Week 3

On Tuesday I was feeling quite anxious as I had my interview to go on Exchange though I needn't have been, I was prepared and it was quite casual and relaxed in the interview and I had had constant contact with one of the ladies via email the whole time I was organising to go on Exchange. So overall I left feeling like it had gone quite well.

I had MPI303 and 304 straight after the interview and we presented to the class again our weekly update of progress. I showed a PowerPoint presentation of the models I had organised to be in my film. We had discussed 5 and I've organised 6 in case someone pulls out or for another reason, I ended up with 4 girls and 2 boys. The girls are quite diverse one is performing ballet for me, another jazz, another hip hop and the other ballroom, all are trained. Both boys are self taught one is very much into break dancing and the other just has a couple of nice moves that flow well and will bring the tone of "It doesn't matter if you can dance or not as long as you enjoy yourself" which is the whole meaning behind my film to make it arty and not so commercial. I also updated the class on the locations I had planned to use. Over the weekend I had taken a snippet of footage from the film Little Miss Sunshine and dragged it into Premier to practice playing with the footage I will acquire. Every 10 frames I took out 5 frames and when I told the class they suggested I play around a little more and not take out to many frames which I am happy to try.

I told Jenny that I would be filming the boys dancers this weekend just gone (13-15 March 2009) and asked if I needed permission or anything, I was told I did need to lodge a form with the local council to seek permission and a classmate gave me the website to find the form and said I would only need to give a few days. Little did I know the drama that would arise.

Wednesday I got the form and was trying to find the appropriate person to sign off on it so I could lodge it with the council before the end of the day thinking that would give them a few days to approve it and I would be right. After eventually finding someone to sign the form I then used Google Maps to locate exactly the locations I wanted to film at for the form (I thought this was quite clever of me) and went to the council office. I was told by the girl at the desk that I also needed to fill in another form and that I would need to supply a layout of where I wanted to film or photographs. I rushed back to uni for a camera and headed back to town to photograph my 4 locations those being Berry Street Carpark, Barretta Lane, Tongaboo Lane and outside Wagga Wagga Civic Centre on Baylis Street. I managed to photograph these places, get the images printed and handed it all back into the council office well before closing time and was then told it would take 5 working days to process! I asked the girl if it could be brought forward as I wanted to film that weekend and she said no, there were a lot of others ahead of mine.

Well this lead me to break down in tears and cry to my mum as I'd been so stressed and run around all day trying to get it in on time that this just pushed me over the edge! She had a good idea though she told me to get on the Wagga Wagga council website and look up a council member and phone them and tell them what had happened as ask for their help. I did this and got hold of Yvonne Braid who said she would ask at the council meeting she was on her way to and could I call her back at 8pm. I called her back and she told me how she had spoken to two people and I was to call one of them Janice Summerhayse first thing the next day and she would be able to tell me who I was to deal with out of the two of them. I rang the following day and she was in a meeting and was asked could she call me back, three hours later I still hadn't heard from her so I tried again and was told she was on the phone and could she call me back. Her secretary eventually phoned back a few hours later and said that Janice had passed my application on to Greg Minehan and he would call me back as soon as he was free.

Eventually Greg phoned me to tell me that he couldn't allow me to film because they do not allow anyone to film on roads and this includes alley ways and carparks as it does not apply with road safety rules. I said that was perfectly fine I understood and asked if I would at least be allowed to film outside the Civic Centre and he said he would allow me to film their this weekend and we finished our conversation with him saying no I didn't need to come in and collect anything he would just make note of it. He phoned back a few minutes later to say I hadn't handed in the Universities liability statement and he needed it to process my application correctly. So after a lot of hunting and various stressed phone calls Katrina in the SVPA office was very helpful and emailed it to me straight away. I handed it in Thursday at around 4.30Pm and Greg Minehan had already left for the day, I want his job!

Basically the bureaucracy of it all is that the council likes to big note themselves and make life hard for uni students who with out the university this town would not have a lot going for it. I think the council should take greater care of the students here, I understand the reasons for the forms but we are not big production companies these are assessable tasks only and I don't feel we should have to go through the same process to be able to do an assignment.

The rest of Week 3 consisted of me trying to come up with a better idea for my documentary and all I can think of thus far was to photograph the Bacardi Express concert coming to Wagga Wagga in 2 weeks or the couple of 21st birthday parties I have on back home.

I'd originally thought I have to attend the Sydney Travelling Film Festival that came to Wagga Wagga on the weekend for COM123 but as my Distance Education pack finally arrive on Tuesday and stated distance students didn't have to go I was quite thrilled. Instead I did hire some videos from Blockbuster to watch to add to my journal as I thought if I wasn't going to the film festival I should at least do some film watching to write about.

Jenny said we really needed to have some work to show in class for the coming week for MPI304 on our seminar. I said I was going to be doing my research seminar assignment on stop motion. So far I have thought of Tim Burton to study with his films Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas. I also would like to study the makers of the short film that first really grabbed my attention of stop motion and really made me want to try it myself called Ten Thousand Pictures of You which was directed and written by Robin King. Though from what I can tell he mainly does short films for a company called Stand Alone Films and I am not sure whether this will be alright to research as it is a little off topic. I think I will also look at Aardman who created the Wallace and Gromit animations. Willis O'Brien and Lady Starewicz who seem to be the leading pioneers in stop motion in America and Europe respectively.

I'm sure I will find more to talk about for my seminar this is a rather broad assignment and can lead you anywhere.