Tuesday 12 February 2008

Second Is Better Than First

8 February - 10 February - A rather epic weekend when all was said and done - there was far too much stress and drama involved in and on the periphery of the Stinkwater 24! competition - although it must be said, it was predicted.  Perhaps I just need a muse.  After a liquid fuelled and failed brainstorm on Friday we recovered with a caffeine and B&E fuelled substorm - the Evil Melon crew were none too confident of what we were going to film but we decided the important thing was to have a narrative and where better to find inspiration for a narrative than from Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Three Clever Brothers seemed an apt tale considering there were three young chaps in the crew - production expense of putting these fine stories to film is quite high (it almost broke Terry Gilliam but then again, most of his films tend to do that) - so we had to compromise in several areas - notably the clever part and also one of the brothers (considering that one of our crew had to run away at a crucial part of filming to look for a house).  Rubbish weather didn't help the shoot and the rain threatened to shut down our trusty camera but by 1pm we had enough footage to start the editing process - little luck with the attaining of a suitable narrative force so I was forced to lend my dulcet tones - mucked around with some special effects and after much stress managed to cobble together something resembling a film.  And, as luck would have it, by the time I'd finished the editing there was a textual solution to my sextual problem - this proved to be an opportune time as it allowed for an ocean stroll around the harbour in my recently acquired floating chariot which should prove to be an excellent alternative to the dangers of riding the Sydney streets (more on that later).  Suitably fortified myself with beer (and tried to cough out the evils of the previous day) in order to brace for the impact of seeing my (our!) creation on a big screen - once I got confirmation that we were through the first cull I was at least relaxed enough to enjoy the night - met a judge, offered a bribe, found ourselves placing musical chairs an age before the curtain was drawn and then sat through a serious sometimes painfully bad, sometimes even more painfully good shorts - a fair few of well prepared, well equipped projects, was initially a bit overwhelmed by the hearty cheers that erupted before some of the starts as it indicated crews of film students of a sizeable number but was heartened when "A Bike With One Gear" found itself up on screen - only a small huzzah but from the first visual gag we at least got a couple of laughs and that was all I could really hope for.  But I probably should have hoped for more because it was delivered with a smashing second place that beat all of the slick productions (I like to think we produced something more in line with the spirit of the festival???) and even pipped the in depth documentary about toast which would have won had the filmmaker been lucky enough to interview me (there are not many who appreciate the assorted niceties of toasted bread and not many who could share my appetite I'll bet you) but it was a time to celebrate.  And celebrate we did, although some of us could have potentially taken it slightly easier as future pictures may suggest.

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