hours to render this one image. I think, therefore, that what I'll do is render the window once, and apply that to the window glass as an image. That way it doesn't have to re-render the full light effects, transparency, and distortion every time, presumably shortening the render time dramatically. There's a built in method for doing that kind of thing, called baking but I've never been able to figure out how to do that successfully. It may be time I learned.

Checkpoint: Resistance

My mate Rob and I are assembling some effects for his short film, Checkpoint, and because we love the whole idea of creating stuff from scratch, he's also put together a sequel idea, which we're calling Resistance.

This will be made entirely of live action people filmed on a greenscreen, then composited against an entirely digital backdrop, a French village. We hope to be able to take 3D models and 2D images and combine them together to allow us to move around within the artificial environment relatively freely.

The challenge comes in making these digital matte images in the first place. Sometimes we can use real photographs, and other times we need to make pieces out of 3D models and mix them in.

A few weeks ago I made a test image from one of the angles, as a test to see if I can create a convincing enough 3D building that it's indistinguishable from the real background. It worked pretty well, and I've progressed somewhat, adding additional features to the building, and have also expanded the backdrop area to give it more space and scope.

There's an explosion that is going to happen within that building, which is another reason why 3D is better than real life - it gives us the ability to add the explosion effect accurately and under our control. We had a meeting yesterday where we discussed a live explosion that we'll create in quarter-scale, in a small model of the building, that we can film, slow down to give it scale, and paste onto the scene. Interactive elements such as a table and chairs or the curtains within the building were also discussed.

Exciting stuff.

It's starting to come together.

Charley Boorman: By Any Means

I accidentally stumbled upon a cool TV series on DVD a few years ago, which at that point rapidly turned into my favourite documentary ever, called Long Way Round. Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman got on a couple of motorbikes and travelled around the world, pretty much on a straight line through Europe and Asia and America, from London to New York. It was loads of fun, with tons of adventure, and a great voyage of discovery for them both.

Since then they have done another, Long Way Down, which wended its way through Africa. Unfortunately, it didn't quite have the same magic the second time, and was also marred by being over-organised, but it was still great TV.

Charley Boorman has also done something on his own, when he took part in the most dangerous race in the world, the Dakar Rally, in a show called Race To Dakar. I enjoyed that too, but it was very much more oriented towards motorbike racing, so that didn't quite draw me in as much as it might someone who's a fan.

But now his latest solo adventure, By Any Means, is something I've been really enjoying a lot. He and his Producer friend Russ Malkin, who has been part of all the previous series, are taking a trip from Ireland to Sydney, via Asia, using only land transport like cars, bikes, buses, boats, etc, to get there. So far there's been four episodes and it's been fantastic. Always upbeat, interesting, and fun, as well as being seat-of-their-pants racing from place to place, in sometimes very precarious transport.

Michael Palin's journeys, which are similar in vein, are now too structured and colonial to have the visceral appeal it had when he began the Around The World In 80 Days trip he made. Charley (and Ewan) are now taking up that mantle instead, and they're following through admirably, with just the right balance of fun and adventure.

I totally recommend it, I'm sure it will be on DVD soon, and I can't praise Charley enough for managing to front the programme with such ease, competence, and charismatic aplomb. This new found career he has stumbled on of hosting travel and adventure shows is perfect for him, and I hope he continues.

Horizon Online

I made a website for my film.

Sometimes the most fun part of a project is the ancillary stuff, which can often take a lot of time that you don't have to spare. It's a common problem amongst new filmmakers that they want to make a film so they can get to have a behind-the-scenes documentary or a DVD with flashy menus, and the risk is they get so caught up with that kind of unimportant yet cool stuff they forget to actually make the film in the first place.

As I am aware of that particular potential pitfall I am risking by doing this, I suppose I can't really let the website be considered properly live yet.

But, typically, I couldn't help myself, and I put this design together anyway. I also tried to be fancy with a couple of funky CSS tricks, like the plane being layered over the top, and the clouds scrolling behind.

Anyway, it's not ready, okay? It's done, but only unofficially.

I shall fill in the blanks as they happen.

Horizon: And So It Begins

I had my first production meeting for my first short film, Horizon, today. I have been afraid to begin something like this for so long, because of the responsibilities I'd have towards the rest of the people involved, and my fear of being unprepared. But now I've committed myself.

