The Dag Journal

I just thought I'd toss in a quick update on where things are at with The Dags.

***Getting closer now
Yep there's only two and half months to go before Con 9 From Outer Space. The con whose genesis was wayyyy back in 1998, which was then brought to life with its current name in 2005, is almost on our doorstep. As far as preparations are concerned, things are going very well and we hope it'll be great event.



***'Ear, ear
A couple of weeks ago I had something in my left ear so I gave it a big poke and scratch and in the process manage to deafen my left side by pushing something in too far. As a result I had to visit the docs who promptly flushed both of my ears out (which is not a pleasant experience I must say).

The result is that I hear so well now that everything sounds different. Rustling fabric sounds different, running water in the shower sounds different and even the sound of the kettle boiling is different. And to think I used to do all the sound mixing on my films ... god knows how THEY sound now LOL

***House update
For once I don't have anything new to report :)

***Life after Star Walking
As you know I retired from Star Walking back in October last year and it seems that since then things have gone southward a bit for the ol' SWI. Admittedly their last Skyforce meeting was fine, but the club didn't have a dealers table at either Armageddon or Supernova and the website is off the air and has been for over a month.

With these unusual events occuring, someone asked me how I felt about it all and I said that it really didn't bother me. I finished with the club last year and have since moved on - if anything I'm regaining my allegiance to Austrek as their new Prez is really great and they seem to have more enjoyable (and more frequent) meetings.

The irony is that a couple of people said to me that SWI wouldn't survive if I left the club (a feeling I didn't agree with) and yet it almost seems it'll be lucky to see the year out at this rate as they don't seem to be very a happy bunch of bunnies.

As most people know I'm not a big user of Facebook. I don't log on often and I post messages less often than that. One thing FB does have in its favour is the ability to find people who have gone missing in your life for long periods of time.

Well believe it or not, someone found me recently and this person is someone I've been searching for for 32 years.

During my primary school days in the mid 70s my best mate was Wossa. We hooked up around the time Star Wars came out, which meant we saw the film multiple times (he was the Han Solo fan and I was Darth Vader), going to the toy shops, playing cricket in the park (more like sabre fighting with the stumps) and doing what all 10 year old kids do. Back then you would've thought we'd stay mates forever.

We went to the same small primary school in Rathdowne St Carlton so we were always together (in fact these were the best years of my whole schooling life), however, I was a year ahead of him thus at the end of 1978 I moved to high school which meant we didn't see each other as often and neither of us had a telephone to keep in contact.

Sometime during 1979 I moved house to the northern end of the suburb and for a 12 year old kid riding a bike from one end of the surburb to the other was like a trip across the galaxy.

I can't remember if we caught up much during 1979 as I was now making new friends at high school and he was still at Rathdowne St so we started to drift apart. Then in 1980 he came to my high school but barely stayed for a couple of weeks and I remember we passed each other only once in the school yard ... and that was the last time I ever saw or heard of him.

Until tonight.

I've been using the Internet to try and track him down for years but alas he has a very common name (Smith) which made the search next to impossible. On top of this I had no idea what he looked like nor where he lived.

Then last night I was on Facebook and discovered that someone with his name had sent me a message back in December last year that I'd missed asking what primary school I went to. After a couple of back and forth messages confirming our identities I rang him up tonight ... needless to say he sounds nothing like what I remember and his Facebook picture is not even remotely close to how he looked as a kid LOL

What a spin out! After 32 years he told me that he lives in Brisbane, has four kids and is a crane driver. After seeing him briefly for the the last time in 1980 I've finally found Wossa!

OK the short film career is now officially over. So what's next for The Dags? This...

In Just a sniffle over 24 hours from now the films will finally be premiered and with that my short film making career comes to a close. At the moment I'm pretty relaxed as I've got all my DVDs completed ready hand out to my cast and crew and everything is set to go for the screening.

But for now, the film business gets pushed aside as Carlton are about to play Richmond so off to the TV I go :)

But that doesn't mean you can bring your cat, dog, fish and pet rabbit along 'cause we don't have a lot of space.

Seriously though, if you're keen on coming along then just let Peter know - his email is on the poster.

If anyone has any questions regarding the films themselves just let me know (and yes that IS me acting in the third one ... if you can call my performance "acting").

Although the film was officially finished last month (though admittedly I was still making a couple of changes last weekend - shhhh don't tell), I've been busy getting my DVDs ready to hand out to my cast and crew. The problem with doing Special Features is that you always find ways to improve what you've done or change things around. Well as of last night I thought it was all complete until I thought of something new to add in this morning - curse my damned imagination. :)

Anyway the aim is to have a screening of the film at the end of March so if all goes well I'll let everyone here know where and when it's on.

You know how it is, you do some big improvements to your home then before you know it you're spending money doing something else.

Well that's just happened to us.

What seems like only yesterday when we had the backyard concreted we've now signed up for ... solar panels!

