Our two-day short film/teaser trailer shoot this weekend was amazing, but it couldn’t have been achieved without the massive efforts of everyone in the team.
To say thank you, I made a pavlova. I just whipped one up. It was a little Aussie treat for our American crew, and also a treat for the Australians who know how awesome they are.
I’m pleased to say that both the thank you gesture and the pavlova went down well with everyone. However, to be brutally honest I think the reception of the pav is going to be eclipsed by the reception of the short film. It is going to be AMAZING!
Okay, so from the title it looks as though I’ve got lots to write today, and I do, but you’ll have to wait another day.
It was my first day on set today as we shoot our short film and I am plum tuckered out. I’ve finished off my commitments for the day, which include cooking muffins and mini quiches for breakfast and a pavlova for afternoon tea. I’ve also typed up the menu for tomorrow, so people know what to expect.
As for today, it was all interesting. There are lots of stories to tell. I learned a lot.
So until I can describe it all in detail to you, I will leave you with a photo of Michele and I in front of a fake pillar. The story behind the pillar is that it creates depth with camera angles. I think its primary purpose today was to fool everyone. I think at least 10 of the 16 people on set were tricked by it and leaned on it, or assumed it was a solid building support at some stage of the day.
Okay, so I have the far more official title of Production Coordinator for our short film, but my duties have extended to catering.
Today was the last pre-production day before we start shooting tomorrow. Which meant that everything needed to be locked down, picked up and delivered to our location. While Gin and Devoir were picking up lights, cameras and maybe some action along the way, J and I were at the supermarket. Three supermarkets actually. I was shopping for catering supplies to feed 16 people for two days and she was getting art department props, stuff like apple juice to be pretend beer and baking soda for pretend cocaine.
We went through the running order for the shoot and where things would be. All this new jargon floated around as they ‘blocked’ the scenes and called out code words to each other which maybe one day will make sense to me (just not today).
Then it was back to the ranch for me to finish on the breakfast items of little egg & spinach filo tarts, muffins and the cupcakes for afternoon tea. I ran out of time to make the pavlova, so I hope to have time tomorrow night to do that. I’m sure people could do without it, but it’s such a lovely Australian touch for our new American friends who have come on board to help us make this film.
I’ve just printed out the lunch menu, for which we are ordering food to be delivered, so I think I’m about sorted. Now I just need a good rest before I have to leave the house in 7 hours for my first day on set.
Yes, I’m nervous. Yes, I’m scared. I have no idea what to expect. But none-the-less it’s going to be exciting. And very cool to be on set with my buddies making a movie.
Perfect poolside networking outfit courtesy of Charlie Brown & Nine West.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect at the Advance Global Australians, Global Networks Word of Mouth event, but any opportunity to meet new people is welcome.
I checked out the venue’s website and found that it looked pretty swanky, so I thought I’d best dress accordingly for my first poolside event in LA, in Beverly Hills, no less. I’m so glad I didn’t skimp on the frocks and shoes I brought with me as I definitely have something for all occasions in my wardrobe.
When I arrived, I was glad I’d deliberated over my outfit as I first met one of the organisers, and then the Consul-General. It was a really interesting and diverse crowd ranging from executive types to artist types, to those who are firmly rooted in LA to newbies like me and with quite a number of Americans trying to recreate time they spent in Australia thrown in for good measure.
My first real conversation was with an older woman all glammed up and with her silicon enhancements on display. At first I felt completely gauche beside her and her posh accent, but then I just rolled with it as she told me about her new grandson in Byron Bay, her two ex-husbands from Adelaide, the nightclub she’d once owned with Sean Penn, her career in interior design, real estate and News Corp and her 32 years in LA. While I was a bit intimidated at first, I warmed to the task and let myself be in awe of these people with super interesting tales to tell.
I met Broken Hill’s version of Billy Elliot. Whilst he first introduced himself as a carpenter and builder to me, later in the evening he divulged how he left school to do his apprenticeship as soon as he could. He rode motorcross for Suzuki and took boxing for strength and then a girlfriend introduced him to ballet for balance. He ended up in Adelaide where they said he had the talent to pursue ballet further, and then ended up dancing in the US for 12 years. He also recorded a song with Tania Kernaghan which kicked off his country music career. Wow.
