Binnsy's Hovel

My mate Zak died tonight in Tamworth. He was getting old, blind, deaf, and wasn’t getting around too well. It was probably about his time. I was glad my Mum was with him; given half a chance, I would’ve been too. I grew up with Zak. He was my best friend in the whole world – the fact that he had four legs and a tail didn’t matter at all.

I remember 12 years ago, going to our friends’ farm to pick a pup. Zakky could fit in my right hand. My young right hand. He was tiny. I picked him because he was the cutest, and he had brown eyebrows, which I thought was cute and cool all at once. A month later, he was weened and delivered to our house just outside Tamworth.

Mum said I could name him. I didn’t want to rush into it. Naming a good friend isn’t something you take on lightly. So I spent lots and lots of time with this puppy. Playing and laughing and chasing balls and cats etc. One afternoon I was lying on the floor, the young puppy sitting on my chest licking my face. And it came to me. Zak. With a K. Just to be different. I turned to my Pop, who was sitting not far, and I told him. Pop, who died only a few months later, said it was a damn good name for a dog. And Zak was a damn good dog. A whole new kind of dog. Loyal, kind, caring. The best little brother in the whole world. And my best friend.

Life happened. People came and went. We moved. A lot. Lives changed, were turned upside down. But Mum, Zakky and I stayed together. Always. When the events of November 2006 happened, that tough trio was torn asunder. Mum and Zak went back to Tamworth, and I stayed in the Hawkesbury, to keep on with uni.

I’ve been to Tamworth only four times since then. It’s terrible, I know, and God knows I wish I could go more. If only Tamworth were a little closer. I was there last weekend. And I got to sit with Zakky. Pat him, be with him. Zakky only has one eye. The other was scratched out by an irate kitten in his youth. But in that one eye was packed more knowledge, wisdom and kindness than you could possibly imagine. That eye could melt butter. And he looked deep into my soul with it over the weekend. And I knew it would be the last time I saw my mate Zakky alive. We said goodbye on Monday morning and I had tears in my eyes. I could hear him crying as we drove off. Mum said he cried as he lay in her arms tonight, holding on to life, struggling to protect her for just a few minutes more.

You don’t have to protect us any more, mate. You need to just worry about you now. I know you’ll be with us always, but you’re free of pain now. You go run with Cassie and Russell. Tell them I say hello, and that I miss them. And know that I miss you too, Zakky. You’ve been gone all of five or six hours and I feel like a part of me has died. A part of my childhood has gone with you. I love you, mate. Be safe, and remember me – your big brother. Now and always.

Where’s your ball?

Written 4:36pm, 24 April 2008

It’s funny how you forget how to relax.

I’ve been on my uni break, which essentially started last Thursday, and since then I’ve driven north to Tamworth, drove back home to the Hawkesbury for a night then on Tuesday I flew south to Melbourne. I was in Melbourne for a night, then Dad and I jumped in the car and drove three hours east to Bairnsdale, where we are now. Today, we drove another half-hour east to go to Lakes Entrance.

Mid-semester break isn’t really meant to be a holiday as such. It’s more of a catch your breath type, catch up on work and readings type break, which I have used it as. I’ve been watching plenty of films, taking copious amounts of notes on genre for an upcoming project, and working on the two essays I have due later in the semester. But trying to balance work and rest has been both more and less challenging than I expected.

Nonetheless, I feel sort of rested and revived. Somewhat. Looking forward to next Thursday when I get a sleep-in and a few hours to work on stuff for uni before I have to rock up to close at Video Ezy for the first time in a fortnight. Glorious fun!

Until next time…

You can say what you want about all other facets of culture, but video games are in a pretty good state right at the minute. There’s nothing but innovation on all fronts when it comes to games like Bioshock, Mass Effect and the third instalment of the record-breaking Halo franchise. The PC continues to be the front-runner when it comes to the development of ever more impressive graphics engines and more realistic gameplay experiences. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are the consoles to beat in terms of graphics and performance. And then there’s the Wii.

The Nintendo Wii was released in late 2006 amidst an awful lot of hype. Its uber-dynamic and super-sensitive motion controls were equally highly anticipated and prematurely derided. No one quite knew where it was going to fit, because right off the bat it had a lower standard of graphics and very little in the way of software. But once it hit the market… oh boy.

