NZ finalist videos now online

The New Zealand Your Big Break film contest finalist videos are up! Check them out and decide which YOU think is the best and deserves to appear on American television! :-)

You can also see them on Facebook and share your positive thoughts there! Go with FB if you have the option, because it has hi-def versions and I am hearing reports that the contest website is running sluggishly, probably due to overload.

I have to admit - although I have a clear favorite for many reasons - I am really impressed by all five of the finalists. Directing a film is incredibly hard work and they each created something magical while maintaining unique and distinctive sytle.

1) write a script
2) fly to New Zealand
3) meet the casting director
4) make a shot list
5) location scouting
6) pick talent - in this case four actors - 1 on screen, 3 off
7) prop / art department scouting and meetings (vids on my FB page)
8) shoot the movie
9) edit the footage
10) sound
a) music
b) effects (foley)
c) record voice-overs
d) there was one more sound engineer, but I'm still sorting out which elements he was in charge of
11) final mixing of all the elements together
12) wait, wait, wait, wait, wait... until March 5!

I'll have to do a separate post where I give props to the other finalists, but for now I'll let you mull over the process above (and I'll have to check my notes to see if I missed anything.)

You Can Own Kristi's House

You can own the house that internationally recognized movie screenwriter/director Kristi Simkins, finalist in New Zealand Tourism's Your Big Break Competition, once lived in.

She has met personally and been advised personally by Barrie Frickin' Osborne, so you know she's got talent. Seriously, just watch her movie and understand that the vision is all her's and she really is incredibly good at telling a story through the medium of motion pictures, especially when you consider this was her first time with a project of this scope.

Google is indexing my blog, I might as well use the opportunity and throw out keywords and sell a house :-)

NZA - I got a sneak peak at the competition

Seattle time zone

Yesterday was Friday in New Zealand and Rajneel was scheduled to finish the mixing on his film. I believe that Andres is scheduled to finish tomorrow (Sunday, NZ time).

The first three films (Tim's "Mr Frosty and the BMX Kid," Kristi's "Something Special," and Aya's "Sweet As") are in the can, and Rajneel and Andres are almost done. I got a sneak peak at the first three in QuickTime format (because I'm the spouse of one of the finalists, right?) and I will grudging concede that Tim and Aya did great work. I found both films to be entertaining, attractive and compelling. Although, with apologies to the great child actor in Tim's film, I only understood about half of what he said. I eagerly await the last two films.

Okay, enough about the riff-raff (kidding!). Kristi's film ROCKED!* The last time I saw it was in the mixing studio which had a massive sound system and a huge screen. The screen was kinda low-res for the size, but that was fine since the point was audio mixing, not color grading (a process I did not get to see). So it was really cool to see it in hi-def where the gorgeous colors and breath-taking beauty of New Zealand really POP. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the sound while converting to QT format, and Kristi is working with them to get that corrected before it goes live on the website. Between the voice-over track, the music and sound-effects, the audio is about 2/3 of the total story, so it is vital that it be fixed before going live so that people can actually experience the story properly. Everyone at the premier in the mixing study was blown away by the total package, so we know it rocks and look forward to getting that fixed.
(* I will confess to possibly, maybe, thinking about suffering a little bias. But ONLY a little.)

I'll post again here when Tourism New Zealand goes live with the films.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! One the plane back from New Zealand, the airline (Air New Zealand) wished everyone a HVD and did a quick poll for "the couple married the longest and still madly in love." While Kristi and I are madly in love, we've only been married 11.75 years, so we were easily trounced by the couple who have been married 49 years and are, in fact, really cute together.

Post-New Zealand, Day 1 - back to real life (sort of)

Slept 13 hours last night, cats are *very* glad to have us home, still adjusting to the idea of normal life after spending three weeks in the Southern Hemisphere being on the BEST VACATION EVER. Okay, Kristi was working MAKING A MOVIE but that only enhanced my sense of enjoyment! I'm going to make an awesome Hollywood Husband!

Here's how we look at it. There was a screenwriting contest to win a trip to New Zealand to make a short film. Kristi sooo won that! There is now a second contest to judge the best short film. Okay, so that contest is very select entry - only the five winners of contest one are allowed to enter :-)

Here is what a rep of Tourism New Zealand has told us:

"We will assemble all of the 5 films and present them to Peter Jackson on the 23rd of February NZ time. We hope to get a response from him within 24 hours.

"The public announcement of the winner will not happen until the 5th March (US time) to tie in with the airing of the winning film just before the Spirit Awards on IFC."


We're hearing mixed reports about when the 5 films will go up on the TNZ website. But our understanding is that the films will be available before the winner is publicly announced, but I'm skeptical about that...

