February 2006

  • strict warning: Non-static method view::load() should not be called statically in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/views.module on line 906.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_handler_argument::init() should be compatible with views_handler::init(&$view, $options) in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/handlers/views_handler_argument.inc on line 744.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_handler_filter::options_validate() should be compatible with views_handler::options_validate($form, &$form_state) in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/handlers/views_handler_filter.inc on line 607.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_handler_filter::options_submit() should be compatible with views_handler::options_submit($form, &$form_state) in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/handlers/views_handler_filter.inc on line 607.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_handler_filter_boolean_operator::value_validate() should be compatible with views_handler_filter::value_validate($form, &$form_state) in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/handlers/views_handler_filter_boolean_operator.inc on line 159.
  • warning: strtotime(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/modules/node/views_handler_argument_dates_various.inc on line 72.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_plugin_style_default::options() should be compatible with views_object::options() in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/plugins/views_plugin_style_default.inc on line 24.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_plugin_row::options_validate() should be compatible with views_plugin::options_validate(&$form, &$form_state) in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/plugins/views_plugin_row.inc on line 134.
  • strict warning: Declaration of views_plugin_row::options_submit() should be compatible with views_plugin::options_submit(&$form, &$form_state) in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/modules/views/plugins/views_plugin_row.inc on line 134.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.
  • warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home2/standing/public_html/sites/all/themes/STP/node.tpl.php on line 7.

Life

This year, I've been living with doctors. I've also lived with a lawyer and an engineer. Now I'm living with another lawyer and someone who works in HR.

Normal people. People whose jobs have structure and purpose.

And they're not boring, either. They're interesting. They build (literally) bridges. Not in a "build a bridge and get over it" kind of a way, or a "bridges to a network of artistic communities" kind of a way - they literally build bridges. Well, the engineer does. The other ones do things like, you know, deliver babies. Bring people into the world. That kind of stuff. The others appear in court. One of them employs people.

I don't even employ myself. I'm what's called freelance.

Wikipedia defines a freelancer as "a self-employed person working in a profession or trade in which full-time employment is also common. The word's etymology derives from the medieval term for a mercenary, a "free lance," which literally described a knight who was not attached to any particular lord, and could be hired for a given task".

Well, it's true in a way. I'm not attached to any particular lord. Not in my professional life. In that sense, I guess I'm kind of my own lord, which is nice.

It's the "working in a profession or trade at any given task" aspect that makes freelance sound rather like work-whoring. Sometimes, when I go home to find doctors who've saved lives and engineers who've constructed bridges, it does make me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my time. The other day, I was negotiating orange juice prices (no, really) at one of my paid jobs, when Rita called asking did I know the German translation of "I Could Be Anybody". Not exactly your average day in the office.

I suppose it could be described as "mercenary" though.

I'm thinking of writing "mercenary" as my profession on my tax forms. Or at the very least on my passport. Although the other option is, I could just write, "own lord". I'd be in some good company there.

Linguistically speaking

So we’ve been trying to work out what the title of our film is in various different languages, because we’re thinking we might send it to people overseas. It’s arguably fairly presumptuous to believe that the French would be interested in je pourrais être quiconque, but we don’t care because it sounds posh. And anyway it’s true: je pourrais etre quiconque. You can’t deny it.

I think Melbourne and Fitzroy will look way cool to the French anyway. And the Germans. Sure, they’ve got that French tower, and those German beers. But we’ve got Flinders Street Station and nice cheap bottles of wine without labels on them, and trams that pose difficult lighting questions in post production. How can they not think to themselves, “C’est vrai! Je pourrais être quiconque! En Australie!” We’re probably injecting billions of dollars into the Australian tourism industry as we speak.

By the way, Melanie Howlett (one of the Standing There captains of industry) is way clever. She and Nick Jaffe are our official translators. Does anyone out there know Russian? Not much snow in je pourrais être quiconque, but there’s a possibility that in the opening scene someone is having a vodka.

Surely that's what's known in marketing as an "angle". Russia, here we come!

Our Baby

Our little film came into the world last night at 1am after a six month labour and an even longer gestation period. Producers and movie are both happy and well. The little bundle of joy weighed in at nearly fourteen minutes, and visiting hours will be announced on this website very soon. Congratulations to everyone involved!