I met a guy with three passports who shared how he met his wife on Contiki and then detailed their courtship. I met an American lawyer who said he left his heart in Australia in 2009, specifically at a restaurant called Crocodile Thai in Kings Cross while on a 2 week holiday. I met a British photographer with a love interest in Melbourne.
And then I met Peter, a meditation teacher. He too, had an interesting story. I guess I’ve always been kind of wary of ‘new age’ stuff, most likely a product of my upbringing, but as I get older I start to open myself more to new concepts outside the structure in which I live. I have a feeling that I met Peter for a reason and that meditation is going to have a role to play in my personal journey.
One thing I discovered this evening was that every Australian in LA has a super interesting story; one that they are not afraid to share in a significant amount of detail with strangers. Which makes me wonder about what my story will be in ten years time. Whatever it is, I’m pretty confident that it’s going to be fascinating.
That’s what Leigh Whannell and James Wan (the Saw creators) said as they introduced their new horror flick Insidious at an Australians in Film screening tonight. I needed no further encouragement.
Now, we know that I am not a fan of horror films, so how come I ended up at a horror film made by the guys whose Saw films I can barely even bring myself to look at the trailers for? Well, as we have a horror script in our arsenal, I figured I needed to go and check it out. Perhaps you could say, confront my fear, before we make something scary ourselves.
I briefed a new friend beside me as to what to expect from me; screaming, jumping, hiding behind my shawl and the like. I needn’t have bothered, because whilst she was a diehard horror fan, she was more terrified than me. Don’t get me wrong here. I screamed. Loudly. Loud and often enough to come away with a sore throat. I also jumped out of my skin, spent a good deal of time covering my face with my shawl and biting the end of it and doing little panting breaths in the scary aftermath. But in amongst the scary stuff (which was thankfully not gory stuff), there was some really nice comic relief. How can you not laugh at the comedy Angus Sampson brings?
So despite the film being out of my comfort zone, I enjoyed it. I thought it was an interesting story that came together and I think other scaredy cats like me would enjoy it too.
Perhaps the best bits for me were the introduction of the film and the follow-up q&a with Leigh and James. These Aussie guys are so down to earth and incredibly funny. They have an infectious enthusiasm and when they talk about Insidious, their other films, their creative process and each other, you can’t help but feel excited for them and inspired at the same time.
The day finally dawned when Michele and I hit the road for an op shopping adventure.
We jumped in Esmeralda, rolled down the windows, opened the sunroof and cruised on down Hollywood Boulevard to the Goodwill store in Silver Lake. With a prime location in a beautiful modern building with big glass windows on Sunset Boulevard it is a lovely environment to go op shopping in. There are long aisles of clothes categorised by type and colour, and lots of staff on the floor.
Scouring the racks, I tried on a few dresses and ended up buying a couple of wrap dresses which will be handy come summer. Michele also got herself a new outfit with only shoes left to find.
Then, we well and truly got stuck into the book section. We were checking every single shelf and exclaiming when finding a book we loved. Bibliophile Michele would pull a beloved book off the shelf and then ask if I’d read it. Unfortunately for the most part, my answers were no. I haven’t read a lot of books recently, and in the past year, most of my reads have been Latin American fiction by either Isabel Allende, Paulo Coelho or Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I found books I wanted to share with Michele, like the Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M Auel. We traded stories over the Confessions of a Shopaholic books and how they led to a strong urge to hit the shops. We discussed Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, even though neither of us had read it. The crowning glory would have to be Michele finding a 1966 hardback edition of her favourite book, with red tipped pages. That made her day.
Despite me deciding that I wouldn’t buy books to weigh me down in LA, that I would just borrow them from the beautiful, fresh Silver Lake Library, I was tempted by the low prices (with no tax added on top) and came away with seven books to read.
So I’d best get off the computer now and into a book.
