Wed 17 Feb 2010

And what was that, Mr DVD Sleeve?

Posted by Dan Binns under film, writing
No Comments

All is in readiness for the second day of filming of Unravel Me on Saturday. It was a mad dash to the finish line, with camera equipment availability and casting to be done up until yesterday afternoon!

But I’ll be picking up the camera, kindly being loaned to us by a friendly fellow production company, and the 35mm adapter on Friday, and all will be well.

Lastnight saw me finish my second short film in as many weeks. I’m just super-crazy-productive at the moment. I hope I can channel this sort of enthusiasm into my Ph.D. writing when it gets going in a month or two.

Work has seen me production managing a shoot in Pakistan, doing some great creative work for a rather large and well-known multi-national, and implementing a stack of new management systems, mainly JobBag. I’m also organising contracts for a stack of short films (not mine, sadly).

More soon.

Until next time…

Tags: , , , ,

 

Sun 14 Feb 2010

Power cables produce edicts of judiciary

Posted by Dan Binns under rants
No Comments

Today I closed the old ‘binnsy’ Google account and signed up for a new one. The old one was so overridden with spam, both in Blogger and Gmail, that it was hardly worth keeping. Being bored, I had a brief flick through the T&C, and found this little tidbit of legalese goodness:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Ooh, er, guv’nor!

So basically, post what you want, you own it, all good – but if Google wants it, they’ll damn well take it! Google has this appearance of being an organic, innovative, progressive ‘community’ (as opposed to overlording corporation), but this is the way they will take over the world. The planet Earth will very soon be designated, for real, ‘Google Earth.’ We will all be known by our Google IDs. TV commercials, billboards, the lot, will be governed by AdSense.

Essentially, the world and all kinds of freedom will be nommed by the Goog.

Best start stocking up on canned goods. That’s gonna be a looooong winter.

Until next time…

Tags: , , , ,

 

Sun 14 Feb 2010

Flashlight of Destiny

Posted by Dan Binns under rants
No Comments

It appears to be yet another hyper-commercialised, overrated and under-criticised day of celebration.

Happy Valentine’s Day, folks.

Yes, it is that horrid day of roses and chocolate, of teddy bears and gratuitous spending that can only come from a total misinterpretation of Christian history. Sigh.

I have no issue with expressing feelings, exchanging presents, and generally being a big softie. What I take significant umbrage with is that people wait for this one day to do it. Why not spice things up and buy a dozen roses for your valentine on May 29th? How about a box of chocolates on December 4th?

Of the true St Valentine, it appears we don’t know a great deal. We know his name, we know that he was one of several Saints named Valentine to be martyred for the big dude/dudette upstairs, and we know where he was buried (somewhere in Italy). According to Wikipedia, his relics are kept at the Church of St Praxed in Rome*. There is no notion that he was the patron saint of lovers – and I would’ve thought such a conservative institution as the Catholic Church would frown on such a patronage.

One wonders where it all went wrong. Well, as is usually the case, you can blame the pre-Tudors. Geoffrey Chaucer, well-known for his Canterbury Tales (possibly deserving of a rewrite in light of the gallavantery of various rugby league teams), was, among other things, a courtier, and held a great and loyal circle of friends – think an old-school Vincent Chase. Up until his time, St Valentine’s Day was a fairly benign affair, having been originally sanctioned by Pope Gelasius** about 500 AD. Couples would exchange flowers and be very chaste***. Chaucer was a man about town, and it was around this time that courtly love was the thing. Courtly love is the ancient precursor to the practice of men being sleazy, asking if they can buy a woman a drink, which eventually leads to a drunken ravishing. Back then, it was only slightly more gentlemanly. So it was that Saucy Chaucy started sending ‘valentines’ to the women he fancied. 500-600 years later, Hallmark got a hold of the holiday and that was that.

My point is, Valentine’s Day is pointless. Pick every other day of the year to be romantic. Damn the Man.

Until next time…

——————————————

* Poor St Praxed. Praxing sounds an awfully painful process.

** I’m sure he was.

*** Read: ‘Boring.’

Tags: , ,

 

Fri 5 Feb 2010

Carpets, untamed

Posted by Dan Binns under writing
No Comments

Two of my projects have been submitted to Metro Screen’s Short Breaks program. I hope they do well – I’d love to see both of them made, and better still with someone else’s money!

I’m also submitting a couple of scripts to various other film festivals and grant schemes. In doing so, though, I’ve ignited this need in me to produce something simple. To write a short 5-10 minute script, set it in an easily filmable location (there are a couple around where I work), and film it in an afternoon. A simple edit, an upload to YouTube, maybe some film festival submissions, and the satisfaction of making something well-written and profound.

I caught the bus with a friend yesterday, and we got to talking about a few projects that we’ve seen or worked on, and it really drove home to me how the best stories – the ones that really stay with you – are the simplest. A simple premise, well-executed, can be the most effective narrative, and the most visionary.

I’m running away down south for a few days starting tomorrow. Expect simple things soon.

