A video!

And of course I just forgot to post a video! This one cracked me up :-)

Update & The Cult of DONE

It's been a while so a quick update.

The Nuns With Guns script is looking good! :-) What an insane concept!! I'm sick of watching Australian movies playing it safe. Of listening to supposedly 'upcoming' directors paranoid about their first movie and how it must be 'perfect' or they'll never get another chance. Of films that had to be made' but didn't have to be watched. What happened to entertaining the audience instead of pandering to the bloody funding body?

I watched 'Blue Murder' last weekend and thought 'wow'. It's a great story, scary, involving, intense, a committed cast and crew, done on a tiny budget, on the run, and is basically 20 times the first Underbelly, more like 100 times the second. I've been watching Aussie movies consistently over the last few weeks and the sad thing is none of them have inspired me enough to actually write anything about them. (OK Suburban Mayhem was pretty good). Blue Murder is better than any of them and it's not even a movie!

OK glad that's off my chest.

Now for a new mantra I've tracked down... The Cult of Done Manifesto. Great stuff. I realise this is the manifesto I've been working to my whole life! There's a link on the right to more information an doptional posters, but this is the basic manifesto itself.

Enjoy :-)

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

iPhone Tragic - Official

A few changes to mention.

The blog name has changed. NWG is on course but it's not the only reason for this blog. So the name has changed.

I am officially an iPhone tragic. I will never have to see that annoying 'Low memory' message on a Windows Mobile phone again. Thank God! I may also start posting things from the bloody thing.

Now enough of the technicals. Film!

Chocolate is finished. It can be watched right here.


Chocolate from LostSheep Productions on Vimeo.

Overall I'm very happy with it. Punchlines are tough but the journey is very pleasant.

I've also filmed the play, Lovely Bits. Editing it at the moment. Hired another EX1 to do a 2 camera shoot, unluckily couldn't find anyone experienced to help me so had to deal with both cameras myself. But it looks like it's worked, hopefully I'll have a cut ready in the next week or so!

The Stinkwater International Film Festival is on this weekend, I'll be at the Ritz on sunday in Randwick. The Spot Food Festival runs all day.

The food festival is free, the film festival is $10, but if you find me I can probably get you in free. As Stella Artois are sponsoring the event there will also be a few free beers involved!

Peter Garrett's coming along for the movies and to hang out.

Michael Caton (Packed to the Rafters), Bud Tingwell (The Castle) and Roy Billing (Underbelly 2) will also be there as they are being inducted into the Australian Film Walk of Fame - You know plaques in the pavement and all that.

If anyone reads this comes along, finds me and says 'Razmattaz' in my ear, I will get you into the film festival for nothing and give you free beer all night. More info below::

PJ

THE SPOT FOOD & FILM FESTIVAL

SUNDAY 1st MARCH 2009 - from 1pm outside the RITZ

The closing day of the Arts festival is a wonderful community celebration as Randwick City Council, the Crowne Plaza Coogee Arts Festival & the Ritz Cinema join together in the streets of the Spot with a feast of food, entertainment, children’s activities and film.

The celebrations begin at 1.00 pm when the streets surrounding the Spot are closed to traffic and opened to fun with food and music, jumping castles, petting zoos, helicopter simulators and much more in a film themed street festival.

The Ritz Lounge Bar and Balcony will be open for anyone who wants a relaxing birds eye view of all the celebrations and festivities on the day. Come and enjoy a drink whilst the kids enjoy the street fair and all the activities available in the Spot.

THE AUSTRALIAN FILM WALK OF FAME

SUNDAY 1st MARCH 2009 - 7.00pm outside the RITZ

On Sunday, March 1st, 7pm - we commemorate the legends of Australian film by placing plaques in their honour in the footpath outside the Ritz Cinema as part of the Australian Film Walk of Fame.

The Arts Festival concludes with the 6th

STINKWATER! INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

SUNDAY 1st MARCH 2009 - 7.30pm - Cinema 1

The 2008 screening of STINKWATER! was totally booked out over a week beforehand, so make sure you book early.

New Year, New Projects

Well the run of Lovely Bits at the Newtown Theatre is over, but everyone who visited enjoyed it. We were beaten to a place in the final by a 'dramatic' piece called Mandragora, but the audience loved us. :-) It was a comedy piece after all!

Ayways back to Guns, though it's possible we may do a quick film of the play - everyone's very keen!

Am also doing a session tomorrow on Natural Beauty Queen with the editor, Alison. Got to remember what plans I had!

