Step 1, bore your audience away.

For the past three months, our bathroom floor had been converted from cream tiles to black and white, yet nobody noticed. Not sure why I didn’t do an after shot, maybe I’m losing my vlogging touch. And yes, that is little Phoebe who makes a few brief appearances.

Each year it’s our tradition to enter a short film into Sydney’s Tropfest Short Film Festival. Each year we compete against 700 other entries, including at least 100 from advertising and television professionals who shit on everyone with their technical quality, but don’t know shit about storytelling. Each year their biased judges pick an undeserving final 16, based on unspecified criteria, and more often than not they pick a random winner from countless equally deserving entries.

And each year we get pissed off at the whole thing, yet still enter into competition anyway.

Why? Because regardless of how many professional big budget films enter (some of the finalists have upward of 50 crew, which sort of defeats the purpose of the festival), regardless of the bias of the judges, and regardless of the fact that it’s like sticking your art into a black hole (they never write back to you with anything other than “thanks, you didn’t win”), it actually keeps alive, in a small kind of better than nothing kind of way, the ideals of independent film makers and film making.

This year (2007) we decided to keep away from the typical Tropfest style cliched 7 minute redundant narrative with mandatory and expected tilt, and decided to remix someone elses work. Well, we’d originally planned one of those cliched short films, but for whatever reason we cancelled the shoot half way through, and decided to film our kitten Phoebe instead. Much more fun!

So here it is, a remix of the old Jam Handy film Easy does it, audio all taken from the original, and the visuals shot on the set of our other incomplete short film. Never work with children or animals? Phoebe starred in both films, and fortunately the outtakes from the first could be remixed as the second. 🙂

The video says it all really. They may be common elsewhere in the world, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in Australia. You drive into a car park, and you drive directly into the first available spot. Now if only they’d direct me to the closest to the shops available spot, I’d be a very happy man.

For about the last 18 months or so, I’ve been working on and off on (sic) a new video series called Bonny & Clyde. While other projects came and went, many actually paying the rent, Bonny & Clyde just sat there, slowly ticking away in the background. Until now.

We’ve finally locked in a release date of 14th May 2007, which coincidentally is either Mothers’ Day or the 52nd anniversary of the signing of the Warsaw Pact, depending on which way you’re inclined.

Bonny & Clyde is a weekly improvised serial, so up to 4-5 minutes per episode per week, with each being mostly improvised by the characters. You can find more detail on the Bonny & Clyde Production Journal.

If you enjoyed our Frank & Dale, I’m pretty sure you’ll also enjoy Bonny & Clyde.

I don’t know how many strays I’ve videoed and posted here, but every one was deserving of a home, and most likely didn’t have one. Having to fend for themselves in an unnatural environment, we have only ourselves to blame.

And so it was that my own stray, Macro, died last month, living to the ripe old age of roughly 88 years in human terms.

Then last week, Heather from my girlfriend’s work, brought in three 4 week old stray kittens she’d found in a local park, so… I present to you, the latest edition to the family… the beautiful Phoebe.

I shot this video yesterday, her first day off the baby formula and eating solids. I’m very proud. 🙂

A few weeks ago, we went scouting for locations for one of the later episodes of Bonny & Clyde. This is our archived footage.

I thought I’d take a break from filming cats, but the other night this kitten not only followed me home, but followed me into my house. It’s a long one, so hang in there. And as always, you gotta ask, ITAVB?

One of the annoying things about 9/11, or 11/9 as we prefer to call it outside the U.S. in modern ISO standard notation, is the token posting of security guards around our big monuments. In particular the Sydney Harbour Bridge, this whopping great mechano set built in 1932 and still the world’s largest single arch bridge. Meet the little guy assigned to protect this great national asset.

More significant though is the fact that I’ve filmed this, and joked about destroying the bridge, which is arguably in this day and age, enough to warrant a visit from the bridge police. Just don’t tell them OK?

What would you do with Eight Treadmills?