Until next time…

Tags: , , , , ,

 

Sun 31 Jan 2010

Widening gyres make prams nervous

Posted by Dan Binns under Uncategorized
[2] Comments

I’m not ashamed to admit I like the new Channel Ten promo. You can see it here.

What I take issue with is the nigh-immediate response it got from folks that work in the mental health industry, who state that it unnecessarily lampoons the very serious issue of mental health.

Point number one – at which point does it poke fun at real people who are genuinely suffering from mental disability (which, may I say, is definitely a real problem, and not a single person is doubting this)?

Secondly, I despair for the advancement of comedy when something so benign is taken as being offensive. Making fun of minorities, of society’s fringe, is wrong. But this kind of humour is brilliantly self-deprecating in the most wonderfully and classically Australian way.

Making fun of oneself is a comedic principle the British pride themselves on, and is the reason for the success of Monty Python, Little Britain and other comedy gold. The second Australia tries it, some advocacy group comes out of the woodwork and slams it down.

No wonder there’s nothing good on TV any more.

Until next time…

Tags:

 

Sat 30 Jan 2010

Posted by Dan Binns under writing
No Comments

Here we are.

At WordPress.

This is genuinely strange. WordPress is very involved, but also quite simple. The layout, for now, will stay as it is now, but no doubt I’ll tinker over the coming weeks.

I played Mass Effect for a little while today, after updating the near-neolithic graphics drivers on my PC laptop. The game, for the most part, is very cinematic. I’ve yet to engage in any (no doubt RAM-chomping) combat or any in-depth sidequests, but I’m enjoying it thus far.

At present I’m backing up all the documents, music, pictures and such on the MacBook, in the hope of installing XP Pro via Bootcamp by the end of the day. Once that’s done, I’d love to install both Mass Effect and Vampire The Masquerade on there, just to see how they run on a nice new-ish Dual Core processor.

Anyway, nerdiness aside, I’ve almost completed writing the short film I’ll be submitting to Metro Screen in the hopes of getting a tiny but very valuable production grant. Channeling Abrams, I guess this would be my Cloverfield. I’ve mapped out the remaining 2-3 pages. I’ll let you know how I finish up.

Best get back into it. Writing, that is. Mass Effect I might hold off ’til I can get it cranked on the MacBook.

Until next time…

Tags: , , ,

 

Wed 27 Jan 2010

Posted by Dan Binns under film, writing
No Comments

Well, I’m making the switch to WordPress… very soon, the Hovel will be hosted at www.danbinns.net/blog.

I’m not too sure how I feel about this. Blogger has been great, but I think I need to get rid of my old Google account – many aspects of it anyway – given that it’s been compromised in the past.

In other news I’m writing again – a few ideas inspired by television series I’ve been watching, and desperately wanting to cash in on something topical and/or bankable.

For now though, off to work I go (full time at the production house – very, very cool). Will update when WordPress goes live.

Until next time…

Tags: , , , ,

 

Wed 20 Jan 2010

Potted plants pitted against pistachios

Posted by Dan Binns under writing
No Comments

There’s been much talk at various blogs (well, mainly one) about the best kind of space for a writer. The consensus, as it should be, is that everyone is different, and inspired by different things, and work better in different environments.

For mine, I’ve written on planes, on trains, on the side of the road, in bed, on the floor, on the toilet, at work, on holiday and any other kind of scenario that can be imagined.

My ideal time for writing – my best writing, anyway – is between 11pm and 3am. Once, during this time, I wrote over 15000 words. Another time, I wrote almost an entire feature script.

Different things inspire me – music, good wine, decent food, a face spotted on the bus, a moment glimpsed from afar.

I guess these things, for all writers, are in a state of flux, and what works perfectly one day may cause ideas to fizzle up and die the next.

Do what works in the moment. And don’t argue with or get fed up with yourself when nothing works.

Until next time…

Tags:

 

Sun 17 Jan 2010

Videos eat squirrely drivel for lunch

Posted by Dan Binns under Uncategorized
No Comments

Good work, SMH…

Until next time…

Tags: , , , ,

 

Wed 6 Jan 2010

Money eats chickens for brunch

Posted by Dan Binns under Uncategorized
No Comments

2009 was a big year for me, for many reasons.

Among many, many other things, it was a year of friendships broken and friendships made, of big connections established and of great things achieved. I wrote my Honours thesis, got second class, was offered a place for post-graduate work at UWS, and continued full-time work at Onion Media Group.

It was a year of great reflection, and contemplation, as the Black Saturday bushfires ravaged my home state while I watched from up north, floods hit the northern states numerous times, and closer to home, I left the confines of university accommodation to occupy a small apartment much closer to the city and to work.

2010 offers many new opportunities. I’m taking a year away from study to work full-time, develop my skills, write screenplays, stories and articles and generally build up a neat folio of work that will make me utterly irresistible to any and all kind of employer and female the world over.

I’m taking up piano again, finishing off my short film and sending it around the world, thinking up new things, playing lots of video games, getting fit, settling my debts and getting my car in tip-top shape.

I may also buy a PS3.

Most of all this will be an incident- and change-free year. If anything major happens, it’ll be of my own doing.

Until next time…

Tags: , , , , ,

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »