I open my eyes and find myself lying in bed.
Sunlight dances playfully across the ceiling and I wonder what time it is. I vaguely become aware that the ceiling that’s greeting me is familiar – not the ceiling of some hotel room, but the ceiling of my own bedroom in Auckland. I’m home.
For a few seconds, my brain still lilting gently in some fugue state between sleep and wakefulness, I wonder to myself if the last 17 days have been some kind of blissful, beautiful dream. A fantasy crafted with such perfection that it could only have been wrought from my own imagination. For a small moment, the pit of my stomach turns cold as I suspect the Your Big Break experience was all in my head.
Then I sit up…and see my still unopened suitcase in the corner. The tag on the handle clearly tells me that I flew from Wellington to Auckland the previous night. I check myself in the mirror and see my characteristic ‘director’s beard’ that I get hit with every time I’m filming (when I get too tired and lazy to shave). And then it all comes flooding back to me: memories too potent, too real, too vivid to be a dream. It all happened. I was a Your Big Break finalist. I journeyed across the country, experienced amazing things, met incredible people, shot a film in the most magical place I’ve ever seen, finished it in one of the most advanced and luxurious post-production houses in the world…and it all actually happened.
My mind reels for a second and I lay back on my pillow … and then it becomes impossible to suppress the happy grin that spreads across my face.
The last couple of days at Park Road Post swim by me in a daze – I vaguely recall that I had a sparse day of meetings on Thursday and a fair chunk of free time. I decided to walk the whole whopping 5 minutes up Park Road, where it slowly bends and eventually takes a sharp right angle to become Camperdown Road, and past Weta Workshop (which, in contrast to Park Road Post, is one of the most inconspicuous buildings you’ll ever see. It literally looks like a regular old factory, possibly a packing warehouse or a food store) and up to The Weta Cave.
Dr. Grordbort characters on display at the Weta Cave
“The Cave” is a part retail shop/part free museum of the props and collectibles produced by Weta Workshop. On display are a range of gorgeously designed and detailed collectibles – from replica props to miniatures, action figures, clothing, weapons and more – from films that Weta have worked on and also original franchises that they’ve developed in house (like the awesome pulp series “Dr Grordbort” – a sort of “John Carter of Mars” style sci-fi series based on collectible ray-guns). I browsed through their awesome stuff, took lots of photos and watched a 20-minute ‘behind-the-scenes’ video (Chan if you’re reading this, you’ve GOT to go see that video at the Weta Cave. It’s got a hilarious interview with Gino Acevedo that you HAVE to see to believe!).
Do not climb on Lurtz!
Interspersed with my meanderings as a cheap tourist, I was working with Park Road’s incredible sound team to get the audio of Blank Spaces into shape. We quite literally hit the ground running as the astounding David Whitehead (sound designer for District 9, booyah!!) delivered a musical score for the film that was so brilliantly assembled that I immediately fell OUT of love with my temp tracks and spent the next two days humming Dave’s amazing music in my head! Armed with his brilliant score, David, sound designer Tim Prebble (30 Days of Night), dialogue editor Chris Todd (The Lord of the Rings) and the Park Road Post foley team began to breathe life into Blank Spaces with a vast array of designed and sourced sound effects, atmosphere tracks and sweeteners. Most of Thursday was spent coming and going from various sound offices, listening to audio and FX tracks, making adjustments, discussing ideas, figuring out how we could nail the narrative drive of the film, expand its scope and so forth. All of this is merely preparation, of course, for the BIG day which was Friday – the sound mix.
Mixing Blank Spaces
I’d never done a cinematic sound mixing session in a proper mixing stage before and it was one of the few aspects of post-production I was eager to experience, mostly just to learn how it’s done and what procedures have to be in place before a film’s audio can be mixed. We were going to spend the whole day at Park Road’s Mixing Theater 3, aka the ’small’ theater which was still the size of an average cinema except only with seating for a dozen and a massive mixing board built into the floor at the center of the room. The mixer – a lovely gentlemen by the name of Tim Chaproniere – would sit at the mixing desk and pilot the levels while each department head (Chris for dialogue, Dave for music and sound design, and Tim Prebble for foley and additional sound design) would drive the Pro-Tools suite that fed the sequence in and back out of the desk. Each HOD would set up their tracks, conform them to however the mixer would like them and then run the sequence while the mixer would, in real-time, adjust levels over and over again until they were just right! These would be done in passes – first we’d mix the various instruments of the music, then we’d mix the foley, then the specific sound design work and then the vocalizations and finally we’d mix them all together into one seamless 5.1 surround track.