It's a story about a Jet Fighter Pilot who looks back on his life and the love he has for his wife. It is a very short tale, set mostly domestically, but with a few visual effects scenes involving the plane in flight. It's not going to win any awards for its sensitive portrayal of a man in crisis, or anything pretentiously moronic like that, but it's good enough as an experiment in my ability to create and complete a film of my own.

Today's meeting was with a few of my friends who have made films of their own, and we talked of the practical elements involved, so that I would go in armed and prepared. Locations, directing, filming, permits, schedules, crew, and lots more, were all discussed and decided. Also, a particularly elaborate prop, or set, is the cockpit of the fighter plane, and we explored our options on achieving that.

I am now reassured that things will be easier to handle than I at first anticipated, and am buoyed up by my friends' endorsement. It should go well.

My next steps include sourcing locations, organising a shot list and schedule, and getting a few more people on board as part of my team. It will be a busy few months, I think.

Shouldn't Have Done That

I am a website designer, I've been doing it for over ten years. But I'm not particularly great at it. Sometimes I have done work I'm proud of, but if you were to look at my coding skills, they're mostly pretty average and naive. I like to be tidy, but structurally I can be haphazard, and anything beyond HTML and CSS is mysterious and incomprehensible to me.

As I'm not currently working, which is great and I wish it could ever be so, I don't get to do website stuff much anymore. I could probably redesign my own website, but I've got nothing to show anyway, so it's laying dormant.

So I was talking to my mate Rob about a website I visited recently, and how I thought it was in desperate need of updating, which I'd gladly do if I was paid for the work done to it. And inevitably, I had images in my head of how it could be improved upon. That night I had a very clear idea of the graphics I'd apply to it, and the colour scheme. And then the next day (yesterday) I couldn't help myself, and I spent all day designing the page.

On the one hand I need the experience and to keep up my skills, it can be great fun to create something that works well and fulfils the vision you have for it. But on the other hand, I basically did work that will never be showcased. I have no job lined up, there's no payment, they don't even know I did it.

I find myself wondering if I should contact them and suggest I work on it. But then that would mean a lot of work for them, and therefore a lot of time and money, which they may not be willing to outlay. It really ought to be them who volunteer to upgrade, rather than some pushy designer coming along trying to convince them to do something they have no intention of following up on.

Still, I am happy with the design I did, so here it is.

Writing Is Not Easy

I've been writing the second draft of my screenplay off and on these past few weeks, working through some of the problems.

Having had to introduce a whole new subplot to beef up the energy level it needed, and to keep some of the characters active through the plot, hasn't exactly introduced new problems into the plotting, like I thought it might; It has actually made it a much better story.

But what it has done is introduce problems with the pacing. Having to weave through this new, more exciting thread has interfered with the story structure already in place. Now I have to interrupt or bookend a quiet scene with an exciting action packed scene. Or worse, shunt up an action scene in one location, up against another action scene happening in a different location.

I've seen that work in a film, but I'm not talented or experienced enough to know what the trick is for it. Luckily I don't really have to be too strict in how each scene works together, as in the editing process there's plenty of opportunity to swap and alter and adjust to suit. But having said that, getting the scenes to at least work chronologically, and not be too jarring or confusing to read, is also an important skill to refine. After all, there isn't actually going to be an editing process, as the film is not intended to be made.

I think I'm doing okay. For every change I make that bothers me at its potential for distorting my story, there's another subsequent scene that pulls it back on track and keeps it flowing smoothly. It surprises me how successful it has been so far, to the point where I'm wondering if that means I'm missing something important. I probably am.

I should have this draft complete soon, and will then hand it over to a couple of people I trust to review it. I'll be looking for feedback on my abilities to write cohesively, entertainingly, and with the right level of detail to conjure up the imagery and characterisations I am hoping to depict. I expect I'll get a fair amount of notes, some of them harsh, and perhaps some of them suggesting dramatic changes in the story.

But I hope they'll generally be favourable enough to encourage me to keep going. And then hopefully I'll be buoyed up enough to write something new.

I Like Parcels

Not that long ago, when I had very little money, an awful lot of really cool geeky stuff was made available. They were difficult to source (I occasionally heard about them through my local comic shop), expensive to ship (sometimes shipping cost more than the item itself), and for those reasons, and my lack of cash, I had to let most of them pass me by.

But now I have some money, and the difference is glorious. It's so easy to find the coolest things online. Toys, books, DVDs, music - if you want it, you can get it. Due to demand, shipping is now really competitive and affordable. It's a doddle to get coolness personified sent to me in exciting brown cardboard boxes.