In any case, Kristi is worrying about what she should wear to the awards and I'm working on writing her speech (just in case she has to give one). 'Cuz, you know, I totally know she's going to win this second contest, too :-)

I certainly won't reveal anything before March 5 ;-) But TNZ does need to notify the winner so that she can make travel arrangements. Aya won't have any trouble since she lives in Los Angeles, but Tim and Rajneel are New Zealand natives and Andres is from Argentina. TNZ was kind enough to extend an invitation to me, should Kristi win, and I'd love to go, but that would be a LOT to ask of my employers - IT Source *wink* *wink* - because they were already super-generous letting me off to NZ.

New Zealand Adventure, Day 18

Saturday, Feb 13, 4:35 PM Seattle Local Time

We're home! (Almost, we're at the airport killing time waiting for the shuttle.)

Due to the magic of the International Date Line, we left on Saturday afternoon and arrived on Saturday afternoon. As Dave W. pointed out to me on Facebook, this does help make up for having completely giving the miss to Wednesday, Jan 27. It just never happened for us :-)

We spent about 16 hours on three planes today. One from Wellington to Auckland, then Auckland to San Francisco, then San Francisco to Seattle. The short flights are brutal on my ears; but the long flights are no problem. My hypothesis is that the short flights climb and descend faster than the larger planes; and thus the pressure changes are less rapid.

The Wellington airport has no security checkpoint. We went straight from baggage claim to the airplane. What a less complicated world they have there; I think it just adds to the Paradise-like mystique. It also added to our sense of the entire trip being surreal. I have to admit – one of the reasons I wrote this blog (besides to entertain you, dear friends and family) is to prove to myself it really happened!

In contrast to the EnZed-only flights (Queenstown was just as jackbooted about their security as Wellington), the International terminal in Auckland had a security checkpoint (not required to remove shoes), then we filled out the inbound-from-another-country paperwork on the plane, landed in San Francisco, went through a passport check, picked up our bags and dragged them to a different bag check (no, really, the total distance was maybe 100 to 120 feet), went through another checkpoint to turn over the i-f-a-c paperwork, then another security check (where we did have to take off our shoes), then on the plane to Seattle.

So, in a nutshell, the American border check has many more layers and points of review than, well New Zealand. To be fair to New Zealand, they do have a *really* intensive inbound examination, but that is mostly to make sure you're not trying to smuggle in any kind of foreign agriculture or nasty bugs or fungi (they will even clean your dirty hiking boots for you!) But, unlike the US, once you're IN New Zealand, they trust you and you're pretty much allowed to go anywhere you want.

I keep telling Kristi that when we go back next year to shoot one of the other full-length scripts she has written, I'll show her all the touristy sights I found :-)

I'm going to spend the weekend, and maybe some time going forward, looking back over these blog posts and tidying them up a bit.

New Zealand Adventure, Day 17

Friday, 11:30 PM, NZ local time

At 5 PM today was the "world premier" of the final cut of the film. Meaning it's finished!

Allison I. at Park Road Post is a great hostess and she threw a small party with beer, wine and munchies. About 20 people showed up for the premier and it was awesome!

Some comments from the audience:

"We're watching it again? SWEET!"

"I really enjoyed working with Kristi. She was very easy to work with. She knew what she wanted and knew how to get it. She made changes for the right reasons, unlike some directors," speaker makes a face here, "who make changes for the wrong reasons."

"Next time your back in Wellington, I know a great [fill in the speaker's profession]!"

"I got goosebumps!"

"It's wonderful to be reminded that a short film can be powerful, engaging and memorable in only three minutes."

"WOW"

New Zealand Adventure, Day 16

Thursday, 8:45 PM, NZ local time

Everybody loves to meet me. Well, partly that’s because I’m handsome and charming (and modest, and have such a disarming sense of humor), but actually it’s because they are impressed with Kristi and think it is such a cool story that I was able to come along for the journey. Everybody at Park Road Post is excited to see Kristi’s film come to fruition. These are all people that can “see” the story as they read it and so were really moved by the script. I’ve found that people who can “see” it while reading it are the ones most likely to exclaim “wow” when they get to the end. It’s even more impressive in living color. Park Road Post is incredible and so are all the people. Yeah, okay, I’m geeking out, get over it :-)

I was able to get over to PRP this afternoon. Kristi spent the morning with the sound and music teams (Tim, Chris and Dave) and really put everything together. Late in the afternoon, I got there and we watched the film with all the sound elements in place. It was AWESOME! These guys are great. Tomorrow she will goes into the finalization of all the sound elements – voice-over, music and foley (sound effects) then the final cut at 5 PM! Woot!

I met Aya today. She is in Wellington doing her post production. That means I have met four of the five finalists. I met Tim in Queenstown and saw him again here in Wellington. I met Rajneel in Queenstown and Aya in Wellington (she was out of the Queenstown office whenever I was dropping by so did not get to meet her there). Great people all and good luck to them! I won’t get to meet Andres, but I understand he’s incredibly sharp.