Sound is half of any movie and what was achieved over those eight hours in Mixing Theater 3 was like the bolt of lightning that sparked life into the Frankenstein’s Monster that was my film! From pure silence, it soon was layered with the clinking of Dave’s backpack, the scraping of his fingers on the rocks, the whisper of high altitude wind, the gentle sway from the waters of Lake Unknown and all balanced against Dave’s whimsical and infectiously catchy musical score. Blank Spaces was alive and lurching forwards into the light! Of course there was little time to pat ourselves on the back as our premiere was immediately happening moments after we locked off the sound mix. We invited anyone and everyone who had 10 minutes to spare to come and watch the film and once everyone was happy with it, I had to grab my stuff, hop into a cab and head for the airport and fly back home … my Your Big Break experience coming to a close.
In that short time since, I’ve had the pleasure to check out Tim’s Frosty Man & The BMX Kid, Kristi’s Something Special and Aya’s Sweet As and I have to say that Sir Peter Jackson has got his work cut out for him. Every film is flawless and yet plays on vastly different strengths – Tim’s has a proud, pure and glowing heart which is anchored by two extraordinary actors, a brilliantly warm and funny script and the most beautiful Queenstown day you’ve ever seen captured on film (or digital sensor in our cases). Kristi’s is an emotional powerhouse that’s punctuated by (easily) the best cinematography and scenery out of all of our films and an achingly melancholic musical score, once again pulled off by Park Road resident music genius Dave Whitehead. Aya’s is slick, fast and boldly tongue-in-cheek with clever flashbacks, flash-forwards, transitions, turns and a believable, comedic world that you want to visit and possibly never return from. And I’m sure Andrés will blow us all away with his own unique brand of humor and his extremely clever use of visual effects to nail the central theme of the Your Big Break films to the wall.
I can only echo the sentiments that the YBB Critic has expressed here – the quality of these films are remarkable and their execution is astonishingly pure, filmic and unique to the individual. This will not be a contest judged by how well made a film is because they are all flawless and jaw-droppingly professional. Rather it will be a contest of ideas, directorship and which film is the best product that best adheres to the central themes of the “Your Big Break” competition as a whole … and boy that’s going to be a tough nut to crack.
I’m gonna get off my soapbox in a minute and I really don’t have much more to add beyond what Tim McLachlan has already intimated in his final blog post. I am proud to report that Aya, Tim, Kristi and Andrés all truly deserved to be here because their talent is astonishing and at the same time, I’m certain that there are countless HUNDREDS who applied who could have produced works that are just as amazing! It is an absolute privilege to call them my peers and to work around them as I make my little film which I hope will live up to the incredibly high standards they’ve set here.
Last of all, but certainly not the least, some Great Big THANK YOUS to…
Howard Greive, Barrie Osborne, Sir Peter Jackson and Tourism New Zealand (especially Ben Crawford and Brad my guide!) for creating, executing and running Your Big Break.
The incredibly dedicated and passionate Catherine Madigan, Jill Soper, Sarah Hinch, Narelle Wilson, Gary, Heidi, Carey, Vanessa and everyone else at the Production Office in Queenstown for working all those hard hours to ensure that we had all the gear, people and resources we needed to shoot “Blank Spaces”. Best producer and production team EVER! Without you guys, I would have been shooting this film on the banks of an inflatable kiddie-pool. The achievement of these five films are testament to your dedication and skill!
Rewa Harre, my amazing cinematographer who was always calm, collected and pushing me to find that better angle!