Last week I got a new comic art anthology. Today I got three new DVDs. Next week I expect to get a soundtrack CD and a DVD of one of my favourite movies.

I'm not a fan of the more commonly experienced forms of shopping, i.e. clothes and shoes and wandering from shop to shop, trying stuff on, looking for bargains. Blah. Buying online is so much easier, and more exciting. Perhaps I buy rather too much too often, but I'm careful; It hasn't depleted my savings too much. And it means I get more parcels!

I love getting parcels in the mail.

Spot The Fake Building

I am the king of getting halfway through a project and then leaping onto a new one. It's not healthy, because unless I have a deadline or a promise to another person, those other things tend to be permanently abandoned.

I'm currently involved with two projects for my mate Rob, one for another mate MPS (though I haven't got the footage for that stuff yet), and my own projects that tend to just meander.

In one of the projects for Rob there will be 3D virtual environments, which is usually done by combining video with photographs that will be manipulated in 3D (or 2.5D) in order to look as realistic as possible.

2.5D is when you take 2D elements, like photographs, and apply them to a 3D environment, or manipulate them in 3D space, such as for parallax motion. I shall be doing some of that, as well as building 3D models to place inside those 2.5D environments. The first such example is the oft-mentioned train and railway gun, which is being placed in a 2.5D version of the real valley location we photographed.

But the above image is meant to represent a street in a French village, where we need to place a Cafe. As it has to look pretty specific, and so we don't have to hope to find a good photograph we can use, I have made a 3D model of it.

Can you spot where the real photo ends and my 3D models begin?

Pegasus Rampant - The Second Draft

Writing, they say, is not easy. Just when you think you're on top of things, that you have a great story, an excellent grasp of the characters, and the whole thing is coming together perfectly, something comes along that throws a spanner in the works and totally throws you off your game.

I am halfway through the second draft of my movie script, that I'm writing for my own personal 'writing exercise' experience. I like most of what I'm doing with it; I like my characters; I like the story; I like how many of the scenes unfold and play out; but I have, inevitably, struck a problem. It doesn't, as it stands, work as a movie.

It'd probably be fine if I adapted and expanded the plot into a novel (though it probably wouldn't sell very well and I wouldn't be lauded as the next JK Rowling or anything). And it might work as a comic book, played out episodically. Perhaps. And if I picked a few scenes out to make as a short film it'd be quite promising, I hope. But that's not what I'm doing with it - I'm writing it as an exercise in feature film screenplay writing, so it therefore has to work as a feature film, or else it's a failure.

I noticed early on that the motivations for the characters to go on their adventure were weakly realised, so I knew that in the second draft I would have to add some urgency and intensity to the beginning. I figured out the kind of things I wanted to do but it couldn't be anything too intense, as it would push the rest of the story in directions I didn't want it to go. So it had to be small enough to not impact the story too much, but big enough to add much needed energy to the plot.

Then I realised my bad guy was too static; he wasn't shown as much of a threat until near the end. So I had to introduce his machinations earlier in the story. However, I combined the two problems into one, and now I have my antagonist introduce a sub-plot into the storyline that is continually woven throughout.

But my worst fears are potentially going to be realised: the new sub-plot is threatening to impact the existing storyline, the parts that I already am very happy with. If this means I have to rip out and rearrange that part of the tale, then I will be very disappointed.

Writers will tell you that such things are often the way it goes, and it must be done without sentimentality. Improvement in the final story is all that matters. But, nevertheless, it will be heartbreaking if that's what I have to do.

So I am desperately trying to weave in this sub-plot in ways that will only expand and motivate the characters, and not so it pulls the story down a different track.

The irony is, if I hadn't recognised the problem I saw in the early parts of the story, and had made the finished film as it was in the first draft, it would've been just as good as the B-Movie fantasy flicks that are so often made, as they tend to have plot holes and discrepancies throughout. But my goal is to make something better than that, to prove it can be done if you put the effort in.

And the irony in that is that if I actually sold it and it got made, they'd probably strip out all the things I think are great, and jam in more sword fights and giant monsters, turning it into a mess that doesn't resemble my story hardly at all. Writing scripts is too often a hack and slash exercise, that when it gets released and people dismiss it as rubbish, often blame the poor writing, even though the script they actually put together was a marvellous whimsical joyride of a story, and not the explosion and effects-fest that the idiot director turned it into.

