Edit Suite...

So Kat and I made a film tonight. Tha's right, we're so excited about the course that we fill our HOLIDAYS with film-making. Thanks Kat for the dinner and snacks which no doubt kept our creative brains alive...til 1am...oh dear!
Scroll down to see a super-duper version of our Victory Beach day!

Victory! - Kat and Jint's Up Close and Dangerous

SSBF (Snail Set Building and Filming) 101

So on Friday I walked along George St. during rush hour carrying a roasting dish full of weeds. Not because I'm an odd-ball botanist (maybe I'm that too), but because Paul decided that it would be a fantastic idea for us to build a snail set. He promised us snails, but it turned out that he supplied plastacine and got us to mould our own... We even had our very own guest judge (Chris O'Connell, nhnz production manager) to deem who got the jellybeans.

Dwayne's is on the run!

Bojun crafted some fancy antennae.

Uh oh Steve - Nick - where's your croc - I mean snail - got to?!

Mark's came complete with sliverbeet, care of Pip.

Katie won the jellybeans for her snail holiday-home effort.

Julia found love...

...Lu found the floor...

...but no one could find Alistair, not even his snail.

Victory?

On Friday, as you will probably know, if you've been reading my classmates blogs, we all trundled off to Victory Beach in search of the sealion. As the morning progressed and the beach was distinctly lacking in anything slightly resembling an animal, we started to hanker after seagulls, seastars, anything! I turned my camera on Kat, and watch this space for a soon-to-be-edited video diary of the day! Both Kat and Sarah have popped up photo diaries, and Alistair has uploaded a wee 'filmlet' showing the real coup...yellow-eyed penguins so close that we could see each individual feather as they preened themselves! We also spotted a tragic-looking leopard seal half way along the beach. Oh, and a ferret in the car park. I'm afraid I wasn't busy enough behind my still camera to give you a full illustrated run-down, but just a couple, to give you a taste...

Lecturer/camera guru Paul Donovan letting us in on the secret that we have to cart everything back up the other way!

Kat - my wildlife star for the day - establishes up her lair high in the dunes, all the while on the watch for prey...! Alistair watches on.

Lu does her best sealion imitation. Aarrr!

I've nicked off with the camera master's camo hat.

Lu looking stoked to have that tripod back on her back.

Sarah, Nick, Dwayne-o.

It's a three camera line-up. Pip, Julia.

Kat hanging out behind the camo net, willing those penguins to come our way.

Everyone got tired and things got a little wacky.

Shall we take a closer look at that? Paul proves he's still got his eyes peeled.

This is the beginning.

Care of out lastest guest speaker, Graeme Tetley. He's a New Zealand script writer, two of his most well-known works being Ruby and Rata, and Vigil.

This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage
as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first person narrator introduces himself
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo soprano stands in the wings.
Here the builders are studying a map
or pulling on their long wollen socks.
This is early on, years before the ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent.

From 'Aristotle', by Billy Collins

And it IS the beginning. The skeletal frames of stories - there, but tenuous. If we are to follow Aristotle, the middle will come next. A mad clutter of pitching and pushing and partnering. Hours behind a camera followed by hours in front of the Pro. Chocolate, coffee, late nights, flourescent lights. Nervous, frustrated bodies. And then, the end. A night at the Regent, a heavy curtain rising.

But we're still at the very beginning. Like you, we've not yet learnt to crawl.

Cake Day #4

Some bright spark in our Team decided that establishing a weekly Cake Day was imperative to getting the creative juices flowing. Since I'm not a whizz in the kitchen, I decided that my best chance of impressing was in making personalised gingerbread men...maybe then the flavour would be irrelevant?!

Mark doing his best He-Man impression.

Dwayne-O sizes up his look-alike.

I wasn't fast enough for these two - Kat's is armless and Pip's decapitated hers...

I should have put a halo around Sarah's! Butter wouldn't melt...

Katie taste-tests.

Lu's tickled pink!

More than just shaving foam

Rod Morris. Film-maker, photographer, author, animal behaviour expert and above all, mesmerising story-teller. Our hero! Last Monday, I sat at one end of the NHNZ round table and listened to a true master of storytelling impart his wisdom from the other end. What's so fantastic about Rod is the fact he's amazingly grounded. Not only is he full of knowledge, but he passes it on to us like he's having a yarn about rugby over a beer. Instead of feeling intimidated we're easily able to voice those nagging questions and concerns.

Rod's walked away from commercial film-making in the last couple of years, disillusioned with the direction in which natural history film-making has moved. Increasingly tight budgets are imposing severe constraints on the ability of people like Rod to make films the way they want to. It got to the point a couple of years back where Rod felt he was compromising his morals to make films within economic bounds. He wanted to make films that were, in our professor Richard Thomas' words, more than just shaving foam. So he stopped. Inspirationally. I hope that, put in his situation, I would have had the integrity and strength to do the same thing.

Luckily for all of us, getting out of full-time commercial film making has not meant Rod's mind's become idle. We sat on the edge of our seats, eyes wide, mesmerised, as he talked us through his dream film - casually weaving plot lines and throwing in characters...but we were hooked. When it's made - it simply has to be, it's that good - Gods and Lemurs will use two threatened lemurs and the tragedy of humanity in Madagascar to make Western audiences think again...

For a photo of our hypnotised team with the master himself, I'll refer you to Kat's blog.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

Calling all viewers! Please note I have attached (faithfully, painstakingly) a poll to the sidebar. This is for you all to use! I am dying to have your feedback! Dying to know that, despite appearances, this thing that a good deal of my life is at the moment dedicated to...is not a waste of time! Of course, it's not. Of course. Of course of course. One of you will be able to confirm that for me, right?
Maybe I ought to repaint my poll bright red. It may then catch the eye. Is invisibility the problem? IS INVISIBILITY THE PROBLEM? For those of you who have tuned in from Day One, Blog One, AM I SHOUTING YET?! I am unfamiliar with blogging etiquette. Is it rude to ask readers to respond? Should I shut up right now?
OK.
Maybe the problem is that my ideas are all in previous blogs, and unsummarised. Shall I summarise?

Happy Valley -
The scene: Long term occupation of picturesque West Coast valley. An attempt to prevent it from becoming a coal mine/killing off some pretty special native animals and plants.
The characters: Long term occupiers who have just overwintered up there.
A possible story: So there are a whole load of people dressed up as Kiwis rolling round on Solid Energy's lawn. It's funny, right? I mean, tragic! How embarrassing! Don't they look silly?! Who are the people that do it? Who are you? What drives you? What's your cause and why should we give a shit?

Moth Mad -
The scene: Slightly outlandish New Zealand ecosystem, the dead of night. An exposed ridge, somewhere. An island, maybe. A whole load of light traps on white sheets, each with their halo of light and eager moth-hunter lying in wait.
The characters: A father-and-son moth mad duo, and their fellow moth-mad cronies.
A possible story: Father-and-son duo determined to find that rare elusive moth - use as a vehicle to discover the world of the 1800-odd New Zealand moth species. Will they find it? Or has it disappeared...?

Spinning a High Country Yarn -
The scene: The vast open spaces of the South Island's high country.
The character: A larger-than-life academic, passionate ecologist/botanist/conservationist.
The story: His story. So entwined with the story of the South Island's high country, and the forces that have shaped/are shaping it.

Caught -
The scene: A sleepy fishing village. A local boat. A fishing trip or two. An office, 16 stories up in Auckland.
The characters: A fisherman I happen to know. He's got a beard tinged with white, formerly-white gumboots and an infectious barrel-laugh. A guy in a crisp white suit and a view of the Viaduct Harbour.
A possible story: The fisherman's. Pre-quota days. The introduction of the QMS, the big boys coming in to play. We follow him on a day's fishing. Will he get the catch he needs, or won't he?

No excuses now. If I don't get at least one response in the next day or so, I guess it's confirmation I'm still whispering. Or I've seriously broken blogger etiquette. My most sincere apologies...

Our inshore commercial fishermen...what future?

Photo from Greenpeace

It's morning, just prior to sunrise. Mist clings to swannies and slides off white gumboots, enjoying the last few moments before its rosy, inexorable decline begins. The wharf creaks underfoot, the water slapslapslaps against disintegrating wharf piles bedecked with old car tyres. The moisture in the air muffles clanking chains and gruff voices as the Emma Jane casts off from her mooring. This is a fisherman's world. Pre-dawn, they have it all to themselves, cocooned in a misty shell. They'll be gone before the sun robs them of their cloak, returning fish-spattered tomorrow...or perhaps they won't be back for two or three days. Their mission? They're dead set on mass murder. Ironically, it's mass murder that's the life-blood of communities. There's a whole culture set around this way of life. A steady income, a trade to pick up, a common goal, something to keep families in one place and communities ticking over.

In the 1980's it was deemed that the mass murder taking place was unsustainable. The quota management system was put in place and the stats say that in many cases, fish stocks have recovered to some degree. Quotas, levies, tradable fishing rights available to the highest bidder. A booming recreational fishery taking bigger and bigger slices of the cake. Small-town fishermen have been hit hard. Quota is now owned in the most part by large companies. For the small players, leasing quota from the big blokes is now uneconomic. Once-sustainable small-time commercial fishermen in local ports are leaving town or running charters for holiday makers. You don't need quota for that. Fish stocks are now in the hands of big companies, far removed from the small communities that once depended on fishing for their livlihood. Profits go straight to the cities. What does it matter to the big Auckland businessman that a fish population in the southern South Island is wiped out for a few years? Why should they worry that the small fishing settlements now have no way to support themselves, and hence are slowly turning into bach communities for the rich?

There's a little settlement I know of, a wee way up the coast. Fantastic history...Maori strong-hold, ex-whaling port (you can almost hear the cries and smell the blubber boiling), summer holiday-makers paradise (Tip-Top icecream from the 4-Square, anyone?). Above all, fishing port. In it's heyday, there were dozens of small boats. Even in my childhood there were the fishsheds, manned by Fay, punts lined up colourfully along the slipway. Bill, John, the Te Mai boys, Tobe, Ken, Goose, to name just a few. Cray-pots in stacks in front of every house. Now, the fishshed's gone - in its place, a restaurant. This year, I'm told, there are just two boats commercialling out of the bay. It's idyllic, says the successful big-time businessman who's just bought a few properties up there. Used to be a bit of a backwater, he says, shaking his head.

The Emma Jane chugs away and soon I'm alone, cocooned by mist dyed blood red by rising sun. A salty slapslapslap inches below me, tide tugging at heartstrings. The toot of an early morning loopy - I reluctantly make way for his Jetski to enter the water.

Introducing Emeritus Professor Alan Mark C.B.E.

Passionate conservationist, especially of tussock ecosystems; one of the original Guardians of the Lake; reknowned and incredibly knowledgable botanist and ecologist...and fantastic, larger-than-life character. What more could one want?! Don't tell Alan (I haven't had yarn with him about it yet) but I'm starting to think he would be a fantastic character around which to frame the story of the South Island's tussock ecosystems. It's topical - the whole upland conservation estate is going through tenure review at the moment, and there's the new proposals which may see wind farms making use of the higher altitude open spaces. There is no end of aesthetic beauty up there to capture...

Lammermoor Range, Central Otago. Photo from the Department of Conservation's website.

...and with Alan alongside, any upland outing is sure to turn into an adventure. A final selling point - Alan's efforts as a conservationist have gone largely unrecognised. Because of his determination to speak out on behalf of native species and ecosystems, he's copped a lot of flack over the years. Is this not a great chance to publicise his lifelong battle, and capture on camera the real character of the stalwart of South Island high country conservation?

If not Happy Valley, then what?

So we have a one-on-one interviews with Mike Rubbo on Tuesday. To discuss the multitude of filming fantasties we have brewing quietly away in the back of our minds. Hopefully, as an practised storyteller, he'll show me how to hone bloated doco dreams into well-rounded storylines... I wish him luck with that! I guess in the meantime I ought really to outline what else I'm dreaming of...

A dark screen. Then a light, a white sheet, an eager face deep in concentration. A black shape fluttering, mesmerised, closer and closer to the light, until the light fills the whole screen. A quick movement, a net, a pottle, and the moth is imprisoned, captor elated. "Look how beautiful he is! Look at his wings! Ooo, be careful, don't want to destroy them - need them whole for mounting". Green velvet meets plastic again and again - the imprisoned is helpless. New Zealand has over 1800 named Lepidoptera species, 90% of which are endemic, and over 98% of which are moths. New Zealand also has some very passionate Lepidoterists and Entomological Society members, many of whom will go to extraordinaty lengths to collect that perfect specimen. Imagine spending your weekend nights perched on an exposed hill top staring at the darkness around your light trap! Recently concern has been expressed about the decline in population numbers and distribution of two formerly common and widespread Geometrid moth speices. The documentary could use this as its main storyline, following Lepidopterists as they try to track the reason for this, whilst delving into the almost untouched world of New Zealand moths.

Quote of the week -
'Personally, I won't need to buy drugs anymore' - Mark, on discovering the video fx options menu on imovie.