FInally Kate sent me a very funny link today, you can customise it yourself by changing the name, here you go!

http://www.worldsgreatestbusinessmind.com/20090118-PJ-Collins-create.html&WT.mc_id=WGBM|Create

Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

Hello hello.. So much has gone on... Best start on what I'm doing now.

My play (or rather the first play I've ever directed) is on at the Newtown Theatre, Sydney 13-18 January as part of Short & Sweet! OK so it's been on a night already but better I mention it late than never! It's gone down very well so far, in fact I heard that last night one of the judges was 'deeply insulted' by it - LOL! Find out more here . Anyways we keep working on it each night - quite a few of my friends are coming for the friday performance - I want it to be at it's best by then!

Now I've also finished Chocolate, the short film I mentioned before. It's a sweet little number and I'm glad it's done, slightly unsure what to do with it now. I've stuck it into Tropfest, not that I'm wildly hopeful, but I guess you never know. In the meantime I'm back onto the NWG project.

Yes yes Nuns With Guns.. This is THE YEAR!

I've decided to delay principal filming significantly, think now October 2009. There will be plenty of filming before then but for the main shoot, there's so much to work on first that there's no point rushing in. I want this to be as good as it possibly can be - the only deadline I've set myself is that all filming will be completed by the end of this year. At the moment I'm going back into the story to make sure it's superb and achievable and that I start off with a GREAT SCRIPT, the first and foremost requirement for a film project. The contacts at least keep coming in - those listings in IF and Encore have been useful.

Now, a video. This is something bizarre I came across the other week, very well made, well shot and well twisted. I give you Teddy Saw.


Teddy Saw from Ben Schwartz on Vimeo.

Plays & Nuns & Scripts & Shorts

Strangely enough, a bunch of stuff has happened at exactly the same time. Odd how that happens..

Not content with my family/dad duties and getting NWG off the ground, and filming the Chocolate short I mentioned in my last post, I've also now been accepted as a director for Short & Sweet, which means I need to choose a play, cast & rehearse it ready for a week run at the Newtown Theatre 13-18th January 2008! I'd forgotten about that one....

OK I'm actually a little along the way already.

I've shot Chocolate - I cannot believe that after all my time filming here I could go out into the middle of a field for two days under the Australian sun and forget:

1. Sunscreen
2. A hat
3. A pen!

What a plonker... Though I did have all the above for the second day, I put sunscreen on everywhere except the back of my neck and it's taken the best part of a week to recover! That was one burnt bit of skin....

On the plus the short is pretty amusing, it's come together nicely. Rob Queree did an excellent job as Farmer Jim.

I've also already chosen the play I'm directing from the first 50 accepted scripts of Short & Sweet. It's called 'Lovely Bits' by Mark Andrew, and I've cast the key leads with the very talented Lisa Fineberg and the equally talented Matthew Thomson. First rehearsal this sunday!

The NWG first draft is also getting there slowly - I've set a target of the end of the year and I hope it will be done by then, but I did always factor in a few weeks delay from the Chocolate Short and didn't factor anything in for S&S!

I have put together 500 and 1000 word synopses over the last week which gives a good insight into the project and even better, my good friend Simon Ralph has some up with an excellent new logo for the project during these pre-production times. I've already used it to redesign the holding page while a proper website is built. Go check it out.

So things are looking good - hold on, I need to touch some wood now....

And there's more! (I have been a while between posts) - The first rough cut of Rock Chikz NBQ was shown to me last weekend! Of course there's a thousand things to change but it's great that Alison the editor has moved it forwards. Looking forward to a constructive session on sunday morning.

Laters. Oh yeah, I like to post a video each time, here's something amusing I found the other day!


That Explains It from Derek Doublin on Vimeo.

More news! Obama elected!!

Work is progressing well on the 'Nuns With Guns' First Draft Script. More news on that when we finish it. I've also been scouting locations for a Tropfest entry this year, a bit of a last-minute decision but the script was hanging around and really it's not that complicated a project, once I track down the ute, a herd of cows and a large bull! Planning to shoot at the end of the month, gotta be ready for the beginning of Jan.

Finally, I have at last sorted a trailer for the Rock Chikz episode. It's taking forever for the editor to get round to editing it so in the meantime I put this together over a couple of evenings last week. The cast and crew like it A LOT!

http://www.vimeo.com/2169903


Rock Chikz Episode 3 Teaser from LostSheep Productions on Vimeo.