Wii Sports, the game bundled with the console, was, and still remains, one of the most popular solo and party games on the console. The ability to create a Mii – a personalised character based on your own appearance – which stores your high scores, game profiles and can be playable in some games, was a highly unique experience. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The Complete Lego Star Wars Saga, and later Super Mario Galaxy and Guitar Hero III put the Wii on the map in terms of game diversity and ratification of the wonder and power of its unique control system.

Out of all the consoles I’ve played, the Wii stands alone as one of a kind. Gone are the halcyon days of long summers misspent playing through Goldeneye and long late-night multiplayer sessions of Perfect Dark, and I don’t think even the new Mario Kart on the Wii could quite recreate the sheer joy and excitement its original Nintendo 64 ancestor, but the Wii really is something special.

I was playing Rayman Raving Rabbids, a B-grade party game release, found in the bargain bin at a nearby EB Games store, and though its graphics are nowhere near 360-quality, the sound might be a bit lacklustre, and the gameplay might lag a little here and there, I really didn’t care. When playing Mario Galaxy, there’s no uber-realistic lighting or sound or effects – but it’s Mario: who cares? Mario Kart Wii might have a few bugs – who really gives a crap?

The 360 and PS3 offer startlingly realistic gameplay experiences, and games like Grand Theft Auto IV will no doubt be incredibly enjoyable. But sit down and look at the Wii. It’s white, small, unassuming. It can sit next to your DVD player and not really draw attention to itself. You turn it on, the soft tones of its Wii Menu fill the room with light, calm you down. You load up one of its titles and you play, you lose yourself in the world of motion and colour, and you don’t give a damn about anything else: you’re having fun.

That’s what the Wii is. And will continue to be.

Until next time…

How very excitement. There’s a possibility that next week, for a uni assessment, various contingents of my group will be interviewing an ex-Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Film and Literature Classification, a couple of bloggers and journalists from a games website and the Age newspaper. All very very exciting.

In other news I’ve been packing up much of my life for a trip up north to my family in Tamworth. The problem is that after events of late 2006 I packed up all my worldly belongings and brought them with me to my 4m by 4m room. Everything fits, but I trip over things all the time, and everything clutters far too easily. So I’m sorting through everything at the moment, sorting the important now from the sentimental from the useless crap I’ve accumulated over the years. I’ll be leading a much more Spartan existence from next week, put it that way.

Checkmate’s been put on hold indefinitely, while everyone does stuff for uni break and assessments are worked on and finished etc. I’m not too upset – I know I’ll have a chance to do it the way I want soon. Meantime I have to conceive a short piece involving any number of digital effects. Not sure quite what I want to do there yet.

More soon – promise.

Until next time…

One apologises for a certain disconnectedness that’s come in posts recent. This is mainly due to several university assignments being due and the like. It’s one of those times where one or two units decide to have many proposals and little reports and stuff due all in the same week, just to annoy the hell out of the students. Much fun.

So one sits here, it’s 1am, I’m living the university student’s dream, one might say. I’m in a bean bag, with my laptop, wirelessly connected to the Internet, blogging to the world, with a Coke and Vanilla Vodka in a coffee mug by my side. One might say life couldn’t get much better. I guess they’d be right.

One thing that I’ve been missing a lot though is my own bathroom. When I get the opportunity to housesit for a couple of friends who live locally, one of the most awesome things is just not having to worry about taking your toiletries with you every goddamned time you go to have a shower or brush your teeth.

This is the main reason why last week I applied to transfer from my current res to the one actually on the campus I’m studying at. I’ll only move, though, if I can get an ensuite room. ‘Cos an ensuite room would rock my socks, proverbial and otherwise.

Res has just been getting to me a lot lately. It could be any number of things, from my nextdoor neighbours, to the raging parties that seem to be encroaching more and more on what I thought was my personal space, to the general apathy of most other students to the needs of those who want to actually get some work done in relative peace. I just don’t feel… at an equilibrium any more. The line between stress at home and stress elsewhere is blurring. Hell – the fact that there is stress at home is worry enough to begin with.