Kristi started a new trend for the finalists – during her third day of editing, she went out into the bulding to find people who had not seen the film yet (like the office manager and reception desk clerk) and invited them to view it to give her and Paul a fresh perspective. Allison at PRP has shared this with Aya, and Rajneel and Andres will benefit from it also.

I learned that last bit while Allison, Kristi, myself, Aya, Tony, Jono and Dave were sitting around a conference table having an impromptu hang together. (Jono is Aya’s editor.) That was really cool to just BS for a bit. I quipped that it’s “unfair” that the production teams learn the ropes from the earlier finalists (remember, Tim #1, Kristi #2, Aya #3, Rajneel #4 and Andres #5). Without missing a beat, Tony expressed the next half of that thought so I did no t have to say it – “Yeah, but we’re all more excited at the beginning and not as tired.” All the production people I’ve talked to have expressed being grateful to be part of this project, but they’ve also said it is the most compressed they’ve ever done any kind of film. Another tidbit I learned at the table is that most “short films” run 5 to 18 minutes, and sound and music typically get a combined 4 weeks, instead of 3 days. So things that normally get hammered out slowly and effectively are being hammered, gonged, molten, beaten, tempered and quenched. (Considering that editing was 3 days and grading was like one-half day, I can only guess how much time those normally get.)

Oh, oh, on a separate note I saw Guillermo del Toro at Park Road Post. Did not get to meet him or anything, just saw him. I think he's there doing pre-production on "The Hobbit" (but really I have no idea why he was there).

We got over to the Te Papa museum today and wandered the Pompeii exhibit. Incredible and staggering. It is amazing how the preserved artifacts and homes and murals, etc., were so well preserved. I can only imagine it forced modern archaeology to redefine their understanding of life in the Roman Empire. (Or maybe not, those Romans took great notes. Ha.)

Wow, it’s hard to believe this journey is almost over. It has been entirely surreal. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it (of course, I’m on holiday, so that helps!)

Why my New Zealand Adventure starts with Day 7

Because I put off creating a blog for years, and figured "why start now?" I naively figured I could use Facebook. But, after a few days of hacking away with FB, I decided it was a lousy way to blog (it's a great way to leave random notes for people you know) so I asked some friends and launched here on Blogspot.

New Zealand Adventure, Day 15

Wednesday, 10-Feb-2010, 5:45 PM, NZ local time

I had heard said, but never gave it much thought, how incredibly much energy is required to say nothing at all in a blog.

Within a six block range of the Duxton, I have so far discovered more mom-and-pop eateries and clothing boutiques than I can count, four used bookstores, four adult stores, a huge comic shop, and two anime/geek toy shops (I would have said one, but tripped over a second this afternoon). There are also two grocery stores (I've only been to one, meant to get to the second today, but seem to have come down with a crushing bit of exhaustion and needed a nap instead), and six convenience stores that I can remember. Oh, and several museums of different size, two leather/shoe repair shops (one of which I've dropped a new belt for Kristi so it can be re-sized), etc., etc., etc. In other words, I'm in the heart of the city.

I think this part of Wellington has more small-town life than Seattle and New York City combined. I've been in Seattle, New York and San Francisco, and when I think back on those cities I feel like most of the old small businesses have been displaced by one flavor of chain or another. Sure, there are chains here, like Dick Smith's (think of Best Buy, only smaller), the Warehouse, New World (grocery) and the inescapable Subway, McDonalds, Burger King and Starbucks (I've tried to escape them, it cannot be done), but there is literally only one of each within the radius I have walked and they are actually lost amid so many more interesting stores.

Arty Bee's used books - these guys have a lot of floor space and reminds me of Half Price Books back home.

Pegasus Books Bouquinerie - great little shop. Obviously a mom-and-pop labor of love. Reminds me of the place in Puyallup on 112th near the South Hill Mall. Great people. I had been hunting for the local post office, and gotten four answers from three people before I asked here at Pegasus. Not only did the husband and wife team give me excellent directions, but Mark (the husband) actually walked with me, guiding me the three blocks to the PostShop so I would actually find it that time. So, just for fun, shoot them an email and tell them you think they're cool :-) Tell them the husband of the YBBC finalist sent you. (Yes, I did tell yet another random stranger that I'm in NZ because my wife is making a movie for Barrie Osborne! That never gets old and the locals actually think it is very cool and wish Kristi the best. I'm building a font of positive energy here so she sweeps the award haha).

