It seems like ages since I last gave you all a progress report on the blog – and guess what, it has been! The last time I gave you a proper update was in June, and it’s now already November. How times flies!

Well, as per usual, we’ve been busy. Very busy!

On top of all the exciting projects we have in development, we’ve been working with Pocketbonfire Production’s in both the production and post production stages of their short film, “There’s a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake”. Jaime Snyder, who wrote and directed the film is currently “stuck in the edit suite” cutting away.

We’ve also shot a Tropfest short film entry called “One Flew North”, on the Canon 5DMKII, which we are going to start editing within the next few weeks. It was written and directed by Nick Colla. We were lucky enough to score Benjamin Hidalgo on board as director of photography and the footage looks amazing! Stay tuned for more details on this film!

Jacqui Hocking has also been very busy jet-setting around the world capturing amazing footage on her TOPtoTOP adventure. She arrives back in Melbourne on Sunday for a brief period, then she’s off again.

We also recently worked alongside Draught Films to put together an entry for the Melbourne 48hour Film Competition, which was directed by extremely talented Thom Holt. Despite the tight deadline, we are EXTREMELY happy with the results of the film. We shot it on a HVX202. We’ve already made it into the top 12 and will find out whether or not we pick up any awards in the competition before the end of the month.

Both Nick Colla and myself have also been working closely on several other major concepts. More details to follow soon!

So yes, I know this blog post is a bit all over the place. But rest assured, the reason we’ve been a bit slow on update the site is not because we’re lazy – it’s because we’re busy what we do best – making films!

So stay tuned… Lots of exciting things still in store before the end of the year!

Happy film-making!

Best Regards, Chris!

At long last, finally some of our hard work is hitting a little thing they call the world wide web! Due to various reasons, we have decided to release Happy Sundaes to the world, free of charge and have also put the SAKOOZ teaser/trailer up on YouTube.

You can watch Happy Sundaes here:

http://tr.im/happysundaes

You can watch the SAKOOZ Teaser/Trailer here:

http://tr.im/sakooz

As Happy Sundaes has been around for a while now, and has gone past it’s festival life, we have been considering for a while the best place for it to live online. After reviewing a few different options we ended up settling on IMDB (at least for now). The reason? IMDB is a very professional site with a great reputation. It’s also got an amazing resume database. As Happy Sundaes is now just a showcase tool for us, by putting it up on IMDB after people watch it they can then follow links to the IMDB pages of all the cast and crew. The hope is that if people like Happy Sundaes, they’ll click the link to our actors, and then get in touch with their agents.

SAKOOZ on the other hand is a bit different. We just want as many people to watch it as possible – hence the reason we decided to go with YouTube. Originally we intended to launch the SAKOOZ Teaser/Trailer to the web at the same time as the official SAKOOZ website, but that’s just taking far too long. So instead, we are going to put it up on YouTube exclusively for a bit and just see what happens. Hopefully we get a few hits. Then later this year we will launch the SAKOOZ website which will allow you to edit your own version of the trailer using the raw rushes. Hopefully that also attracts some attention! Again, it’s all about promotional and awareness – but for slightly different reasons.

We really hope you enjoy both Happy Sundaes and the SAKOOZ Teaser/Trailer!

Until next time…

Hello everyone! Well, it really feels like it’s been a long time since I last posted any updates, and guess what… it has been! As always we’ve been incredibly busy behind the scenes with so many different things. As some of you may have noticed we launched a new blog run by Nick Colla, which has been attracting lots of hits. I’m still unsure whether it was a wise move to give Nick his own blog, but I haven’t received any court orders as of yet, so that’s always a bonus.

Jacqui Hocking has also started selling her short film on TOPtoTOP via the latenite films site which has also been quite exciting. Incidentally, she also just left last Wednesday to continue her adventure travelling around the world on a beautiful yacht filming her travels for part two of the TOPtoTOP documentary series, but also for Swiss TV. Make sure you keep an eye out on her production blog as I’m sure she’ll be posted lots of interesting things every now and again.

Unfortunately our three entries to MAFMAD did not get through, which is a bit disappointing. We thought we had three really fantastic concepts, but we must have been up against some serious competition. Oh well – there’s always next year!

The Sakooz website is still on hold at the moment. We haven’t touch it for a while now – but are hoping to get onto it soon.