In order to guard against post-natal-depression, we have decided to get busy planning for the future of our little darling. We will be designing a DVD, we will be going around to all the best festivals and seeing if we can enrol the film (although the waiting lists are very competitive) and we will be organising a naming ceremony, in the form of a cast and crew screening.

I will also be putting my metaphor to death, because I feel I need to press on without it. Hopefully my heavy symbolism will get me through this emotional time.

Colouring In

We got the film back from the colourist yesterday and now we're watching it again. We've watched it a few times now. Like, maybe a couple of million. Maybe a trillion. You know China? China's really big. We've watched the film a China-worth of times.

This whole "colours" thing is funny. Weird funny - not amusing - it's the least amusing thing ever. Deeply serious. You sit there, staring at a whole lot of screens and making really rash decisions based on instinct. And it's not even a good instinct, apparently. The colourist (cool job title, don't you think?) - his name's Marcus - he told us that it's a fact (so therefore it is) that humans only retain memory of colour for five seconds. So if I show you a colour and then six seconds later I show you another colour, well frankly I don't care what you think because you don't know what you're talking about.

So, imagine the confidence that piece of information inspires in us as we all sit around watching the same pictures over and over and trying to remember what we think we want.

Anyway, gives a whole new meaning to the expression, "You're looking a little off-colour". Our film was looking quite off-colour for a while there, but it's looking healthier now. It's back on the solids and it isn't watching Oprah and vomitting into a bucket anymore. Hopefully it will be able to go outside and play with its friends soon.

Personally, I can't wait.

Little bastard's been under my feet for months.

Oscars

Well, I would be lying if I said I wasn't pretty disappointed to read in the papers that I Could Be Anybody has not been nominated for an Oscar this year.

Meetings

I was having a meeting with Stewart in a cafe the other day when a waiter accidentally spilled a litre and a half of water over the two of us. We weren't even being offensive.

Were meetings invented in the eighties? They feel like they were. Well, maybe not the sort of meetings we have. The sorts of meetings we have feel like they were invented by us. They're in a different gene pool from the kind of meetings you can charge to your company account and complain about to your therapist.

Standing There Productions meetings are usually too long. They can be called with little or no notice, they are quite frequently on weekends, and they often involve lengthy and complicated tangents relating to the role of women in traditional cinematic narrative, or discussions regarding what's worse: forgetting your wallet, or running really late (in other words, Rita versus Lorin).

Rita and I met with some excellent people at a DVD place called Eskimo the other day. That was a couch meeting, in an old garage, with beers. That's a good meeting in anyone's book. Then we met with a colourist who was supposed to be at a karaoke night. He didn't even look like he was going to sing, so that was disappointing. And then there was the under-water meeting between Stewart and myself. A litre and a half of water over our heads and all we got was a free drink each. Had we been charging our meeting to a multi billion dollar account, that would have been an outrageous exchange.

"Only a free drink each? After being drenched by a waiter? I say, do you know who I am? Let me introduce you to my lawyer..."

Not for us, though. We felt like royalty. A free drink and a free shower. That's the low-budget filmmakers' equivalent of a corporate credit card.

Now all I need to do is get someone to accidentally attack me with scissors and I'll get that haircut I so desperately need.

Out Standing There

Scott Selkirk, the one who looks exhausted in all our stills galleries because he carted our gear around for the entire production of I Could Be Anybody, has subsequently made his own short film which has now been selected in the shortlist for Tropfest this year. Tropfest, for the three or four of you who haven't had films in it at one point or another, is a short film festival in Australia, watched by thousands of shivering people on picnic rugs with sore necks nationwide.

So Scott should be sent to the Congratulatorium. So should Fez (the Sound Magician), Tobes (Music Fingers) and Stewart (Light Nerd), who all worked on It's A Good Thing, the short film in question.

Had we entered I Could Be Anybody in Tropfest, there is an outside chance we would be seething with a white hot jealousy. As it stands at the moment, however, we're claiming It's A Good Thing as our own flesh and blood. Congratulations guys.