Hi, how are you?

Well hello over there, I didn’t see you over there (what’s that from? eh, I can’t remember, I quote without reference these days, not an original idea left in these bones, not since I microwaved those chewed up chips – a story for another time perhaps). So, washappening? I’ve been absent from these waves on account of I stopped caring a little. Stopped caring, mixed in with deep anxiety about feedback, combined with relationship breakdown and a touch of dad having cancer. Life is an anagram of File, so let’s do that shall we, file away that absentness and come up for air with a link. Here it is: www.youtube.com/boxedthewebseries. Enjoy. Also, I’m going to put a bunch more photos on flickr, because while finally looking at footage, I realised I could just take any stills I wanted. I fought the urge to make all the actors look, well, stupid. So, check that out too.

It for now.

Alana

Numbers.

Well, I’m sitting waiting for my last episode to export. It was due yesterday. Things went wrong. I should’ve been done by now. I coulda’ been an early bird contender. 84%. three minutes. Not long. You see, the sound came back to me with a strange warbly compression type thing on it, made everything muffled and a particular section distorted entirely. So, I had a pleasant 14 hour day at uni yesterday staring, listening, hearing, watching, slowly dying inside. Nah. Part of the job innit. Wup. It’s done. Took me 3 minutes to write whatever I just wrote.

The next day…

It’s now taken me overnight to get back to writing this. It’s been 24 hours since the sound was finally locked off, 3 days since the after effects and colour grading was finalised. About a week since the picture edit was completed. It’s been around 4 weeks since the final assembly, about 8 weeks since I imported the files, synced the sound, and realised that I didn’t get all the shots I wanted. It was 11 weeks ago that I got hideously drunk at the wrap party, drunk on my own ignorance of the mammoth task ahead, and also beer. It’s been 3 months since the filming started and the constant sense of impending doom began. It’s been roughly 5 months since the first production meeting and the semblance of a team started to take place. It’s been maybe 8 months since the first draft of a strange and convoluted idea, and finally, it’s been 1 year since I woke up in the middle of the night and jotted down a few notes about a delivery guy who mistakenly does an audition, a writer who never wrote, and an actor who just kept trying, trying, trying – no matter how impossible the odds.

I’m happy with the result. The screening is tomorrow and despite this needing to pee feeling, I’m cool.  And although I love chaos, I love a vague kerfuffle, I really hope for smoothness tomorrow. For the audio to be audible, for the video to be visible. For people to smile and be ok with it, whatever “it” is. That’s it from me. I will be publishing a real live Boxed The Web Series dedicated site sometime very bloody soon, with all the episodes, shiny and ready to be streamed. So thanks for reading, hope to see you round the box, on the outside though, ey.

SWOOSH

is the sound time makes as it pushes past you at peak hour to get onto an overcrowded Tangara. SMASH is the sound deadlines make when they arrive smiling and bloodied at your feet. Something weird happened last week. I was freaking out about the thingo, you know, this thing what I’m making. Then I started to relax, actually relax. Don’t get me wrong, my shoulders are still hunched up around my ears as I type and I can’t get rid of this twitch in my left eye or the dead pain in my cankles (what are cankles?), but I let go a bit. Realised that I can only do what I can only do, and there is something there. Images will move, audio will emit. The technical staff will mutter and scratch at themselves, whispering, pfft, I could’ve done better. Maybe. Well, yes, definitely. I also magically started to write again. Words flowed easily after the months I’ve spent fighting em. Left jab, short right, hard right, left hook…as dad might say. After two minutes of that shit, trust me, you are spent. I was being forced to write from all sides, not just the script for Boxed but this other play thing, which I vomited out angrily. It made me not want to write like I used to, for joy. Something deeply pleasurable about toying with an adjective, mouthing a noun, playing with the words like bubbles, floating from a pen and popping predictably, whenever, wherever they want to. I’m a failed actor, an exhausted unpublished poet, a bad DVD borrower, an uncoordinated dancer, but I do love to put words together. For better or worse, I think it’s with me for life, and I know now, when the mood strikes, let it strike hard and hold on.

I’ve always hated assembly

You know… you sit, you stand, you sing. This one time in PNG a riot broke out during assembly, don’t ask me why but it happened all the time, that and bomb threats. I remember being so excited by the chaos, I added to it by putting my hands over my ears and screaming, only to open my eyes and see the principal standing there looking none to pleased. But this other kind of assembly, this fancy ‘video’ assembly (side note: jesus, people walk heavy in my office, where are they thudding to? This one lady runs, RUNS to the toilet, what the hell? Why? Surely you can plan your toilet visit sensibly, give yourself some time, don’t wait till your prairie dogging…I’m at work by the way…) is really a totally different kind of assembly, when you think about it.

