Year End

I sold off my Polaroid camera as I've been using my LX3 more and more and I can't justify keeping 2 cameras and also lugging them around with me on my travels. So farewell Polaroid. Here is what one of my bedroom wall looks like thanks to Polaroid.

It's my first day off in a while and I am just chilling out even though I've got to digitize and edit the scene that we shot most recently. I guess I'll get to it either tonight or tomorrow. Watched a couple of new releases recently ' Sherlock Holmes' {alright movie with fantastic character work from Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr.} & a swedish movie called 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' {fantastic in every sense of the word}. And currently reading a book called ' My Desert Kingdom' which is proving to be an interesting read.

Going to the movies over the holiday season is crazy - the cinemas are packed and you get to see a lot of interesting characters & people. One of them was this girl who was standing in the line behind me along with her boy friend. For the 15 minutes that they did stand in the line -she was constantly nagging and annoying her boy friend on why she doesn't watch any movie. It was amusing for 5 minutes but after that you wanted her to shut up and wait for her turn or just go home. I think the boy friend got fed up after 15 minutes, so they left the queue. Another interesting character was a guy sitting 2 seats to my right, who brought into the cinema hall his own stock of whisky and soda and a full meal packed into his backpack - which he finished through out the movie. So no more movies at the cinemas for me till the end of the holiday season.

Hope you are having a good holiday season.

Later,

Amit

Holiday Work

The year seems to flying past faster than I give it credit for. The business presentation went really well and I am pretty happy with how it shaped out in the end. The next major thing I can remember after that is the shoot for Tessa. Tessa wanted to make a video for her Phd presentation and that involved me sitting behind a red screen and then do a narration afterwards. Angelique and Xien helped out with that and it was good fun. Here is an image from that shoot (courtesy: Angelique)

Silhouette mine

One of the fun processes for making a shoot happen on 'Moments' is the borrowing of cameras and radio mics and I've been lucky that I've had supportive friends. I had to go and pick up one of the cameras from Simon but ended up having a few drinks at Dan's party, which is where Simon had lodged himself and it turned out to be just what I needed to relax a little so I could plan the shoot for 'Moments' between Tarun, Lorraine & Matt on sunday.

Mike Lowe & me having a chat while Simon poses

Enjoying the afternoon sun and a conversation

The sunday shoot turned out to be lots of fun even though it was an improvisational scene. Tarun was funny as hell and there were a few points where I couldn't control my laughter even though I was behind the camera. Alan George - a guy I met on the shoot of 'Rhodes 2' did the second camera and I am yet to digitize the footage but know from the shoot that we have enough material for me to edit a nice scene together.

Straight after the shoot was a drive to Lance's parents place for a christmas dinner with them and Tania & Andrew and Lance & Tai & her mom. It was an amazing evening with lots of great food and great conversations and laughs. Here are some pics from the evening.

Gorgeous Sunday afternoon

Tania, Andrew & Lance

Tai's mum, Tai & Tina

Chris looking through binoculars

Through the looking glass

Chris cooking some sausages

After the feast

Clouds rising

Andrew, Tania, Tina & Chris while sharing puzzles and stories

Tai's mum, Tai & Lance

Tai & me - she is not that tall - she is standing on a couch. :-)

Watched 3 movies recently - 'Avatar'; 'Observe & Report' & 'The Wackness' - Avatar was an amazing 3-D experience but the story was pretty average and predictable. It's a good watch in 3-D is all I can say. 'Observe & Report' was pure genius and so was Ben Kingsley in 'The Wackness'. Next up is 'Sherlock Holmes' when it releases later this week.

I finally did a fitness test after 2 weeks of recovery from my left shoulder injury and it was a mixed one but tending towards positive for most of the part. My weight is 65 KG's but my body fat %age has gone down to 15% {from 16.5%} which means I have gained more muscle mass. The downside of the test was my VO2 max levels - which have gone down to 48 {from 49.8} and I guess I need to jump straight back into getting my cardio levels up again after this extended break.

That's me for now.

Till later,

Amit

December in the park

It's been an incredibly busy period since my last post. I had a very short notice surprise audition come up as the actor who was originally cast for that part couldn't do the part because of personal health reasons. I did get the part and did a 1 day shoot on the TV feature and that turned out to be a fantastic experience. The other audition that I did went well and that again was a fun experience.

