FROM THE BLOG

Lenore Diaries (crew meets& pre-shoots)

Here’s a couple more diary entries…

Sunday (Crew Meeting)

Yeah yeah…I ain’t the crew but still. It’s fun to be invited to one..but you do get lost in all the industry lingo….

Interesting to learn that any object of focus is called a “hero” and it can extend beyond humans. E.g; If a cup is the focus, it is kindly referred to as the Hero cup. Then there’s the “Hero hour” basically time of shoot…etc etc. Information for the day.

The first assistant director is Jamie Platt. He usually works on the set of “Home and Away” as 2nd assistant director. Am strangely honoured in his presence, though I don’t really watch soaps. Speaking of which, I celebrate my 1 year TV abstinence sometime this month. Thanks to pesky reality TV.

Anyways the job of a 1st assistant director has something of a right brain function. Since the director is an immensely creative being, the 1st assistant director plays the part of a devil’s advocate.

“can we do this in 3 days?”
“how can we do it?”
“can we really fit these 5 scenes in 1 afternoon?”
“how?”
“Maybe we should let this scene go…we have plenty of other good scenes…”
“Do we really need to drive to Tempe to hire a BUS?!!” – (Tempe is 1.5 hours away from location in peak hour traffic.)

Here’s where I feel for Tahnee…whose creative soul is slowly eaten alive under the weight of practical issues. A fellow creative feels pain like that strongly.

Tarnia (set designer) is fretting over pregnant lady body costume. Jamie has volunteered costumes from Home and Away. Works out quite good. Here’s Tarnia having some fun.

Apparently, the costume makes it hard for you to breath and stuff.

Very realistic.

Somewhere in time on a certain Tuesday: Pre- Shoot takes – Matt insists this is NOT day 1 of the shoot.

Shooting begins on a Tuesday for some of us. The actual shoots are to take place on Fri to Sat on the end of March. Tuesday’s footage will basically be used on the shots for the weekend…

You see, we are shooting pictures within pictures. These are the animated photograph scenes.

My day begins early at 6am. I’ve been told to cut excerpts from Lenore’s where there will be Syncing. Being the Queen of last minute jaunts, this is me at 6am busy making the sound clips and on the second cup of concentrated caffeinated beverage.

Here are excerpts of how slowly I will be singing the song for your amusement. –as I said…the world of digital stills is a s-l-o-w one.

10.45 — I trek down Surry hills with my trusty sandals and boots in my bag. I’m crazy not stupid to do hilly Sydney in a pair of high-heeled boots. No freaking way. Packed into my mini luggage is my laptop (aka zombie girl), external drive, trusty USB 2.0 card reader.

I forgot to mention that crew today is small, and aside from starring in roles, I am now officially acting head of tech department.

11am — I’m at location. A little lost when an army of make up artists from Final Checks have already arrived and are ready to paint the apprehensive subject.

The first thing Debbie whips out is a shaving knife – I was duly rendered facially hairless as I chant “for my art, for the love of my art, for the love of my fucking art”. I’m thinking sheep shaving, then I’m thinking human skins, I’m thinking writing paper made of skin. Your mind likes to bring up strange issues of concern when you are under duress.

Her apprentice Janine, is looking at me with strange pity – I was hoping for actual salvation but oh well…Christina Ricci’s geisha look is stapled on the wall to the left of me. We’ve decided on a boof-head geisha styled look. So here it is.

Callan and Tahnee are in the back of the house setting up the lights. This is a shot where I become a moving picture. I wish I had more behind the scenes pics but then you can’t go around playing journalist when you ARE the scene…☹

4 scenes to get down for me…
1) crazy geisha mode (white)
2) pompous vindictive Victorian
3) red dressed wild haired thing @ alleyway
4) screaming thing

Without going into too much detail, crazy geisha mode probably took the most effort.

Make-up had to be applied at every 10 shots to make it look like I was crying. Debbie was standing by with drops to wash the eyeballs. And no I’m not shit hot as an actress with the whole emotional display thing.

USB 2.0 card reader worked like a dream. We used USB 1.0 the other day and time-wise it was suicide. 100-odd pics averaged a 20 minute dload time. With 2.0, 5 mins was max.

Zombie girl is slurping lots of data today. Love my PowerBook G4.

4pm and my scenes are done. This is when I first meet Mini-me. Otherwise known in the real world as Stephanie Parthenos. Stephanie is a wee 6 year old who is secretly 5. She plays a younger, less screwed up version of me. Cute-eh?

Somewhere on the set. I’m watching Stephanie slowly walk the longest 10 metres of her life. She’s unbelievably patient and animated as she moves slowly and delicately around in digital stills world.

Somewhere on the set, my boots start to feel like well carved torture devices. I want my sandals and I want them now…

Thursday eve of Day 1

With a little maths and some well wielded amounts of estimation. I sense that my current data storage isn’t going to hold.

Picture this: a single pic shot in RAW format comes up to 12 MB.
15 frames /second is the frame rate chosen
Wild ideas will come up here and there to make the original 3 min 30 clip come up to 20 mins thereabout worth of footage pre-edits
Makes it round about 17000 photos for the 3 days. (to be safe)
=Round about slightly less than 191GB. (for the paranoid)

A new drive and a RAM upgrade was in order, and it had finally arrived in the nick of time.

Introducing new toys:

Ice Cube and 1 gb of RAM…beautiful RAM. All ready for tomorrow. Tech dept also bought DVDs to back up the footages as they are made. More in a bit.