I should have finished the assembly about one and and a half weeks ago, according to my gmail calendar or in professional speak ‘schedule’. I got sidetracked by hospital visits and airport runs and life in general. I realised that I have always been that person that finishes things at the last minute. I wait until a deadline looms then I draw from some hidden reserve of discipline and get it done. This cannot work like that. Firstly, I have to physically go to a place to edit, which means I have to make time to travel there and plan around work and family crises. So anyway it’s happening. The thing is actually coming together. I showed my work in progress to a couple of people yesterday and thankfully they didn’t put their hands over their ears and scream ‘make it stop’. So that’s a plus.

Not much else to report, I’m doing a fucking poetry reading tonight. I don’t know why. I said I wouldn’t do them anymore, but I somehow got tricked in to it. If you want to come along it’s at the Bangarra Mezzanine at 6pm, maybe it’s part of the Sydney Writers Festival, I don’t know, I haven’t been well informed. So, anyone who reads this will likely have had a part in the creation of Boxed the web series, so I’ll just quickly mention that the date for the screening is Friday the 24th June. It is a private screening, so if you want to come, you just need to shoot me an email alanakicks@gmail.com

I got nothing else.

Community sweet community

You might think I am speaking of the Community that usually follows Arts and while I have plenty of love for that, I’m really hot for the award winning NBC comedy about a group of students at a community college, starring a mesmerising Chevy Chase…

And it goes on like that…

I started writing the above blog last night, tired, bored, watching Community, drinking. Imagining that I could write a deep, intellectual piece on Why Community Works, with such hilarious lines as:

Dean: Jeffrey, I am the least racist person in the world. My best friend, when I was six years old, was a black man!

Or:

Abed: Jeff, you’ll have to play the part of my dad.
Jeff: I don’t wanna be your father.
Abed: See? You already know your lines.

And:

Annie: But maybe when Jeff gets here we could talk to him as a group about his tardiness …
Pierce: Oh come on, don’t use that word around Abed.

Trust me, that one grows on you.

ALSO GUESS WHAT?!

I managed to get my $250 late enrolment fee removed, by writing a letter and stuff. So that’s cool. Fight the Power etc. Anyway, regarding the actual production of Boxed, the assembly is almost complete, and by that I mean “there is still extraordinary work to be done” – which is a line I stole off the news, regarding something very different. Good night, I’m heating up lasagna.

breakfast tacos

Sitting, watching Robert Rodriguez’s ten minute cooking school and deciding on whether I can be bothered making tortillas from scratch. These are the big decisions. They do look damn good, but I am also damn lazy. One outweighs the other. Can you guess which? So, I may have been a bit hot headed in my previous post. Bureaucracy is an inherent part of any institution and I’ll admit that like anything, you get out what you put in (to a degree). I’ve recently been rejected from another application, this one was to go and live in Papua New Guinea for a year, filming music and art workshops which aim to increase AIDS and TB awareness. The letter always starts out the same… “thank you for your application”…then your eyes automatically jump to the words “we regret” or “high standard of applicants” and to paraphrase it will continue, your application sucked, thanks for wasting our time. I have a nonchalant attitude towards rejection these days, and this one was excellent insofar as you can register for feedback, which ten years ago, I would have burned the computer that contained the rejection, these days I will register for feedback. I don’t support competitions per se, but persisting with filling in applications certainly gives you a sense of what you are truthfully trying to achieve. I think this is why I wanted to make a web series, of course there’s competition online but it’s also something of a free market. Film festivals receive more applications than ever, and sure, if Boxed seems worthy then I’ll give it a bash, but otherwise, remove yourself from the playing field and do it because you want to. Because it means something. I reckon. I also think I’ll try make a tortilla from scratch, why the hell not.

general error

Ahoy! So, on account of being cut off from all uni facilities until I pay an oustanding late enrolment fine (which trust me, is utterly ridiculous – I was already enrolled in my course, but I was supposed to select my subject, of which there is only one – fuck you bureaucracy), I have found myself on the outside of the editing suites. I brought all my footage home only to discover my system won’t play these later versions of final cut pro files. It doesn’t tell you this outright, it just gives you a “general error” or “general error 41″. From the forums I’ve read that I need to trash my preferences, or revert to my auto save vault, honestly, I’m wary of screwing up my files. I have tried though, but it doesn’t suprise me that my old computer can’t handle it, not sure what I was thinking imagining that it could.