Anyway, the point is I am at a difficult stage of the creative process, and it's stressing me out a little.

Next!!!

Last weekend I wandered down to Southbank where a friend of mine was filming his very first short film. It was something that I wasn't sure would be fun, but it turned out to be a good way to spend a Sunday.

Pete, or MPS as we call him, wrote this sketch idea a long time ago, and finally has gotten things together to get it made. It was about an audition process for a film, where there were a succession of hopefuls lining up for a part, all turned away. I didn't cameo, though I did do something silly which they caught on camera so you never know.

Anyway, I was there in my capacity as effects supervisor, as there are a couple of funny shots involving 3D, including a rocket shooting along, following someone out the door, and a trapdoor opening up and the poor guy falling through it cartoon-style.

Should be a giggle when it's all done. It was being shot in the Malthouse Theatre, which was for manufacturing malt liquor once, but is now remodelled into a theatre. It's most likely a protected "Listed" building, as it has all its original exterior walls, and a considerable amount of its interior fittings, still existing and intact. Though a lot of it just hovers in mid air without a way to get to them: Stairways lead to nowhere; doors don't open; mezzanines have no access. It's weird, but cool.

Visits From The Family

I'm from New Zealand. I live in Australia. I've been here since 1999. I came here to get away from a life that had collapsed around me rather suddenly.

I used to have a circle of people who were the best friends I could've hoped for. Fun, funny, creative, we did tons of cool stuff together, though a lot of it never amounted to anything. I was pretty happy, even though I had no money, and not much else to call my own.

But then one of those friends moved away to Wellington. Then another did the same. And a third. Another friend unexpectedly died. The last of the group I hung around with found a cool job that took up all his spare time. I was bereft. When I lost my job, due to serially incompetent management, I saved up what little money I still had and leapt across the Tasman Sea to live in Melbourne, and though it was a struggle at first, I soon found my feet and am happy to be in a place I can call home.

I have no regrets on the move. I have found a new group of friends, who, though not as hilariously funny as my old NZ friends, are much more proactively creative, and are very inclusive in their fun social activities. Some of the things I've been involved with are beyond many of my hopes.

But do I miss my family? I'm pretty close to my family, but not in the way some people are. When we grew up together, my brother and sisters and I got on very well with each other. We rarely had disagreements, and didn't really get into serious trouble. Later in life there were a few run-ins that are best left behind us, but they weren't between each other. Our Mother always tried to keep us in contact, and we'd gather for special occasions a few times a year. My brother was the hardest to corral, as his career took off into jetsetting directions while we were all homebound, but when he visited it was a pretty good evening to be had.

When I left NZ, leaving my family was one of the hardest parts of the journey, but I knew it wasn't a permanent arrangement - visits would occur from both directions, and they have done. Every year either one of them has visited me, or I've gone back to visit them. It gets so frequent that it's sort of boring, sometimes, as there's nothing new to talk about. Last time I visited it was for Christmas 2006, before that it was for my younger sister's wedding. But as my Mum travels around the world a lot, she usually stops by Melbourne on the way there or back so I get to see her a lot. The truth is I don't miss my family, because I see them too often for that.

Which brings me to my point. Today my Mum visited Melbourne again, after a little holiday in South Australia, and she brought her friend Linda (who witnessed my Passport renewal form). We hung out together for a brief lunch and a wander, but there wasn't much to chat about. And it's strange to me that I see her less frequently than I did when I was back in NZ, and yet we have less and less to talk about as so few things develop in our lives as we get older. My life right now is not that dissimilar to how it was three or four years ago, whereas through the 90s it was developing in new directions every year.

Mum brought over a DVD of a NZ film that you can't find anywhere else, which was nice of her. It's called Out Of The Blue and was directed by a friend of mine, Robert Sarkies, who I have done work for on some of his earlier films (some completed, some aborted). It's about the Aramoana Massacre, which happened not far from where I was living at that time, and is one of the worst crimes that has ever happened in New Zealand's history. I hope it's as good as the reviewers claim.

The Astonishing State of Science Fiction TV

Science Fiction and Fantasy on TV has had a chequered history. The 60s was surreal with weird shows like The Avengers, Prisoner, and Thunderbirds. The 70s and 80s had a whole bunch of cookie-cutter adventure shows like Incredible Hulk, Invisible Man, Six Million Dollar Man, Knight Rider. The 90s had an onslaught of shows set in space with aliens, like Star Trek (et al), Babylon 5, Space: Above and Beyond, Earth II, Seaquest DSV, and the silly stuff like Hercules and Xena. Then X-Files and Buffy came along and bucked the trend somewhat.