This blog’s been attracting more and more visitors which is fantastic! Our FCP vs Avid article now has hundreds and hundreds of hits, and our FCP predictions post is well into the thousands! Thanks so much to everyone for all your support! Please keep the comments coming!

Our Twitter feed has also been very successful so far. We’re nearly at the 300 followers mark – which is pretty good. Obviously we’d much prefer to be in the thousands range – but each day another few people follow us, so we’re slowly getting there. If you have any comments or suggestions in terms of what we post, then please let us know!

And as always we’ve also got lots of other exciting projects and productions in the pipeline…

Finally, make sure you come along to the Pocket Bonfire Productions fund-raiser night to promote their latest film, “There’s a Hippopotamus on our roof eating cake”.  As you probably know, I’ve been helping them organise the photo-realistic hippo for the film, so this is a project very close to my heart! It’s certain to be a fantastic night, with free cake on entry, a book reading with the author, plus lots more! It’s at Loop Bar, where we ran our Sakooz fund-raiser last year – so it’s sure to be just as exciting and fun! For all the details check out their site:

http://www.pocketbonfire.com/

Well that’s it for today. Hopefully we’ll see you at the fund-raiser!

Best Regards, Chris!

Kaltura has just released it’s brand new Developers Community website, and I’ve actually been fortunate enough to feature in the developers spotlight! Below is a quick little video of all the people featured in the developers spotlight (powered by the Kaltura player) – you’ll have to skip forward a couple of people to see me…

For those that don’t know, Kaltura has developed the first open source video platform for video management, creation, interaction and collaboration. Kaltura’s platform enables any site to seamlessly and cost-effectively integrate advanced interactive rich-media functionalities, such as searching, uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing, and sharing of video, audio, and photo files. The platform also includes unique collaboration functionalities that allow groups of users to create together, and enables publishers to access and syndicate reusable content across the Kaltura Network of content and to enjoy aggregated hosted video services such as video advertising, professional editing, and DVD printing. Kaltura’s free open source code is available for web developers in the form of an extensive Software Development Kit, and as self-serve packages for publishers in the form of automatic extensions and plugins for leading content management, blogging and collaboration platforms such as WordPress, and MediaWiki.

We have been working with Kaltura to develop a site that allows you to cut together your very own version of the SAKOOZ trailer. Unfortunately this is still very much a work in progress – but we hope to have this online sometime soon. Once we’ve nailed down the SAKOOZ trailer, we may even allow users to remix some of our other projects, such as Happy Sundaes and Superb Menura – so stay tuned!

Apologies for keeping you all out of the loop last month. It was certainly never my intention – we’ve just been flat out as always! However, those that have been following us on twitter at least know we’re alive, as we’ve been regularly posting cool things we come across.

I’m going to make this brief – as we’ve got lots happening at the moment. Here’s what’s been going on:

1. We are still busily working with the team at Pocket Bonfire productions on their exciting Hippo film. Nothing major to report as of yet, apart from the fact that not only are we handling the hippo, but we’re also in the process of putting together their new website. Busy! Busy! As always, if you’re interested in helping out on this one, please let us know! We’re still on the look out for animatronics gurus and puppet makers who are interested in bringing a hippo to life!

2. We recently threw together a last minute entry for the Dortios Competition. You can check it out here. OK, so it’s hardly a masterpiece, but considering how quickly we put it together from concept to upload, we think we did pretty well!

3. Nick has moved to Sydney temporarily. We’ll be setting up a new blog for him and his adventures shortly. Stay tuned!

4. We are in the process of doing the sound design for several MAFMAD entries.

5. We are currently working with a Melbourne-based director/producer team on two exciting online web show series. More details to follow.

6. As always we have a lot of cool film ideas in development – both short films and feature length productions. A few of them are really starting to take shape, so we may have some more projects in the pre-production stages shortly.

7. The SAKOOZ website is STILL under construction. No idea when we’re going to get it up and running. Hopefully soon!

8. We are going to be releasing Happy Sundaes and Superb Menura online for FREE shortly! Stay tuned!

Plus lots more…!

So as you can see, things are happening. We also have three blog entries sitting in the Draft folder just waiting to be finished – all of them discussing new technology, Avid vs FCP, etc. There’s just not enough time these days!

As always, thanks for reading, and for keeping an eye out on what we’re up to.

See you in the soup!

Best Regards, Chris!