New Zealand Adventure, Day 14

Tuesday, 9-Feb-2010, NZ local time

The “King Kong” ship is gone. It was here earlier this week, but is now gone. They took it out this week and sunk it. We didn't even get a picture of the damn thing. I'm talking about the big ship used in Peter Jackson's remake of “King Kong.” The ship was sitting at a dock when we came in on Saturday and the story goes that Peter no longer owned it, and ownership changed hands a bit, and no one was sure what would happen to it. Kristi and I talked, and she took our digital still camera with her today to take a picture of it (it's that geek-fan thing again), but it was gone. Lousy timing or what? The other thing that bakes my noodle is they took this great big chunk of metal out to the ocean somewhere and scuttled it. Um, hello? Scrap metal? What's a ship weigh these days? 1000 tons? 2000 tons? 37,000 tons? (Okay, bake, batter and deep fry my noodle)

This afternoon, I met screenwriter, novelist, voice coach and all around very interesting person, Jade Valour. Jade had posted an entry to the YBBC, and posted on one of Kristi's entries that Kristi should look her up here in Wellington and Jade would treat us to coffee. We could not match up Kristi's schedule and Jade's schedule, but I'm on holiday and so went to meet her. A lovely lady who has feted with Barrie and, if I recall correctly, most of the cast of Lord of the Rings on different occasions through a bit of luck and lots of hard work. She is very eloquent, very well traveled and could probably write a great blog (or even a non-fiction book about her adventures) by herself.

New Zealand Adventure, Day 13

Monday, 8-Feb-2010, NZ local time

They always say that the SuperBowl is watched around the world, but I never really took that seriously until Monday. I was walking past a bar today and watched a few minutes of the game. I'm about 10,000 miles away from where the game was played, and spent a few minutes on Monday afternoon watching a game that was being played live back home on a Sunday afternoon. Just contributes to the sense of surreal of this entire awesome trip has been.

On a completely random observation, it is both comforting and disturbing to see so many brands that I recognize on the store shelves back home. From Schick razors to Kellogg's cereals, to everything in between. There are some brands I've not seen before, and just for fun we've tried to stick with those. Pam's is a common brand, and seems to be the local generic for foodstuffs. They have shelf-stable milk and eggs here too. It was a bit weird at first, finding chicken eggs and cow milk on the aisles away from the coolers, but then I remembered the tech to do that was invented ages ago. They have to be refrigerated in the US because of the bacteria (well, that and we just like cold milk). In the US, pasteurization (using heat) stops short of killing all bacteria, so the refrigeration is used to inhibit bacterial growth. If it is heated more, the enzymes start to break down and it loses flavor. We haven't tasted the milk or eggs (lacking a kitchen) but I'm sure they're fine. One way to kill all bacteria is irradiation. It's perfectly safe, but in America at least we freak out immediately jumping to wrong conclusions like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or “Night of the Living Dead” and other dippy bits like that. Face it, Americans just like to freak out. (For the record, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were political disasters, not technical disasters – by that I mean a political environment existed to allow unqualified people to monitor nuclear energy facilities, and then those people chose not to act when something went wrong because they were afraid of getting in trouble for being ignorant or letting something go wrong.)

In the evening, I got to view the daily editing that Kristi did, hear her stories about how she and Paul S. got along very well (they have completely compatible editing styles). Kristi showed me the 5-minute cut on Monday, and that was superb. Then she explained how they'd made the 5-minute cut using bits they liked, then had to go all ax-murderer on it to pare it down to the required 3-minute limit. It's still a fantastic piece, and she has a copy of the 5-minute “director's cut” that she can take home. (It's not really the “director's cut” and I don't think she'll get to keep any of the raw footage to ever make a “director's cut” but we can always ask.)

Kristi is still very worried about music because it is very important (Barrie himself stressed this, in the category of things we already knew, but when Barrie Osborne stresses something – you listen!). Fortunately, Park Road Post has a music composer – Dave Whitehead – in-house who is world class, and as soon as he read Kristi's piece, he started writing music for it.

The production team back in Queenstown shipped over a DVD and two CDs with 700+ songs for Kristi to listen to and see if there might be something she could use, and due to time constraints we split the burden of sampling them to see, but nothing at all fit. The story of why these only arrived on Monday is that the production manager for one of the other finalists gave his iPod to that finalist so she could see if there was music she liked. This created – let's call it an imbalance – in the resources available to that finalist. As I understand (or choose to understand, because that's how I am and there is no evidence I have heard to believe otherwise) this was done completely innocently and without any malicious intent to give that finalist an unfair advantage, but it did create a real scramble to copy the iPod and provide it to the other four finalists (including Kristi). Tim, the first finalist to shoot his film, was practically finished with post-production when the matter arose, and fortunately for him, he had come into the project already having selected his music and artist (being a Kiwi, he already knew the Kiwi bands very well). Major shout out to Jill and Catherine for scrambling on zero notice to get this music up here. I feel a bit bad that Kristi won't use any of those songs, but she did get ideas from them that she was able to share with Dave and help define the direction of the music he is making, so as far as I'm concerned their effort was well worth it and is very much appreciated by Kristi and myself.