Now the incentive for us doing this is that our friends had a stack of panels intalled at their place a couple of weeks ago and I knew they would've done a heap of research regarding what to get and who to go too - which is exactly what they did. So I simply asked them who they picked and got those guys to see us for a quote.

The result is that we were VERY impressed with the consultant who spent a couple of hours at the house going through everything in detail - and on top of that he's a big Star Wars fan too :)

But it was the price that sold us. For 8 x panels with all installation, setup, configuration and the like, $3,270 with the rebate scheme covering the rest. Now you might say that Tru Value Solar in the TV commercials are offering 8 x panels for under $2K but when I rang them up I was shocked to learn that they don't have consultants, you just order the deal and they'll come out and install it (psst, do a Google search on "Tru Value Solar complaints"). Naturally this set off all the alarm bells because I wanted someone to come to the house and explain everything to us, so Tru Value got the flick quick smart.

With our setup it turns out that we should be able to generate over 6 kilowatts of power which is kinda handy as we only use 5 kilowatts currently. Ironically my aim wasn't to eliminate electricity bills entirely just lower them, but if it turns out we do get rid of them then Woo Hoo to us!

Anyway we put the order in today and the installation is due to occur on Friday, however, it'll take about 5-6 weeks to get everything setup and configured for use which we are fine with.

So who did we choose? The Enviro Group.

I'll let you know how it all goes. :)

A lady here at work has knocked down her existing house and is building a replacement in the same location for her family. Last week she brought plans in for us to have a look at.

I tell ya this thing is a monster at over 50 squares of living space (25+ on each floor). What got me though was the kitchen 'cause next to the Walk-in-Pantry is ... get this ... the Butler's Pantry!

The WHAT!!!

Now I know a lot new homes are putting in two sinks - one in the kitchen and another is a small separate room off to the side where the real cooking takes place (why anyone would do this is beyond me) but to give it a name like that is a total spin out.

Visitor "what's that room?"
Host (in their best toffy accent) "oh that's just the butler's pantry"

Now all you need is a Jeeves to use it LOLOL

OK it might not be an "era" per se, but it is the end of a chapter in the life of The Dags.



So what does it all mean? Well the completion of my latest film RED effectively means that my short film making "career" is now over as I don't plan to make any more short films. I knew a number of years ago that making films of this nature wasn't going to last forever and as a result I wanted to finish with my swan song RED.

So where has the journey taken me? Well it all started with The Dead of Night back in 2000 followed directly after by Skyforce: The Movie. From there things were quiet until production commenced on Jedi Heritage in 2004, from then on it's just been a tidal wave of activity: Alone, The Psychology of Killing, Continuity, Reality Check, Flair - The Psychology of Killing Revisited, Oneself, Oneself Two, Oneself Three, Red, 4 x corporate videos, 2 x wedding videos and 1 x TV commercial ... and this doesn't include all the films I worked on for OTHER people in various roles.

So it's definitely been a very productive and enjoyable time that's for sure, but alas time is what's causing the slow decline of activity. You see my core film making group is starting to drift apart as sadly we now don't see each other as often as we used too and as a result the drive we had to make films at a breakneck pace a few years ago has tapered off significantly. But that's OK because it really is a case of "it was fun while it lasted" and it's the kind of thing that simply wasn't sustainable in the long term.

For myself film making was something I needed to get out of my creative system and fortunately I've been able to do that, now it's time to shut that door and see what other doors open...

But wait a minute!

What about this feature film I'm planning to make? Hmmm indeed. Some of you will know that I had talked about making feature film version of The Psychology of Killing once RED was completed. The truth is that I doubt it will see the light of day simply because there is no money for it and not being a full time industry professional means I don't have all the inside contacts to make it happen. Admittedly I did give myself up until 2017 to get it done so there is still time that's for sure. I guess we'll just wait and see... :)

Avid LJ readers of The Dags would recall a year or so back we busted our chops to avoid installing AC into the house - we invested both in blinds and tinted windows yet this wasn't enough to cool the temp down to an acceptable/comfortable level because there was no air flow. So we finally capitulated and last year installed an AC unit into the loungeroom.

Well with a 34 degree Sunday on the cards, we turned it on at 11am yesterday and I tell ya what, we would never have guess what the temp was like outdoors as inside it was fantastic. Set at 19 degrees with the fan only blowing on 2, this was more than enough to make the house (the loungeroom in particular which was traditionally the hottest of the lot) feel very comfortable indeed. Yep the investment was definitely worth it.

**************

In other news I've finally finished my last short film, RED. Yep the film that gave me massive grief in May/June last year has now been completed.

So is it any good? Well despite my high hopes I don't think it's brilliant by any means, however, it certainly looks pretty good. Looking at it now, I'm not entirely sure if the story is strong enough to win an audience over, plus it's clear that some sequences with the wolf could've been elaborated on showing him a bit more. In the end it comes across as a film that needed to be longer with more in it but alas there simply wasn't enough time nor money to do this. Still at least it's done.

As for the duration, it runs a sniffle over 12 minutes which makes the cost around $1,100 per minute.