I know it’s not the stereotype where I’m from, but I really do find most of them friendly. Americans strike up conversations easily and frequently and are often ready for a chat. That is one thing I love about being here. It really is okay to talk to strangers, and you don’t get glared down when you do. You just never know who you’re going to meet.
However, when the conversation is more than a random chit chat in a queue or other such encounter, they also talk a lot. A lot. And mostly about themselves. It can be very tiring to keep up the nodding, agreeing, oohing and aahing you feel you need to make in order to appear polite. Meanwhile, your sentence beginnings remain stuck in the back of your throat as you try and staccato out a phrase when you think it is finally your turn to speak only to find out that it was not.
So I was pleased when after being cooped up inside and only speaking to Gin, J and a girl on the phone all day I had a great chat with the guy who served me at Dosa Truck, a South Indian food truck that was out the front of Silver Lake Wine. It was a quiet time of night with barely any customers, so I stuck around to eat my dosa and had a nice conversation about Palm Springs, film sets, Australian versus New Zealand accents, taking public transport, the desert and food trucks.
There is something really invigorating about a good chat. Especially an unexpected one. I walked back to my car feeling really happy and I felt that knot of excitement at being somewhere new with millions of new people to meet return to me.
After ripping off the interfacing the damage was exposed and I got to work ripping staples out.
All the cards fell into place this weekend for me to fix my broken box spring.
I spent Saturday stripping the upholstery off the frame staple by staple. As I had not yet purchased a tool set, I managed to do the job with my Leatherman (which by the way, has never been used as much as it has here where it is truly indispensable) and a pair of nail scissors. It did take a really long time though and my patience wore somewhat thin.
By the end of the day I’d removed the interface, the fabric cover and the big piece of cardboard sitting on top of the slats and exposed the frame in all its shoddy Made in USA glory.
After removing the fabric and cardboard. I still can't believe they tried to gaffer tape it up.
Cue to Sunday where prior to going to Home Depot for the timber I’d measured up and to buy myself a tool kit and drill I met up with My Friend Who Puts the A in LA to go to the Hollywood Farmers Market. I mentioned my planned outing and discovered that he has a drill which he gladly loaned me after I said I’d buy the drill bits he didn’t have. So that saved me a few bucks.
I always enjoy going to Home Depot (a Bunnings equivalent) in Westlake, between Echo Park and Downtown. The staff are friendly and helpful, and there are so many conversations going on in Spanish around me. Today no fewer than three people helped me out and I had at least four others ask if I needed some help. Maybe it was because I wore my damsel-in-distress-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing look. I find it is always helpful when doing traditionally male things, even if I really do know what I’m doing.
I picked up the drill and driving bits for A, bought a probably dodgy $10 tool set, some screws and had five pieces of pine cut to length. I had initially been concerned that the timber wouldn’t fit in Esmeralda, but they did easy peasy as unlike my Daewoo in Australia, she has fold down seats.
Putting the drill to work on the slats
Back home I pulled the frame out into the lounge area and tried to rip off the broken slats. They were nailed down harder than they looked (with an odd little nail that had a thread on the end) so in the end I just broke off the splintered pieces. The centre rail was broken and had a piece missing, so I screwed a new piece of pine to the side of it and up against the chock blocks and then put the four new slats into the frame.
Finished and atop the frame! DIY success.
I decided against putting the fabric cover back on because it was one of the manky items that had been painted, and also it was just more work! Dad always says I do a rough job of things (on the DIY front), and whilst it probably rings true on this occasion the end result is all that matters, and tonight I will sleep in an elevated position for the first time in ages.
The doorman gets the best seat in the house, although the view of the stage is pretty shoddy.
Astra and I were headed out for the evening to see a musical comedy show, Lost Moon Radio, produced by a (hopefully soon to be) friend I met last week.
We had just got on the freeway and I was telling Astra how I like to sit on about 55 miles per hour (not quite 90kmph) when all of a sudden all I could see in my mirrors was a cop car with flashing lights and sirens blaring. I was being pulled over. I had a mini panic because I didn’t really know what to do. I moved into the far right lane and went to stop on the shoulder when over the megaphone I heard “Take the next exit”, so I kept going. The exit seemed to go on forever and there wasn’t anywhere to pull over. The cop could sense my hesitation and said “Exit the freeway! Exit the freeway!”
