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THE Band being dubbed in German!

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It has been an eventful week.  I learnt that the German release of THE BAND isn’t going to be subtitled but is being dubbed!  I look forward to seeing how they translate some of the Australianisms!  Lucky no one says “cracking the shits” in the film!  I always thought that was a very funny Australian turn of phrase.

Unfortunately, for the wonderful sound designer of The Band, Lachlan Mooney, had to recreate all the sounds made but the actors on set through the time consuming art of Foley.  To make matters worse they emailed me on Friday, but as I like to get away from my computer on the weekends I didn’t get the email til monday and went into a state of panic because they needed it by Tuesday!  I managed to get some extra time and Lachlan did a sterling job putting it all together in such a short period ( this man is brilliant, please employ him!) …we both have learnt lots.  At the same time being such a low budget production there was no chance in hell that we were going to be able to afford to ADR the whole film, hence I found it strange that they choose to dub the film for its German release.  I’m meeting with the German distributor, Wolfgang from Cult Movies, while I’m in Berlin, so I will ask him.
The film is the film that keeps on demanding my time.  Just when I think there is nothing else I need to do for it, something else pops up! 
I’m counting down the days to Berlin and trying to work out when I’ll get time to do washing before I go,  wondering if I should get sleeping pills for the long flight, realizing its going to be stupidly cold and I need a coat I can close ( thanks Sprinkle for sorting out that one, go check out her clothes, beautiful, well made here in Australia and no sweat shop labour) and learning how to burn Blu ray DVDs for the screening at the Berlin Porn Film Festival!  Never a dull moment.

Exciting News for THE BAND!

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The US DVD cover
The German DVD cover 

Sorry its been so long between entries, but I have been off gallivanting around the world; celebrating a friend’s wedding in Spain, meeting my partner’s family in Italy and battling through Ramadan in Morocco – but many exciting things have been happening while I’ve been away!

Firstly, THE BAND will be the opening night film at the Berlin Porn Film Festival. a great honour and I still can’t believe it.  It makes the slaving my guts out to get the money together to go there extremely worthwhile!  So I’ll be heading to Berlin at the end of October…so if you are in Berlin on the 22nd October please come and be in the audience.  I promise I will be blogging each day that I’m there to keep up to date with all the naughtiness and great erotic delights I will be experiencing!
Until then I am keeping busy subtitling the film in ….english! Yes I know that’s strange but I’m guessing that due to the German’s being inundated with american accents that the Australian one is quite hard to understand!
Its a rather time consuming and boring task, but I’m extremely grateful that I spent over a week creating a continuity script because all I have to do is cut and paste.  However, it is one of those tasks that you wished there was money left in the budget to pay someone else to do!  ah the joys of independent film making  you need to be multi-skilled and wear all sorts of hats!
Other exciting news is that its official Cult Movies in Germany are distributing “The Band.”  From what I can gather, it looks like it is being released on 22nd October 2009, but I need to confirm this.
Also, a new company in the US called Breaking Pictures has picked up the US and Canadian rights and will be releasing it on 17th November 2009 – so keep an eye out for it!  They are backed by an Aussie, so finger’s crossed they might pick up the Australia rights too!  It would be a shame never to see the film distributed here – but as I have said before we live in conservative times!

Director’s commentary for THE BAND

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Today, I edited together the Director’s commentary that I recorded last week. It’s very strange listening back to ones voice and I find that I constantly stumble over words and use the wrong ones. Some sections I want to redo but due to time restraints I have to use what is there, which is disturbing as I think of people who don’t know me will listen to this jumble of words and think I don’t make sense.

I’m so tired that I can’t express how I feel very well….my language escapes me…and thinking back there are other stories I have forgotten to tell about the journey of making the film…like the masturbating auditioner (sic) who was quite happy to let us film him jerking off, but afterwards had second thoughts about being in the film and only wanted to if he could wear a mask! Or the horrible nasty emails I received from someone pretending to be from Family First (a right winged christian political group)…so many stories…its hard to remember them all when you are standing alone in a recording studio! Oh well.