I am sorry. I’m blithering. About my stuff. Which is all wondrously, tremendously amusing to you I’m sure. I’m doubtful it’s relevant to your lives on the whole, though, is it? No. Probably not. Sorry again. In more exciting news I purchased the second seasons of Hustle and A Bit Of Fry and Laurie today, which I’ll be enjoying over the coming weeks. I also bought a movie called Winter Solstice, which I’ve been intrigued about for a good while, as it stars Michelle Monaghan, Anthony LaPaglia and Allison Janney. After seeing Janney in a few non-West Wing roles, I’m starting to grow even more respect for her. And LaPaglia’s just super-talented. Lantana and Empire Records. Who else, I mean who else, could make those two movies stand together as worthy bookmarks in the novel of a career? No one else, I’m sure.

But anyway. One must be off. More on Checkmate soon. Still in producer mode for the time being, organising the re-shoot etc. Off to fall asleep watching Death At A Funeral. Like the typical uni student image needed another boost. Sheesh.

Until next time…

We interrupt you from your regular Checkmate Production Diary for a short time to bring you what might be called ‘normal everyday blogging’. Don’t panic. We’ll return you to your beloved filming documenting as soon as something interesting happens.

Well hello there. It’s been an interesting few days, mainly because I don’t know where the hell they went. One minute it’s Wednesday morning and I’m at uni working on my animation and trying to get stuff done for my assessments (never happened) and the next it’s Saturday morning and I’m just waking up at midday because of the distinct lack of sleep over the past few days.

The only explanation I can come up with is that somehow, when I went to the gym at 6am Thursday morning before work, I encountered some kind of temporal anomaly. This caused the next 48-55 hours to accelerate, putting me through a kind of timespace spin cycle, and spitting me out in my own bed at this exact hour.

That, or I’ve just been freaking busy.

I meant to blog last week about an experience that me and my beloved had whilst visiting the new shopping centre over at Rouse Hill. It was more my experience of the place, because I could barely believe that such a place could exist.

Let me set the scene by saying this: Rouse Hill is pretty much a nowhere place. It’s on Windsor Road between the Hawkesbury and the city of Sydney and has a couple of nurseries and its main claim to fame is a certain Irish pub. Over the past two years or so they’ve been developing this pretty enormous shopping centre, which I’ve since been told is maybe the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. I had my doubts, of course. But we finally went last Thursday. And I must say that it really was like stepping into another world.

This place has over 200 shops. It has streets, boulevards, cafes. It has prime office space above the shops. It has apartments for sale and for lease. It has fountains for kids to play in. It has restaurants and bars. The place is massive.

A little capitalist oasis in the heart of nothingness. Theoretically, you’d never, EVER have to leave. The place has a post office, bank, laundromat, doctor, lawyer and Medicare office. You could work in one of the shops or for one of the firms leasing office space, shop in the centre, eat at the restaurants then go home to your apartment. To be honest it’s damn scary. Continuing my theory, you’d be trapped in Rouse Hill for the rest of your pitiful existence.

It scares me the way the developers and designers obviously planned all this. That was obviously part of their strategy – to create a place where a person could live, work and play, and never feel any compulsion to go elsewhere for ‘life influences’.

Anyway. I rant. I’ll get some photos of the place if I get a chance, because it’s a quite surreal sort of experience.

Until next time…

It’s been a few days – assessments at uni and all that. I’ve taken advantage of the break in communicado to amend the day numbering issue that cropped up in the last few sleep-deprived posts.

I started cutting together the footage on Tuesday night, and for the first day of shooting, everything cut together nicely. It was when I started working on the second day’s footage that problems started to emerge.

It was not the actors’ faults, nor the crew’s. Everyone performed admirably on the day – except me. I think my problem was that I was focused too much on the organisation of the day and not too much on the visualisation. There were too many staging errors, not enough actual direction, bad photography and the lighting, though fun to set up and play around with, weren’t exactly what I’d hoped they’d be.

So, I’m left with a conundrum. And I’m afraid said conundrum ends in one word: re-shoot. I think the best course of action at this point is to organise an actual visualisation session with my assistant director. Not a production meeting, but a period of time where we sit down, watch some briefing scenes and figure out the best way to cover the thing. The third day of shooting is set for 19 April, so we’re hoping to re-shoot the briefing scene and get the other stuff covered as well. Between now and then there’ll probably be another rehearsal just to speed up the process, and the aforementioned creative brainstorming session. Anyway. With a bit of luck we’ll have the thing done by the last week of April. Wish us luck!

Until next time…