I’m extremely lucky to have landed a fantastic job a few weeks ago as an assistant editor full time this year at a amazing boutique edit house in Melbourne. At a time where job security is certainly not ensured, unemployment is high and the economy is in the toilet, it’s great to have a job, let alone a challenging, exciting and fun job working alongside an award winning group of just really great people. But like with everything in life, there’s always some negatives. For me, the simple fact that I’m working five days a week means that I have less and less time to concentrate on my own film projects.  After a big day at work, plus a few hours of commuting home, there’s not much time left to get fired up again about all the others things on your to-do list. As always, time in against me. But at least I’m doing something I really enjoy.

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 last couple of weeks have been hectic, but unfortunately it’s been mainly projects outside of latenite. I’ve personally been interstate working on various live shows, and have also recently start working full time for a post house in Melbourne on top of lots of other ventures, so the Sakooz site has been put on another temporary hold, which is a bit of a pain. As much as I would love to have it all done by the end of this month (and to be honest, it’s VERY close to being finished), I just don’t think it’s going to happen – especially with the bushfires that keep creping up on us! Therefore, we will be postponing the launch till April just to be on the safe side.

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…

One minute it’s Christmas, then zap! Next minute, January is nearly over. How times flies! Hello everyone, and welcome to our very first entry for the new year – even if it is slightly late. I hope you all have a fantastic holiday break, and a terrific New Years Eve! And, if you’re in Australia – I hope you’re enjoying the ridiculously hot weather! Although we personally do love the sun and the beach – when you’ve got a week with temperatures on and above 40 degrees Celsius, things start to get a little bit scary, as the Sakooz headquarters is in the middle of the Dandenong Ranges (i.e. a forest). But as terrifying as it is, it also forces you to think about something very important – backups. What would you do if the worst happens, and your studio burns down? Do you have your camera originals off-site? Do you have backups of all your past and current projects? How quickly can you “recover” from a disaster? There are also scary, but terribly important questions we’ve been asking ourselves over the past couple of weeks. Although it’s probably not the most ideal way of handling things, we currently have a box which we call “the mobile vault”. The vault contains all our original camera tapes (MiniDV, DVCPro50, DVCProHD, etc.), DVD backups of Final Cut Project Files, printed copies of EDLs, Hard Drive’s containing project backups, an equipment inventory, copies of important documents (i.e. CVs), etc. The vault is always kept as the safest possible location – normally the grandparents, as they’re generally always home. In a perfect world, it would be great to have LTO tapes containing all this material instead of cheap hard drives and DVDs, and also to have multiple vaults, just to be extra safe. But unfortunately all these things cost money, and at the end of the day, as long as we don’t loose any “current projects” (i.e. project we’re currently working on), life will go on. Although it’s great to have the original project files of past projects – the chances of going back to them are fairly slim. So anyway… just something to keep in mind. If you are in a bush fire area, make sure you have a good strategy in place in case disaster attacks.  

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!