Ken Sparks, my awesome and fun editor who polished up my work and kept me calm in moments of crisis!
David Van Horn – dude you are the SOUL of this film and without you, there would be nothing to show anybody! I thank you for everything!
Junior Apeti and Tom Maxwell – you bunch of name-taking, butt-kicking, super-actors! You guys were amazing!
Ken Turner and his incredible art department team – including Kevin who I think was driven mad by our ridiculous props! Blank Spaces is all about art department you guys did an incredible job and I can’t thank you all enough!
Johnny Yarrell and Sam Matthews – the awesome mad bastards who saved the n00b director and cinematographer from taking steps into strange and weird directions with the RED Camera!
Joe, Sol, Chris and Eoin for being an absolute bad-ass and dedicated lighting, camera and grip team!
Kathy Muggeridge and Flying Trestles for keeping us warm, fed, watered and comfortable at an altitude of 1800 meters above sea level!
Stefan Crawford and Mark Gabites – Stefan for finding, securing and browbeating all of us into shooting at Lake Alta (a brilliant and masterful move!) and Mark for spending a lonely night up in the Remarkables with our gear and also being one hell of a Safety Officer onset!
Alison Ingram and her amazing team at Park Road Post Production who hosted us, guided us and saved our butts – including Tony, Tim Prebble, Tim Chaproniere, David, John Neill, Chris, Matt, Daizo (who did all of the smartphone and computer displays!), Katie, Cameron, Robyn and the foley and edit-assist departments!
Our infamous Your Big Break Critic, the most unsung hero of the contest by far!
The team at Strutta.com for creating and managing the awesome YBB website! A very VERY fine piece of web development if ever I’ve seen one!
And last, but by no means the least, all of YOU out there who’ve supported us through our blog posts and through your comments on the YBB site and Facebook page and who’ve given us the emotional and moral support we needed to make it to the end of this (especially you Les Petersen!)! Thanks so much for reading and for being there for us!
Ah, Wellywood - you never know who you're going to bump into for a photo op.
This is Rajneel Singh, director of Blank Spaces, signing off!
Adios!
I open my eyes and find myself laying in bed.
Sunlight dances playfully across the ceiling and I wonder what time it is. I vaguely become aware that the ceiling that’s greeting me is familiar – not the ceiling of some hotel room, but the ceiling of my own bedroom in Auckland. I’m home.
For a few seconds, my brain still lilting gently in some fugue state between sleep and wakefulness, I wonder to myself if the last 17 days have been some kind of blissful, beautiful dream. A fantasy crafted with such perfection that it could only have been wrought from my own imagination. For a small moment, the pit of my stomach turns cold as I suspect the “Your Big Break” experience was all in my head.
Then I sit up…and see my still unopened suitcase in the corner. The tag on the handle clearly tells me that I had flown from Wellington to Auckland last night. I check myself in the mirror and see my characteristic ‘director’s beard’ that I get hit with every time I’m filming (when I get too tired and lazy to shave). And then it all comes flooding back to me: memories too potent, too real, too vivid to be a dream. It all happened. I was a “Your Big Break” finalist. I journeyed across the country, experienced amazing things, met incredible people, shot a film in the most magical place I’ve ever seen, finished it in one of the most advanced and luxurious post-production houses in the world…and it all actually happened.
My mind reels for a second and I lay back on my pillow…and then it becomes impossible to suppress the happy grin that spreads across my face.
The last couple of days at Park Road Post swim by me in a daze – I vaguely recall that I had a sparse day of meetings on Thursday and a fair chunk of free time. I decided to walk the whole whopping 5 minutes up Park Road, where it slowly bends and eventually takes a sharp right angle to become Camperdown Road, and past The Weta Workshop (which, in contrast to Park Road Post, is one of the most inconspicuous buildings you’ll ever see. It literally looks like a regular old factory, possibly a packing warehouse or a food store) and up to The Weta Cave (http://www.wetanz.com/cave/).