But it was the onset of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who's reimaginings, and the unique Lost, that have set the way for a new breed of Fantasy TV, and it has made me all excited about television again.

However, there is a major problem. Almost none of these shows are shown here! Aargh! If it wasn't for the internet and bittorrent, I would see almost none of this top class entertainment. And most of the time I end up buying the DVDs, so it's to their benefit that they remain available to me this way. I urge you all to check out these shows that I've been watching recently, and marvel at their brilliance:

Should I Get An iPhone?

I don't have a mobile phone. I have never had a mobile phone. Their ubiquitousness bothers me; their inescapability irritates me; the broad assumption that we all have one frustrates me; the expectation I ought to have one disappoints me.

But I always knew that I would probably get one eventually, when the true need for one arose. Perhaps if I had a family of my own (I can safely predict that's not gonna happen), or was employed in a job that absolutely required one (I am unlikely to be in such a career, but you never know).

And now the iPhone has arrived in Australia, and I am wavering.

I am not a particular fan of Apple's "style over substance" approach to their products. They seem to spend rather too much money on something that looks cool, sometimes at the expense of usability, and usually use it as the centrepiece of their promotion: "Buy this, it's only slightly better than anything else out there, but it looks really pretty!" And a lot of people seem to like the prettiness more than the substance; The new MacBook Air only has its slimline design going for it, at the serious expense of practicality, and yet it's selling well.

I'm not anti-Mac, or pro-PC, I am loyal to PCs only because it's all I've ever known and see no need to change. Re-learning an OS, under the illusory expectation it's better, when it may be much of a muchness for my kind of usage, isn't something I'd want to spend time on.

But the iPhone... just seems to be so cool! And I don't mean in that "style over substance" way I'm decrying, because I wouldn't just give up my principles on a whim. The substance really is what makes it cool - it is usable, functional, full-featured, and, I have to be honest, represents the future of GUI design.

I think that if I do decide to get a mobile phone, it will have to be an iPhone. I won't accept anything less.

Pegasus Rampant - The First Draft

I have just completed writing my first ever feature length movie script.

I started it as an experiment to see if I could do it. Having just come off from writing a short film script, and finding it to be a fun and exciting challenge to complete to my own satisfaction, the next step of writing something longer was one I felt enthused by.

A first draft is not going to be very good, but that's deliberate. The trick to it is to just write everything out, the whole story, without refining it too much, just to have it down on paper. As a wise person once said, it's easier to edit existing text, than it is to fill a blank page. So I just wrote it all down with stream-of-consciousness storytelling, because I knew that I would be going back over it again, and again, and perhaps even again, before it's ready to be shown around anywhere.

And it's true, not even halfway through the writing of it, I could see so many things wrong that I would need to adjust and replace and fix up later. Whole plot strands that I thought were important petered out over the course of the story, so I'll have to tidy up those loose ends. Characters I introduced had no follow up, so they'll have to go. Other characters I didn't expect to introduce will need to be referenced earlier in the story to uphold good continuity. Scenes need to be tightened to add excitement and urgency, or lengthened for pacing. And of course, the dialogue will have to be punched up so it sizzles.

But that's the fun of it. As soon as it gets boring I'll stop, but right at this moment I'm rearing to go. I can't wait to get stuck in and make the story better.

I have no illusions that this script would ever get picked up and made. I suppose it might, if I managed to find a way to sell it, but that isn't the point of why I am doing this. It's a personal challenge, a test to see if I am capable of writing a good tale, of completing it to its end, to see if it excites me enough to want to do it a second or third time, and more importantly to see if I can write something that is entirely my own that is as good as (or better than) some of the movies I see actually get made. Can I do it as well as the professionals?

More than likely, if I did manage to sell it, it would be rewritten again by somebody else, then changed again by the Director, and in the Editing, to the point where it wouldn't be the script I wrote after all. That's how the business works, and I have no illusions that my written word is sacrosanct. Even the greatest movies of all time, directed by the greatest movie makers of all time, buggered about with the script to get it into the shape they thought it needed to be. I accept that, though as long as the heart of it was there, if the plot was mostly intact, and if some of the better dialogue was kept, I'd be gloriously happy to see it up on the big screen.

Perhaps one day that will happen.