This evening, around 7 PM, there was a Brazilian Capoeira school doing a demo in the public square. Capoeira evolved from dance into a martial art and is very beautiful to watch. These were students and they had moves that were easily part kung-fu, dance, gymnastics and break-dancing. One of the students was wearing a t-shirt with this link - http://www.fotolog.com/crolinfight but I'm not sure exactly who they were. As best I can figure, Crolin Gracie is a Capoeira team in NZ.

New Zealand Adventure, Day 12

Sunday, 7-Feb-2010, 10:30 PM

My ankle has been lobbying for two days for me to stop moving and stay indoors. But I've been ignoring it because there are just too many interesting things to see and do. However, my knee has joined the ankle, and they have their own little PAC going. I think they're trying to recruit my other knee, then it's just a matter of time before the rest of my body throws in with them. So, for a while at least I'm grounded.

This morning I went wandering (duh) and I can see the Te Papa Museum from our window at the Duxton hotel. They have the “A Day in Pompeii” exhibit and Kristi and I are going to try to catch that before we leave on Saturday. It really depends on her schedule.

I think the Duxton is in a perfect location. I think every other shop within a six block radius is a local (i.e. non-chain) eatery and the rest are shops of some other sort. The waterfront is also very close and I actually wandered into a farmers' market by complete accident. I was walking along the waterfront and was suddenly browsing food stalls, handmade crafts and I counted seven mini-markets with just about any kind of fresh produce that New Zealand can grow.

Kristi was at Park Road Post today. Her first of three days of editing. She and Paul have hit it off famously and everyone PRP who meets her comments on how much they enjoyed reading her script and are looking forward to the finished product. Kristi and Paul have a good mock-up and apparently it is already getting good reviews internally :-)

When she got back, we went out wandering again and dinner tonight was provided by Wholly Pizza.

Random shout out to voice actor and retired US Marine Dallas Barnett. Kristi had a great time working with him. Thanks for your service to country and film :-) (He commented on her video blog on the YBBC website, so I figured I'd comment back.)

New Zealand Adventure, Day 11

Saturday, 6-Feb-2010

We flew out of Queenstown bright and early. Heidi saw us to the airport, checked our baggage for us, then we walked right onto the plane. Literally. No security check, no ID check, and the attendant at the door never even looked up.

We got a tour of Park Road Post and it is incredible! Apparently Peter Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh were very involved in every step of design. One of the goals was to make it feel like a home instead of an office building, and that it does. A very large home owned by the well-off and even-keeled with fine fixtures but nothing gauche. Really comfortable. The sound studios and editing suites are mini-movie theaters. The largest has a huge console where four techs sit, twelve recliners down front, and four over-stuffed couches at the back, so the director and anybody else the director wants around, can be as comfortable as they wish. Each of the studios is actually a separate building, but the connecting tunnel is so short and well concealed you would only know if someone told you. Wellington is built on a major earthquake fault line, so the studios have to be separate buildings or they could tear everything apart if they collapsed.

I watched the NZI Sevens on television. After watching Rugby for a few hours, I've decided a few things. Some select items include that it's a lot more interesting than I thought, and American Football players are sissies. These rugby guys do the same kind of tackles and pile-ups and do it without pads of any kind. I mean seriously, dislocated limbs anyone? (To my surprise, the worst injury I saw appeared to be a strain.)

Anyway, that was Park Road Post. We came back here and discovered the NZ 7s were going on. This is a bit like "SuperBowl meets Mardi Gras and runs two days." If I understood correctly, there is this major Rugby tournament where a bunch of teams whittle themselves down from a bunch to just one. We watched a bit of the game last night, some in our room, some on a 30-ft digital display the city put in the middle of the shopping district (after closing off four city blocks). American Football players are sissies; that was about the only take-away I got from watching the games.

We asked someone dressed as Tweedle-Dee about the costume tradition, and she had her husband explained that some time ago someone came up with the costume idea and it exploded. "37,000 people attending a costume party," was how they summarized it. So, naturally, I had to run out after the games ended at 10 and get some video (some posted to Facebook).

Kristi met with her voice actors and did the voice recording Saturday. She also met her editor and we got a tour of Park Road Post Production. Kiwis are very literal people. We knew we were going to Park Road Post and I said to Kristi last week "What do you bet Park Road Post-Production is on Park Road?" Guess what? Yep, it's on Park Road :-)

New Zealand Adventure, Day 10 supplemental

Friday, 5-February-2010

I was allowed on the set today to see the final wrap. Not just allowed, but someone actually came down from the mountain with a 4-WD vehicle to pick up myself and the Catherine M. the Producer (Barrie O. is Exec Producer). That was an incredible experience and Kristi was fantastic in action, ordering people around and selecting shots and calling “cut.” I had a great time. I had several people go out of their way to tell me what a great job she had done and that they'd enjoyed working with her. That was very cool.