“The Cave” is a part retail shop/part free museum of the props and collectibles produced by The Weta Workshop. On display are a range of gorgeously designed and detailed collectibles – from replica props to miniatures, action figures, clothing, weapons and more – from films that Weta have worked on and also original franchises that they’ve developed in house (like the awesomely pulp series “Dr Grordbort” – a sort of “John Carter of Mars” style sci-fi series based on collectible ray-guns). I browsed through their awesome stuff, took lots of photos and watched a 20-minute ‘behind-the-scenes’ video (Chan if you’re reading this, you’ve GOT to go see that video at the Weta Cave. It’s got a hilarious interview with Gino Acevedo that you HAVE to see to believe!).
Interspersed with my meanderings as a cheap tourist, I was working with Park Road’s incredible sound team to get the audio of “Blank Spaces” into shape. We quite literally hit the ground running as the astounding David Whitehead (sound designer for “District 9″, booyah!!) delivered a musical score for the film that was so brilliantly assembled that I immediately fell OUT of love with my temp tracks and spent the next two days humming Dave’s amazing music in my head! Armed with his brilliant score, David, sound designer Tim Prebble (”30 Days of Night”), dialogue editor Chris Todd (”Lord of the Rings”) and the Park Road Post foley team began to breathe life into “Blank Spaces” with a vast array of designed and sourced sound effects, atmosphere tracks and sweeteners. Most of Thursday was spent coming and going from various sound offices, listening to audio and FX tracks, making adjustments, discussing ideas, figuring out how we can nail the narrative drive of the film, expand its scope and so forth. All of this is merely preparation, of course, for the BIG day which was Friday – the sound mix.
I’d never done a cinematic sound mixing session in a proper mixing stage before and it was one of the few aspects of post-production I was eager to experience, mostly just to learn how it’s done and what procedures have to be in place before a film’s audio can be mixed. We were going to spend the whole day at Park Road’s Mixing Theater 3, aka the ’small’ theater which was still the size of an average cinema except only with seating for a dozen and a massive mixing board built into the floor at the center of the room. The mixer – a lovely gentlemen by the name of Tim Chaproniere – would sit at the mixing desk and pilot the levels while each department head (Chris for dialogue, Dave for music and sound design, and Tim Prebble for foley and additional sound design) would drive the Pro-Tools suite that fed the sequence in and back out of the desk. Each HOD would setup their tracks, conform them to however the mixer would like them and then run the sequence while the mixer would, in real-time, adjust levels over and over again until they were just right! These would be done in passes – first we’d mix the various instruments of the music, then we’d mix the foley, then the specific sound design work and then the vocalizations and finally we’d mix them all together into one seamless 5.1 surround track.
Sound is half of any movie and what was achieved over those eight hours in Mixing Theater 3 was like the bolt of lightning that sparked life into the Frankenstein’s Monster that was my film! From pure silence, it soon was layered with the clinking of Dave’s backpack, the scraping of his fingers on the rocks, the whisper of high altitude wind, the gentle sway from the waters of Lake Unknown and all balanced against Dave’s whimsical and infectiously catchy musical score. ”Blank Spaces” was alive and lurching forwards into the light! Of course there was little time to pat ourselves on the back as our premiere was immediately happening moments after we locked off the sound mix. We invited anyone and everyone who had 10 minutes to spare to come and watch the film and once everyone was happy with it, I had to grab my stuff, hop into a cab and head for the airport and fly back home…my “Your Big Break” experience coming to a close.
In that short time since, I’ve had the pleasure to check out Tim’s “Frosty Man & The BMX Kid”, Kristi’s “Something Special” and Aya’s “Sweet As” and I have to say that Sir Peter Jackson has got his work cut out for him. Every film is flawless and yet plays on vastly different strengths – Tim’s has a proud, pure and glowing heart which is anchored by two extraordinary actors, a brilliantly warm and funny script and the most beautiful Queenstown day you’ve ever seen captured on film (or digital sensor in our cases). Kristi’s is an emotional powerhouse that’s punctuated by (easily) the best cinematography and scenery out of all of our films and an achingly melancholic musical score, once again pulled off by Park Road resident music genius Dave Whitehead. Aya’s is slick, fast and boldly tongue-in-cheek with clever flashbacks, flash-forwards, transitions, turns and a believable, comedy-stricken world that you want to visit and possibly never return from. And I’m sure Andres will blow us all away with his own unique brand of humor and his extremely clever use of visual effects to nail the central theme of the “Your Big Break” films to the wall.
