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!

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…

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!

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!

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!

But having said all this – despite my ongoing lack of time, I’ve got a huge amount of INCREDIBLE projects in the works. The Sakooz website has been put on a temporary hold yet again – I just need a few days free to get it up and running. This will DEFINITELY be done as soon as possible. I have also just recently come up with a completely new and improved angle for the story, so I will start going back to the drawing boards in terms of the Sakooz script shortly. I’m still on the hunt for a talented script writer to jump on board this one. But all things Sakooz aside for a second, I’ve recently been in discussing with two other writing/directing teams about to very different, yet both incredibly exciting projects.

One of them is a short film adaptation of the highly successful children’s book There’s a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake. I am currently working with the team to offer them some guidance in how exactly they can get a realistic hippo onto the big screen. This is an EXTREMELY exciting project to be involved in, and although this is not technically a latenite film, we will certainly be heavily involved in the production.

We are also in the early stages of helping develop an online television show about super heroes. Again, this is not technically a latenite film – but we’ll certainly be discussing the production on our site in great detail as time goes on.

So as always – things are certainly happening! There’s never a dull moment here! Our twitter account is slowly gaining momentum as we post relevant industry news, geared towards Melbourne film-maker, and our recent blog entry on Final Cut Studio 3 predictions has been getting a massive amount of hits! Thanks to everyone who has written down a comment! It’s extremely appreciated! If you aren’t follow us on twitter yet – make sure you sign up!

We’ve also recently uploaded a whole lot of old film reviews and articles onto this blog for you all to have a look at. We hope it’s of some interest to you. As always, feel free to leave a question of comment.

Thanks for reading – and well keep you in the loop as to all the exciting things we’ve got in the works!

See you in the soup!

Best Regards, Chris!

The good news is that we have been working closely with the team from Kaltura, and the online trailer remix function has turned out great! Thanks to everyone who has been helping us with that element of the site!

Also good news is that our last blog entry has been getting a great amount of hits! Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read it, and also for sending us comments via twitter, Facebook and e-mail. It’s always nice to know that people are actually reading this blog! We recently been slowly getting more followers on twitter which is always nice!

And that’s about it for today! Don’t despair however, despite all these other commitments, the cogs are definitely still turning here… Nick has been working hard on several exciting initiatives, and we’re also starting to put together several teams of other people to begin work on some other new and exciting projects that we haven’t yet talked about. So stay tuned! This is going to be an very cool year…

On a happier note – 2009 is already looking very exciting! We have been working around the clock on the Sakooz website, and everything seems to be falling into place. If all goes to plan, we should be able to go live some time in February. In other Sakooz news, we are still negotiating away with various high-profile people in regards to getting someone on board to write the feature film script. We also have a lot of other projects in the pipeline for this year, as well as a few more unique projects. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be fixing up the website a bit, putting more energy into our Facebook presence, and also jumping fully on board the twitter bandwagon. This year is set to be the year of “new media” – so we are definitely keeping our ear to the ground, and eyes to the sky on the lookout for new treads, technology and, well, basically just cool stuff. We’ll continue to improve upon Melbourne Rebels, and also try and come up with other ways to help Melbourne-based film-makers get their ideas off the ground. This year is all about innovation and experimentation for us. We’ll be trying and testing new things, developing as much new content as we possibly can – and maybe even consider jumping into the wonderful world of professional podcasts. 

So, as always, exciting times certainly lay ahead – as we have very big plans for this year. Keep an eye out on this blog, keeping visiting our website and Facebook Group, follow our twitter, and keep in touch! If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or ideas, please, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us – especially when it’s about projects such as Melbourne Rebels. We love your input!

Until next time…

Chris!