I saw the dailies (called “rushes”) for the day. Even though the RED ONE camera is entirely digital, the terminology is still in “reels.” The raw data is rushed into a QuickTime format so the director can review the dailys and flag the ones she likes best. This list was then passed to Park Road Post where those takes were pre-processed somehow to make them ready when Kristi arrived. Apparently the RED ONE captures an insane volume of data so converting them to a form that can then be edited is a time consuming process. All the other takes still exist in case the editing team wants them, it just requires extra processing. I have no idea what the process is.

THE DAILIES ARE AWESOME!! I wish I could leak them to you so you could enjoy them also, but you'll just have to trust me.

Earlier in the week, Kristi and I had been out walking. She was talking through some ideas and her nerves, so I picked up a stone and wrote my name on it for her to carry for good luck. (I'm a romantic that way.) The final scene of the film includes a 20-foot tall “YES” spelled out in rocks. Kristi had put my stone in the collection so I could “make an appearance” in the film. (She's a romantic that way.) In the hurry to move onto the next shot, the stone got left behind. Kristi was really apologetic during the wrap as she explained my stone was there, but had been left behind. Five minutes later, during the wrap, a crew member (Kevin) came up to me and asked “Are you Patric? Is this your stone?”). I laughed and explained the story. He had been packing up the stone stones to return them to the quarry (because you can't just go about leaving 20-foot stone letters in a field) and found one with a name on it. He asked one of the other crew (Kerry) and she laughed and said “I do! And he spells his name that way and he's right over there.”) Anyway, that's short story is now part of the larger story of Kristi's soon-to-be-uber-incredible film and experience she'll always remember.

I also met Rajneel, one of the other finalists and we talked for about 10 minutes. Really nice guy. He has done a few self-funded films and some music videos, but never anything on this scale before. It was really funny to hear him express many of the same doubts and points of surreal confusion that Kristi had expressed a few days before. “I don't know how to choose a costume! I never had choices before because I had no budget. We always just told the actor – bring something that fits you and is blue!” I wish him well with his project (but, Kristi is still going to kick his butt.)

We watched the day's rushes again. Kristi had a great DP, who was able to help her bring the most of each scene and each shot. Dan M. (the talent) also does a great job emoting. I'll see if I can pirate some of the scenery vids to float here or on FB.

New Zealand Adventure, Day 10

Friday, 5-Feb-2010, 11:45 PM

This will be short because we are rushing to bed. 8:30 AM flight tomorrow from Queenstown to Wellington.

Thought I was going to write another "walked about a bit" post, but that all changed when I got the note that I would be allowed on set today. We jumped in a 4WD SUV and climbed a mountain (got great pix!) and got to watch Kristi in action shooting the last scenes. Tons of fun, and pretty much everyone came up to me at some point to tell me how great she was and they really enjoyed working with her. Her 1st AD even came up to me and said "You warned me she was brilliant, but understated it."

More tomorrow.

New Zealand Adventure, Day 9

Thursday, 4-Feb-2010, 5:30 PM Queenstown local time

Kristi's first shooting day should be closing soon. The schedule says wrap at 5:15 PM, but I suspect that is overly optimistic and they're about an hour outside town in any case. I think we'll do take out again tonight to celebrate (and really, the only groceries I have left are PB&J and bargain lunchmeat), but maybe I can convince her to walk into town with me to this little Italian place that Cathy the Intern and I ran into by accident on Monday. It is literally buried at the back corner of an ally, but once inside it has split-tree wood furniture, ambiance through the roof and excellent food. I got take-away spaghetti with chicken on Monday and Kristi and I both enjoyed it tremendously.

Today I walked some more. I wandered the path outside the hotel, going to the left from my balcony view. More gorgeous waterfront for quite some distance. There is a dock that Kristi and I found on Tuesday and I went and sat on that for a while. It is a private dock, technically speaking, but there are no barriers and I do appreciate the owners (whose house is uphill behind about a hundred trees) letting me use it while I listened to the wind on the water. Except when an airplane flies overhead, it is pretty quiet overall this far outside town.