Since the work on 'Moments' has slowed down in terms of production, I decided that a way to speed up the process in the overall scheme of things would be to start compiling the scenes that have already been shot and edited to find out where the holes are and what needs to be done to fill those up. One of the holes was covering up dialog cuts in the scene between Tarun and me, so I went and got some pickup shots at 'The Whitehouse' as we didn't get any cut aways the first time round when we shot the scene there. We'll be shooting one more scene next sunday, which is a meaty scene and that should give me some consolation about the pace of the project. It's been a hard year but after the past couple of weeks I am declaring my year closed on a high note. Anything good that might happen between now and end of 2009 is a bonus. 2010 here I come.

Friday evening was the staff Christmas party and there wasn't anything terribly exciting that happened at the party. Yesterday I had a long overdue catchup with David & Christina and it was nice way to spend Saturday morning and afternoon. In the evening, I went to 'Christmas in the Park' along with Benji and it was bizarre event. There was something terribly off with the whole vibe of the event - it was like one huge coca cola commercial. It's supposed to be a family event but then you look around and see people getting boozed and stoned while kids and teenagers are running around. Both Benji and me almost got food poisoning over there when the thai stall served half cooked chicken skewers and they gave replacement sticks that were half cooked as well. The jerky pork kebabs from the Jamaican food stall more than made up for the earlier culinary misadventure. But to be on the safe side Benji and me decided to get a tequila shot on our way back, to negate the one bite of half cooked chicken that we had earlier.

Christmas in the Park

Beautiful sunset

Auckland Hospital

Distant viewings

Walk back

Grafton Cemetery

Bunch of people enjoying the cool air

The tequila shot

Earlier this afternoon, had a picnic lunch at Grafton Road cemetery which Angelique organized. It was an odd choice of location but a good one. It is bang in the middle of the city but it has so many trees and is pretty quite. It was an opportunity to catch up Tessa after ages and also got to meet Angelique's boy friend besides meeting some very interesting people.

Picnic at Grafton Cemetery

Sunshine

Sun and Shade

Flowers over a grave

Angelique & Kelly

Anna & Xien

Me & Tessa

End of picnic

And now it's heads down, preparing for the business project presentation that I've got to give to the TVNZ top brass tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Later,

Amit

Movies and all that stuff

My age and look and ethnicity means that auditions are far and few in between. I consider myself lucky even if I get 3-4 auditions a year, so it was pretty frutrating only having 2 audition till Oct and then suddenly having a couple of auditions come up while I was overseas. Typical huh!!! Well I had another audition recently and it went really well, even though I didn't get the part. As an actor - the best thing is to prepare well for the audition, give it your best shot and forget all about it as soon as you walk out of the audition room. If you get a follow up call then good for you otherwise you just carry on as if nothing has happened. I've got another audition this year, so I am pretty happy that this year will end with atleast 4 chances to showcase myself to casting directors.

'Rejected' is in the freezer as it has nowhere to go right now and the script is not in a position I want it to be and the script development process is extremely slow. The best option was to put it on freeze and concentrate on the existing project and other potential projects. Off the potential projects - 'Apsara' has got some legs and it is currently in active development. The script is by Angelique - a close friend and an ex-film school mate and it is being produced by Paula Jones. The script is funny, quirky and has a visual flair and it matches up with everything I want to explore and I guess I'm lucky that the script wasn't already picked up by someone else. More on that in coming months.

The production on 'Moments' is going slower than anticipated because of the holiday season combined with the usual scheduling conflicts associated with 'no budget' movies. Instead of stressing out about it, I'm just playing it by the ear and going with the flow. All this obviosuly means that we won't finish the movie in March'10 as originally planned and it might get pushed back by a few months.

An independent writer was in constant contact with me via email wanting to see if I wanted to direct her script in 2010 with a very miniscule budget. I said no to it because I wasn't getting answers to all the questions I was asking about the project and that's never a good sign. Topped up with unclear roles and responsibilities it was a disaster waiting to happen & all this without even seeing the script itself. After a lot of thought I wrote a very detailed mail as to why I can't accept the project and the response I got made me crack up laughing and I subsequently deleted all the emails related to the project. The final email from the writer/producer goes like this
"Subject: Re:Hey AMIT, in CONFIDENCE
Morning Amarbir, thanks again for the email - much appreciated, all the best for your future endeavours:-).
Kind regards"
Amarbir is another Indian film maker based in Auckland and he is also a good friend of mine. So she obviously asked Amarbir about directing the movie as well or her next person to ask is Amarbir or maybe she confused me for Amarbir all along. I don't know and I don't care. :-)

I scored a couple of free passes to NZ Premiere of 'Morris: A Life with Bells on' - a UK indie movie. The writer/main actor was there for Q&A, so I went along last night and it turned out to be a small but funny movie. Definitely worth a watch. It definitely puts a grin on your face.

That's me for now,
Amit