Behind the Scenes of “The Band”

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I feel like I’ve been push a big barrow of mud and rocks up a hill! Not really, I’ve just been wading through the 20 odd hours of footage that was shot by Megan Spencer to be used for “Behind the scenes.” Its strange to look at the footage now that nearly 3 years have past since we shot “The Band” and brings a new perspective to the shoot. Here are some things I didn’t know:

Butch Midway aka Princess was working 8 hrs at his other job before he would come on set, hence he did most of the shoot sleep deprived! What a trooper, I don’t know how he did it, but thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Aer and Mike were driven crazy by having a film crew in their house for a week…okay I had some inkling of this…..thank you for putting up with it all.
How many people enjoyed working on the film and found the set very relaxed.
That lots of the clothes used in the film to dress Mia were mine and I never got them back! Obviously not that important to me, if I’ve only just noticed that now!
There were so many talented people involved in the film. Thank you all once again, it would have been nothing without all of you, every single one of you!
While it was hard to go through the footage and cut it down, so many “gems” of moments didn’t make it, it restored my faith in how good the shoot was. There were several events that occurred after the shoot that jaded my perception of the experience so its nice to have faith restored once more and hopefully the 33mins will provide people with insight and entertainment into the journey that was the making of “The Band”.

Making it HANDMADE part 4 and “The Band”

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Monday was a marathon day. I returned to teaching, then after a 3 hour class headed off to see Pip Lincolne from “Meet me at Mikes”. I asked her kindly if I could re-shoot her interview as she was very sick when I originally did so. She actually admitted she couldn’t really remember anything about the interview, and while her answers were good, she looked unwell.

Afterwards we drank cups of tea and extensively chatted before heading off to a Brown Owls gathering. I have to admit it is a truly strange sensation pointing a camera at people you don’t know and shooting footage. I always feel like I should do an official “Hi I’m Anna and I’m making a film about…” I did introduce myself but then moved around the room shooting. About half way through people started asking me questions and then the flood gates opened!
There was lots on interesting discussion about craft and female inheritance, why people sell their craft and can you actually make a living from doing so. Home baked treats filled the kitchen as people skill shared, talk about their their days and the inspirations. I wanted to put down my camera and whip out my knitting and join them. The funniest question I got asked was “Do I make craft?”. I find this very strange but I guess people look at me and don’t think I fit the idea of one who crafts, this was something Pip and I had discussed that afternoon, the perception of who crafts. A very interesting night, but a long one….I didn’t make it home til 11pm and considering I left home at 7am, it was a very long day/night!
Today, I will finish shooting the various websites people talk about and use. Thrilling I know!!
However, I am looking forward to Thursday night as I’m off to shoot an evening of mischief with the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle.
Now, I have over 13 hrs worth of footage and my hard drive is looking very full, so after this weekend I will commence post production. Firstly, I’m going to edit a teaser together, so I’ll post it on youtube for all to see and I would love feedback.
On another note, its official I am off to the Berlin Porn Film Festival in October! I’ve raised the airfare by writing articles for various magazines men’s magazines! Very exciting and it looks like quite a few ex-pat Australians will be slipping across from London to be at the screening! I’ve never been to Berlin so it will be great to have a few days to explore the city, unfortunately I will only be there for about 6 days and I’m hoping I can do some publicity for “The Band” and its upcoming DVD release…….more on this later!

“making it HANDMADE” part 3

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Its been a packed few days of shooting.