I also wandered back into Queenstown proper, and this time went all the way through to the Skyline Gondola (www.skyline.co.nz). This is a 5-minute ride in a gondola car to the top of the mountain. Up there are numerous trails and touristy activities, including a luge if you want to get back down quickly, a bungy jump, and a bungy swing for those that want the bungy experience but with a little less randomness in your fall through space. I have to admit it was fun watching people throw themselves out into space and scream and scream until the bouncing stopped. They also have trails, and I wandered those a bit, and took pix, including from the other side of the mountain, but eventually the sheer steepness of the trails wore down my ankles. I'm a desk monkey – my body is still in training for this kind of thing, so I'm feeling really good about slogging a couple kilometers today. I got tons of pix, and I'll post those on Facebook along with the others.

As an interesting aside, the “paper” money here is not paper, but plastic. Very thin sheets, as flexible as paper, but much harder to crumple. Conversely, once they do get bent, they stay that way. I was saved from an impulse buy at a vending machine when it was simply impossible to straighten the bent corners of the bill it kept rejecting. Constructing the bills from plastic also makes it possible to put transparent windows in them, making them harder to copy.

The bills come in $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes. While it sounds bizarre to think of yourself carrying around $100 bills, sadly it isn't. I suffered sticker shock the first couple days, especially with food prices, even adjusted for the stronger US Dollar. A large pizza from Winnies (www.winnies.co.nz) costs $36 and delivery is $5 more. That “large” is about the size of an American “large” pizza, which could cost only USD$18, or so. The exchange rate is about 80%, so that En-Zed (“NZ” - New Zealand) pizza is roughly USD$29. I asked the locals and they point out two things: 1) yes, food prices are a significantly greater percentage of gross income here than in America, 2) Queenstown is primarily a tourist and television town, so there is a bit of a captive-market mark-up. (This captive-market mark-up was really obvious at the book store – school supplies were about what I'd expect to pay at home, but the novels, tour books and other tourist attractions were unbelievable – I mean, really, can you fathom dropping USD$18 on a novel that in Seattle might cost $8?? As much as I feel like I need a book, I just couldn't do it.)

Coins come in 10-cent, 20-cent, 50-cent, $1 and $2 denominations. The $1 and $2 are metal slugs and a pocket full of them will make you want to feed them into vending machines just to make them go away. All costs are rounded up to the nearest 10-cent mark. So a book that costs $5.99 (it was a special promo deal, but I didn't buy it because I would have blown through it in two days) would have tax applied, then round up to the nearest tenth, for example $6.73 rounds up to $6.80. That means there are no pennies or nickels here. A simple and elegant system, and I think the round-up goes into the general tax fund, but I'm not sure.

Alright, that's enough for today. I'm going to go upload some pix to FB and try to call Kristi to get an ETA for her return.

New Zealand Adventure, Day 8 supplemental

3-Feb-2010, Wednesday, 9:24 PM NZ local time

I'm trying to limit myself to one post per day, but I'm a bit excited here. Here is a copy of Kristi's first day shooting schedule, complete with her name as director and Barrie Osborne as Executive Producer. Massive props to everyone on the production team for being supportive and incredibly talented. They even treat me like a VIP and I'm just the husband on holiday...

For dinner tonight we did FergBurger (www.fergburger.com). We got the chicken sandwiches, and I swear they were as big as my head. We got one serving of fries - thank Goodness - because the bag of thick cut steak fries was the size of a Subway footlong sub. (That's a lot of fries.) To give you an idea of the volume of food in these two chicken sandwiches and fries - there are leftovers . I don't leave leftovers :-)

New Zealand Adventure, Day 8

As I write this, it is 2:30 PM on Wednesday, Feb. 3. Blogspot thinks I'm on Seattle time, so that is how the timestamps appear.

It's been a draining couple of days for Kristi, heading into shooting which starts at 5:30 AM on Thursday morning. Late Tuesday afternoon, she went out with her Director of Photography (DP) and Art Director (AD) and they discovered that one of the selected sites could not be made to work. That was heart-breaking since it means the waterfall probably gets cut entirely, and she'll need to use a different feature. That's the life of a director/story-teller, but the loss of the feature is a huge disappointment, and the lost time is a massive problem. She's back in the field today trying to nail down that final location while simultaneously trying to nail down the shot list, select voice talent for the voiceover (she'll work with them in Wellington this weekend), and find music.

The talent, Dan M., arrived in town today. Kristi had an initial costume and make-up consultation meeting with him this morning, and she'll meet him again late this evening to give him direction on how to represent the character. I've met him and he seems like a great guy. Actually, I ran into him in the lobby where he had that lost look on his face. The production office is right next to the hotel lobby, so I suspect the production team picked him up at the airport and delivered him straight to the production office. This hotel – the Rees – is really nice, but the layout is confusing until you understand the basic logic. They had given him a map, but even that makes no sense until you understand the basic logic. :-) I got him to his room, gave him his bearings here in Queenstown and he's all set. He's been to Queenstown a few times on film and commercial projects (in fact, he knows many of the production team from said projects), so he's all set.