I continued to receive barked instructions over the megaphone, which were distorted and unintelligible as we passed under the freeway, so I trundled slowly on and got a commanding “STOP!” I made to turn and get my handbag off the back seat, but Astra warned me not to, just to stay still in case he got spooked about me pulling a weapon or something. Whilst I’ve not had to use it before, I’m sure I could use my handbag as a weapon, especially since I had the mean motorcycle bag with me, but that would be as close as I would get to carrying and using a weapon.
The cop appeared at Astra’s window with a torch. I pressed the button for it to wind down and he asked to see my registration papers and drivers license. He then told me that he’d pulled me over because my tail light was out. He didn’t really want to believe that I didn’t know that but said he would let me off with a warning. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to know when my lights aren’t working, and after just having picked Esmeralda up from the mechanic, it didn’t even cross my mind to check. But I promised to get it looked at the next day.
As the cop went to leave, he asked if I knew how to get back on the freeway, and I said “I have a GPS”.
Not that it helped. We went around in circles for a while as we ended up going north instead of south on the freeway and then east instead of west on an exit to turn around. Despite still feeling shaken, we could see the funny side of driving in circles.
For some reason, the GPS (whose name is Lori the Lunatic), kept telling me to exit the freeway way earlier than I had seen on my earlier Google Maps direction plot. Supremely confident in my ability to find my way, I ignored Lori every single exit until La Brea which is where I wanted to get off. Then I mucked it up and couldn’t get off so I had to wait until the Fairfax exit. Then Lori didn’t want to help me get on West Adams Boulevard, so Astra and I found that on our own and then proceeded to the address. However, after we passed La Brea I started to have my doubts about where Lori was trying to take us.
After a mile and a few blocks, I thought I’d best check the address. And well, human error does occur. It seems I’d typed in 3253 instead of 5253. I think a bit of dyslexia had kicked in there. So we turned around and finally made it to the venue on time – albeit via a most roundabout trip. I would love to see a print out of where we drove, there’d be comedy in that.
Lost Moon Radio Episode 9 was great (and worth the massive adventure to get there). There were some very talented people and some really funny pieces and it was a great opportunity to take advantage of the diverse entertainment on offer in LA. Though I didn’t get up and sing karaoke to the live band afterwards; that would have been bad entertainment.
I know it’s not that special in this hollywoodland of movies to see films before they are released in the cinema, but this country girl still thinks it is out of this world.
That is one of the reasons I’m a member of Australians in Film. You get to see many films before they are released, and if you conveniently forget that you paid a membership fee, then they are free! You also get to see the stars of the film at the event, and whilst I’ve never actually spoken to any of them, I’m quite starstruck.
Last night I took along My Friend Who Puts the A in LA to see Sucker Punch. The marketers have spent a fortune on this campaign with billboards and ads everywhere. It’s been all around me and I expected it to be a Kill Bill meets Scott Pilgrim type film – like, super cool with lots of awesome fight scenes and a video game fantasy element. It sadly didn’t live up to my expectations. It was stylised to the nth degree, which looked awesome, but didn’t draw me into it. There was minimal dialogue and I found the contrast between the action sequences and the mental asylum inmate camaraderie too extreme. I was also disappointed that the almost solely female cast were then placed in an even more demeaning situation than the mental asylum, a whorehouse (ostensibly to attract a male audience with action and chicks in minimal clothing). I really wanted to be surprised and like Sucker Punch, but it wasn’t to be.
Emily Browning who plays the lead character BabyDoll and Abbie Cornish who plays Sweet Pea introduced the film and I have to say, from a marketer’s point of view, that Abbie is PR gold. When she had the microphone, she then moved to in front of the sponsor banners so the photographer would get them in the background and she addressed the audience in the eye. She answered all the questions so well and really made us want to get suckerpunched.
So even if I didn’t really like the film, the screening still rates on my cool meter.
a little cameo 