Sunday, I meet up with Casey of Craft Cartel and Trashbag Rehad to do some “Cunt Fling ups”. As Casey busily added public hair to the last few vaginas, a friend of Casey’s, Tash and myself made cloth roses to represent the flower that the clitoris is!
Casey had told me she had organised a few people to come along and help throw the “cunts” over power lines but I wasn’t expecting the 15 people who turned up! There is something very powerful about a group of people walking along the street together!
Flinging the cunts proved to be more challenging than what I thought and when each person finally achieved it was greeted with jubilation! An uplifting and empowering time for craft and vaginas everywhere!
Monday night, I went off and shot some footage of “Died Pretty”, a trashbag rehab gathering to beautify swine flu masks. Some amazing creations and the final parade was hilariously MCed by Erin Tasmania, who made me laugh so much I had difficulty holding my camera still! I had to fight for space with a lovely woman, Claire from SBS’s show “Insight” and when I arrived Casey was engaged in an interview for ABC 774…what a media whore!! hee hee
As a contrast, next Monday I’m off to shoot “Brown Owls” with Pip Lincolne as they learn and share the art of embroidery. I might even drag out mine and do some stitching myself as I am in need of some manual creativity as shooting so much has left me little time to craft!

“making it HANDMADE” part 2

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Yesterday, I headed out in the gale force winds to interview Pip Lincolne. I meet Pip years ago when her shop “Meet me at Mike’s” was still in Richmond, but since then she has become such a whirlawind in the indie craft scene, been extensively featured in the press and has such a huge “fan club” world wide I wasn’t quite sure who I was going to be meeting this time! Was this another person driven by money, cashing in on the resurgence of craft???

The answer is definately no! I now understand why Pip has such a huge following ( over 2000 visitors to her blog daily). Here is a woman who is passionate about craft and creating, but who isn’t precious about her “art” and is happy to share her skills and knowledge to encourage everyone to have a go at crafting even if they make mistakes or produce “crap”craft. Its so refreshing to hear this and is something I think is wonderful about the indie craft movement that its about creating and not being put off by what I call the craft nazis ( those who insist on perfect technique) and letting your creativity roam free!
Today I’ll be shooting footage of craft websites!! Thrilling I hear you yell! No not really but needs to be done for storytelling purposes!
Tomorrow I’m off to interview outspoken and fiesty crafter and designer Peta Pledger, which should be lots of fun and stir the pot up!!!

“Making it HANDMADE”

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I feel so lucky this week to be able to dedicate all my time to interviewing and shooting for my latest film entitled “Making it Handmade”! It a documentary about the Melbourne Indie Craft movement/scene.

Yesterday, I interviewed the lovely editor of MixTape Zine, Justine. I have to admit that I was nervous as she is the first person I have interviewed without having meet her in the flesh first, but I have been a fan of her Zine for quite awhile. If you are into craft and art or both check it out. She told me about some very exiting plans she has for the future, and I can see the Zine growing up and becoming a magaZine in the very near future.
This afternoon I’m off to interview Pip Lincolne, the queen of handmade in Melbourne. She has squeezed me into her busy schedule (thank you sooo much), she currently writing a new book and I’m looking forward to talking with her about it today.
I’ll keep you updated with the other wonderful people I will be interviewing this week.
On another note: it looks like “The Band” has sold to at least one country, just waiting on final confirmation…but will let you know.

The Band and Cannes

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Finally, I heard back from the sales agent in regards to the screening of “THE BAND’ at Cannes film market.

The screening was 70% full…not bad for a very small very independent Australian Film! Only a few people left but all returned to grab screeners!
There maybe a sale of the film, but nothing completely confirmed as yet…will keep you posted.
In the meantime I am writing a treatment for a documentary I would like to make while in Berlin for the Berlin Porn Film Festival. I hate writing such documents and get distracted and start writing a script instead, and visualizing instead! Writing for something that is a visual medium sucks the big one!
Also trying to find a producer, but no doubt will end up doing it myself again…oh black mood leave me now!

The Band at Cannes

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Finally some feedback!

A friend of the wonderful Sanne Kurz, the brilliant DOP who made “The Band” look so amazing, Tina by accident ended up going to see the film and left Sanne this message on her blog!
Tina wrote:
“Just watched by coincidence “The Band” – amazing movie…congratulations and respect.”
How lovely!
When you spend hours and hours in a darkened room going over and over your film you really do loose sight of if its any good or not!  I am working my arse off so that I can go to Berlin Porn Film Festival later this year and see it on the big screen with an audience.
Also check out the July edition of Australian Penthouse and you can see some stills from “The Band” and read a very brief paragraph about “The Band”.