I can only echo the sentiments that the YBB Critic has expressed here – the quality of these films are remarkable and their execution is astonishingly pure, filmic and unique to the individual. This will not be a contest judged by how well made a film is because they are all flawless and jaw-droppingly professional. Rather it will be a contest of ideas, directorship and which film is the best product that best adheres to the central themes of the “Your Big Break” competition as a whole…and boy that’s going to be a tough nut to crack.
I’m gonna get off my soapbox in a minute and I really don’t have much more to add beyond what Tim McLachlan has already intimated in his final blog post. I am proud to report that Aya, Tim, Kristi and Andres all truly deserved to be here because their talent is astonishing and at the same time, I’m certain that there are countless HUNDREDS who applied who could have produced works that are just as amazing! It is an absolute privilege to call them my peers and to work around them as I make my little film which I hope will live up to the incredibly high standards they’ve set here.
Last of all, but certainly not the least, some Great Big THANK YOUS to…
Howard Grieve, Barrie Osborne, Sir Peter Jackson and Tourism New Zealand (especially Ben Crawford and Brad my guide!) for creating, executing and running “Your Big Break”.
The incredibly dedicated and passionate Catherine Madigan, Jill Soper, Sarah Hinch, Narelle Wilson, Gary, Heidi, Carey, Vanessa and everyone else at the Production Office in Queenstown for working all those hard hours to ensure that we had all the gear, people and resources we needed to shoot “Blank Spaces”. Best producer and production team EVER! Without you guys, I would have been shooting this film on the banks of an inflatable kiddie-pool. The achievement of these five films are testament to your dedication and skill!
Rewa Harre, my amazing cinematographer who was always calm, collected and pushing me to find that better angle!
Ken Sparks, my awesome and fun editor who polished up my work and kept me calm in moments of crisis!
David Van Horn – dude you are the SOUL of this film and without you, there would be nothing to show anybody! I thank you for everything!
Junior Apeti and Tom Maxwell – you bunch of name-taking, butt-kicking, super-actors! You guys were amazing!
Ken Turner and his incredible art department team – including Kevin who I think was driven mad by our ridiculous props! ”Blank Spaces” is all about art department you guys did an incredible job and I can’t thank you all enough!
Johnny Yarrell and Sam Matthews – the awesome mad bastards who saved the n00b director and cinematographer from taking steps into strange and weird directions with the RED Camera!
Joe, Sol, Chris and Eoin for being an absolute bad-ass and dedicated lighting, camera and grip team!
Kathy Muggeridge and Flying Trestles for keeping us warm, fed, watered and comfortable at an altitude of 1800 meters above sea level!
Stefan Crawford and Mark Gabites – Stefan for finding, securing and browbeating all of us into shooting at Lake Alta (a brilliant and masterful move!) and Mark for spending a lonely night up in the Remarkables with our gear and also being one hell of a Safety Officer onset!
Alison Ingram and her amazing team at Park Road Post Production who hosted us, guided us and saved our butts – including Tony, Tim Prebble, Tim Chaproniere, David, John Neill, Chris, Matt, Daizo (who did all of the smartphone and computer displays!), Katie, Cameron, Robyn and the foley and edit-assist departments!
Our infamous “Your Big Break Critic”, the most unsung hero of the contest by far!
The team at Strutta.com for creating and managing the awesome YBB website! A very VERY fine piece of web development if I’ve ever seen one!
And last, but by no means the least, all of YOU out there who’ve supported us through our blog posts and through your comments on the YBB site and Facebook page and who’ve given us the emotional and moral support we needed to make it to the end of this (especially you Les Petersen!)! Thanks so much for reading and for being there for us!
This is Rajneel Singh, director of “Blank Spaces”, signing off!
Adios!
