A Savaege Blog?

Back in January I order a new desk for my home office and a filing cabinet for my ever growing paper work of scripts, tutorials etc.

About four weeks after I had place my order and yet to receive anything I phoned them up to see what the story was. They said it had been delayed or something and would be on in the next week or so.

The order finally did arrive albeit minus the filing cabinet, I wasn’t bothered as I finally had a proper to work on. However when it failed to arrive a few weeks later I got on the phone again and somehow it was still in Dublin and had been returned.

Then the shocking thing happened, I was naturally pissed off by all this and let the girl on customer service know. She then asked me if I wanted the item cancelled! What? Is this how you value my custom? Cancel my order? No I want my bloody filing cabinet and you should be doing every thing possible to make sure I get it. So she reordered it and I was due to have it in the next week or so.
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The Irish civil war film, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, has won the Palme d’Or at the prestigious Cannes film festival. This is the first time that an Irish film has won the award.

The film is an uncompromising look at British brutality and torture and a bloody saga of British against Irish and brother against brother during Ireland’s fight for independence and subsequent civil war in the early 1920s.

Loach told reporters after the ceremony: “We live in extraordinary times and that has made people political in a way they maybe weren’t in the previous four, five, six years. The wars that we have seen, the occupations that we see throughout the world — people finally cannot turn away from that. It’s very exciting to be able to deal with this in films, and not just be a complement to the popcorn.”

“‘It’s been interesting that some politicians say we must apologise for the Empire but I haven’t heard any apologies.

“‘We have to acknowledge the exploitation and the oppression of the British state, but this film is also about heroism and bravery’.

“The Wind That Shakes the Barley stars Cillian Murphy as an Irish medical student who takes up arms against a reign of terror by the Black and Tans, British troops sent in to quell calls for independence.

I wonder if I had applied would I have gotten a role on the crew? I know a few people from college that did work on it… and a lot of it was shot in West Cork and all! ….oh well.

I Bought a K3 on eBay a few months ago and the guy that was selling it said the internal electronic lightmeter wasn’t working. I guessed that this may be down to the fact that there was no battery in the camera.

Like many lightmeters, the K3 was designed to use a mercury cell that is no longer available (the PX640).

To address this problem, k3camera.com created a Battery adapter that allows the use of a zinc-air cell in the K-3. Zinc-air cells are also known as “hearing aid batteries”, are available everywhere, and are inexpensive.

The adapter is sold in a kit that includes the precision machined brass adapter and four zinc-air cells. Instruction Sheet Only $29! (+$4 shipping in the US, $5 to Canada, $8 Elsewhere)

I decided I’d try it out and see if the lightmeter would work afterall. A few days ago it arrived in the post so I put it in to the camera and turned it on, Bingo! the needle appeared in the view finder.

Now all I have to do is get some stock and see what sort of results I get from this baby!

Will post up results when I get them.

Yes, finally I wrote something for My Ball! YAY …now I have something down on paper… now I can start showing it to people and get their opinions. All this time I had this idea in my head which was no good for anyone.

It didn’t take that much effort to sit down at the computer and type out all two pages that the first draft came to. Next draft I may even beef it up to a massive three pages. Three minutes is the most I wanted for this flick so that’s good the way it worked out in my head worked out on paper too.

I want this shot and finished edit and all by mid June so I really need to keep going and find an actor and maybe a camera Op and maybe a few more crew.

I’ve been meaning to up date this with the last few days, even got to writing something only I had to go off before I had time to finish.

This short will be a bit different to what I’ve written before… In that there will be no live sound i.e. no dialogue, although there will be a voice over.

I already know what’s going to happen in the film but as yet I’ve no script! I know the shots I want so I’m currently working out a shot list and hope to piece it all together. The voice over script must of course be written but I do have a few drafts of what will be said I just haven’t yet tied it into a script.

As I’ve said earlier I hope to shoot it on my K3, still untested but should have some idea as what results that can achieve in the next week or so. If it doesn’t work out I have considered renting a Super 16 camera for a day, doing that would allow me to record sound so I could also rent out a DAT recorder or something. But all that starts pushing up my productions costs and you have to draw the line somewhere.

Last night I was thinking over a few new outlines for the short. One that came to mind was:
A film about a man and his relationship with his ball…

What the feck have I been doing the past year since I finished college? Sweet feck all to be perfectly honest… okay I did shoot a short film ‘Turn’ and write maybe two or three other shorts. But is that enough? No!

At the moment I work 9 to 5 and then spend the evenings working on my own projects some not film related at all. I was looking into taking on some more non-film-related projects. But this has to stop now! I tell you why, a week from today is officially the start of Summer here. No one wants to be inside on a fine summers evening when it’s bright up ‘til 11.

But since June, July and August are the three best months that gives me a month before holidays and the real fine weather kicks in. A month of pure writing! …Oh yeah I want to squeeze in a day of shooting for ‘My Ball’ …okay a month a mainly writing with a bit of production work thrown in as well but no non film related work!! Not a THING!!

Goodbye to all my scams that were going to make me loaded (for the time being any way!)

As I’ve said an earlier post I’ve got to get some serious stuff done this summer. So a have to push all these other distractions away and concentrate on what I spent 3 years in college doing.

So My aims for this month

Fine list there to keep me going… and it all starts at 5 o’clock!

I’m working on a new project which I hope to shoot in next month or else in June with the aim of submitting it to the Cork Film Festival.

It’s called ‘My Ball’ I won’t go into it much as it will only be about 3 minutes long. I’m considering shooting on my K3 16mm camera but as I have yet to test the camera I don’t know how well it works.

Watch this space…

…interesting isn’t it?

Been a week since I lasted posted someting so thought I’d freshen things up a bit… small bit at that. I’ve not done anything film related in the last week so haven’t really been thinking about it much.

You see I have a day job a boring 9 to 5 job (won’t say it’s very bad ‘cos its a family business). Anyway for this month my work load has been doubled cos my Mother decided to take a month off!!! And they left me in charge of accounts and paying the wages… 300 for you 350 for you 30000 for me 400 for you…. he he he. I wouldn’t do that….

Anyway that has nothing to do with anything. So in the evenings is the only time I get to write or edit or sit down and watch soaps …I hate it when they drag you in …Mike died on Coronation street …stop it!!

Also in the evenings I work on my schemes to make me rich… they haven’t worked yet but I’ll keep trying.

Basically all I’m saying is I’ve done nothing.

I said I would write a short from scratch a few posts back by the end of the month, that month being March… well I failed to do so.

I did manage to write a first draft to an idea that has being in my head for a few months but that wasn’t the brief I set myself. I think I’ll give myself a C+ anyway for this task… yay I past!

Anyway with the Summer months approaching fast it’s high time I got the finger out and get some idea’s down on paper.

Last Summer I had planned on shooting a few projects one being my short “Turn”. I spent weeks trying to get a cast and crew together. I got some but failed to get the people who I thought would help make a good short.

When things weren’t working out I pulled the plug, I felt that I if I went ahead then I wouldn’t do the crew or myself justice. By then the summer had past. I later did shoot Turn in December.

This Summer I am going to shoot at least 3 shorts! There I said it.

They will be short zero budgets. I have several projects already and some are almost ready for Pre production. Ideally I would like to start shooting in May… a whole (less than a) month away! We’ll see.