Anyway, it leaves a dull taste in your mouth and a sort of stone like feeling in your stomach, something I endured last night, which I attribute to the Moussaka I made out of a recipe book, which though tasty, is rather heavy in the belly. I’ll use the opportunity to read up on fcp, and this offline editing thing. I tell you, in two years of a post grad production degree, I haven’t had one final cut pro tutorial. Everything I know (the tiny amount that it is) I learned from doing, which is a bitch when you get stuck on something as generic as “general error”. Woe is the state of my overpriced and incomplete education. I guess I need to remember why I did this degree in the first place, equipment and people. I could never afford to hire the equipment, and it would be difficult to round up the crew for a personal project, say it’s for your Masters and people know that you have a good chance of completing the thing. People say, save your money and get your own project up, but I don’t have the capital for that. Sure ten thousand would have gone a long way but who would lend it to me? At least, I can borrow from the goverment right now and know that they’ll have a hell of a time getting it back, and they won’t break my knee caps anytime soon. Having said that, there is that $25o owing. Bastards. What to do. Bite the bullet, be late on rent. Stick it to em, don’t graduate. Ah, choices, at least I have the luxury of choice. I’m grateful for that. I think I’ll write a letter, see how far I get, then pay it, but at least they’ll know I disagree with their flagrant extortionism.

So, there is a new clip I did last week, when I still had access to the labs, it’s now up on www.indiegogo.com/boxed, while you’re there, consider chucking in…? I will love you for it, and you will get a DVD, some kind of thoughtful memorabilia, and a warm fuzzy feeling in your belly.

post haste post

Well I got drunk like a sucker last night, like it was the first time I ever drank, like beer was some kind of life saving magical elixir. It’s not. We had a production wrap party at the pub. I was on a mission to relax, because yesterday afternoon we did all the voiceovers and essentially that was the last piece of the production puzzle. Now it’s time to assemble. You can find me in a box in front of other boxes, editing boxed. By the way, I did my talk on poetry shit the other day, and I used the opportunity to show an audience of strangers several clips from the show and…they laughed! Hooray! Hopefully it wasn’t just relief-induced delirium from the relentlessly boring power point presentation I had just shown, about audience fragmentation and increased interaction with digital devices and platforms. Aaaanyway.

nether regions

Hi, how are you? I’m okkkkaaayyyy. So we are in the land between filming and a thing being rendered, exported, dumped, uploaded, linked, imbibed, consumed, digested…let me see, what am I saying? Ah yes, to be clear, we are at the perenium, and depending on the direction we take, it could get very dark and shitty or it could be exciting and produce future creative offspring. I’m talking to an editor, hope she is keen to play. Raphael (actor, camera assistant, all round ace guy) offered to do some after effects stuff, but it looks like it might be me doing the intial rough cut which freaks the hell out of me. I like editing, but this is a lot of footage, because despite how fast we worked Josef managed to get a fair bit of coverage (quite a lot of a trouserless chicken leg wielding Tug Dumbly – Tug was trouserless not the chicken leg, it had been roasted naked, no chicken pants). It’s a challenge and we have around about a month before the screening. Fuck.

Anyway, I have a presentation at Ozco next Wednesday 20th April, talking about  crossplatforminterartmultimediaperformancepoetry (don’t you judge me). I’m attempting to make a teaser to show to my audience of Australia Council workers getting out of writing rejection letters for the afternoon and drinking spiced peppermint and orange tea. So, come if you dare, you’ll get a preview of boxed and you can steal some fancy tea bags, like I did last Wednesday. 3pm 372 Elizabeth St, Slurry Ills.  Other than that, I backed everything up safely, which I realise now is rather critical. I go shopping for external hard drives next paycheck, because versions of everything sit in Bernie’s house, Josef’s house, and multiple locations across the uni’s electronic campus. If anybody knows any animators who might want to discuss an idea I have…hit me in the eye. Goodnight.

thanks for all the fish

Well today is the last day of our maniacally fast five day shoot for this crazy webby tv thing. There is still road left to travel, we’ve gone from sydney to newcastle on the first day, newcastle to woolgoolga via port macquarie, i think we hit lismore the following day and pimpama is on the horizon. However that’s just the production, I do believe the final piece will end us up on Thursday Island maybe, or even Papua New Guinea perhaps? Who knows? I certainly don’t know what I’m talking about, I lost myself at woolgoolga. Anways, I think the point is, that after a few minor catastrophes yesterday regarding memory and data wrangling, we are almost done with chapter one. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the funding site, my pockets are hurting and that little bit extra will certainly supplement the forthcoming expenses. Thank you to the actors who have been incredible and to the tireless crew, the baton is passed on to those in post world. p.s. new photos over there…over there, no to your right. left of this screen. YOUR right.