It feels like New Zealand is struggling with high-speed Internet, but maybe that is just the places I've been (i.e. hotels). Checking email is fine, but forget trying to access YouTube and the pipeline positively choked trying to check the website for one of NZ's biggest outdoor clothing manufacturers (which made collecting costume ideas a pain for the entire production team). This is only really a problem because finding music without decent bandwidth is just an irritating joke.

If I sound a bit drained, that's because I am. I'm technically on holiday, but I'm also here to support Kristi as she finds her way through this project. She's learning a ton, and having some great experiences, but it would be nice if things had gone a bit more smoothly for her first experience with Hollywood. She's brilliant and resilient, though, and will pull through to produce an excellent film that she can feel proud of. And in the end, that's all we're really looking for. Winning the competition will be icing on the cake :-)

New Zealand Adventure, Day 7

Kristi met with Barrie Osborne yesterday (Monday) and has a conf call with him and her production team today. Barrie described her script as “lyrical” and advised her to pay special attention to music selection. She has all her locations chosen, including a lake, valley, and waterfall each appearing in a different scene.

Also on Monday, a production runner took us into town and we hit a half-dozen camping and clothing shops where I got to help model clothing and camping gear for the film. The talent arrives Wednesday night, where Kristi will give him a good walk through and prep before filming starts bright and early on Thursday. Filming continues through Friday and on Saturday we fly up to Wellington for post-production.

Today I decided I needed some exercise, so I took off for a walk. There is a waterfront trail outside our balcony, and I'd heard rumors that “downtown is 20 minutes that-a-way.” I was pleasantly surprised to find I did make it to town in about 20 minutes. What they neglected to mention is that “downtown” is actually another 10 minutes beyond that. I grabbed a muffin and drink at the painfully uber-ubiquitous Starbucks, ducked into a local chemist (pharmacy) for some extra sunblock (even with SPF 50, I'll probably roast from this walk), and – big surprise here – killed some time in a bookstore where I found a New Zealand 2010 calendar on sale :-) (I *always* enter a bookstore with the mantra “I will not buy anything, I will not buy anything,” and sometimes I succeed.)

It's Tuesday afternoon right now and Kristi is in her production meeting. She's working 12 to 14 hour days right now on her production, and mega-props to all the other crew who are working longer hours because they are supporting three films simultaneously. Tim, the first finalist, is shooting today and tomorrow. Kristi shoots Thursday and Friday. Aya, the other American finalist – chosen by populist vote – shoots on the weekend. If I recall correctly, the other filmmakers arrive after that. Kristi has met Tim, and may meet Aya, but probably won't meet the other two.

The Art Department is responsible for pretty much everything that is not photography or costume. For Kristi, that means camping tent, fake fire pit, about a thousand fist-sized stones to make the word “YES” 15 to 18 feet tall, backpack, water bottle, etc., etc. I did college theater and am familiar with all of these pieces (having done all of them in their myriad forms at one time or another), but had thought they were separate departments and did not appreciate how big the Art Department umbrella really is.

Each of the different production crew people here are freelancers. There is a list of about 30-35 people in the production crew. As freelancers they take jobs, see their part of the production through, then take a break before moving onto another production. Typically, their roles run 8 to 9 months for a typical film. The producer and director, of course, may spend years with a single project, and the casting agents typically only a few days or maybe a few weeks, with the art department, production managers, and others falling in-between. Teams form and dissolve with rapid succession. It was interesting being out yesterday with the production runner, Heidi, as we shopped in Queenstown – it seemed like everywhere we went we ran into someone she knew. Obviously, she's been in and about Queenstown a lot over the last few years, probably doing commercials and film alike. (This is the “commercial shooting” season right now, and the locals are even a bit blasé about it.)

As a complete aside (and a bit of bragging, perhaps), there is a steady-cam here this week because Kristi specifically asked for one when she arrived in Queenstown, thus setting the machinery in motion to bring one into town. Ditto goes for a crane camera. If I understand what I'm overhearing correctly, the other filmmakers might be able to benefit from having these tools here. I think this is great, because it's all in the good spirit of successful film making. Really, all of these young filmmakers recognize that just coming here is “they're big break” in many ways already.

I have never seen Kristi more in her element than I have this week. She has a natural and intuitive understanding of this kind of work, and just being here will open many doors and is really fantastic.

Okay, I've waxed loquacious enough for now. Time to rest my feet a bit before I see what is at the other end of the trail outside my balcony.

Finally, a huge shout-out to IT Source, in Federal Way, Washington. Providing an out-sourced IT department to businesses of all sizes, with particular proficiency in medical offices. I could never have dreamed to work for a better company than IT Source. http://www.itsource.com (Compliments are cheap, but I only go over-the-top when it is really deserved :-) )