Production

Going Home is almost finished! Last day of shooting is this Saturday (not including pickups, if we have any).

It's been a great experience, and my first real, proper taste at directing. The actors have been great to work with - Daniel Wu as the lead, and Kareem Ford Sarhan in a small part.

We shot the first scene last Saturday, and it was great to work on the dynamics of characters with two fantastic actors. Definitely daunting at first, but I'm getting used to it.

Below are some production stills. The first few is us on location at Flinders St Station. It was great to get permission to film at this iconic station of Melbourne, so thanks to Metro for their kind support.

The second lot is us at my RMIT post grad room., We re-created an office is that space with two computer screens, two sets of keyboards and mice, one phone, cups, pens and pieces of paper. I reckon it looks 'office-y' enough given what we had.

There's also some stills of our actor Daniel, taken with my Pentax k7 with the 50mm f1.7

The stills were taken by either my k7 or changas d3s. Awesome cameras.

Film will be finished soon, and will hopefully be able to upload more videos soon.

Watch this space.

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New Lenses

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the lens I got with my Pentax k7, the beautiful DA* 16-50mm f2.8, was damaged in the lat day of my Asia trip. I have been devastated ever since, but some good news arrived last week when CR Kennedy, the only guys in Melbourne who deal with Pentax directly for repairs and what not, finally called me up with a quote to fix up the lens - AUD$324.50c. Quite a bit, but not as much as I was expecting. *sigh*, more money out of the pockets...

Anyway, I was on a bit of an eBay addict phase the last few weeks, looking for lenses. It was the first time I ever used eBay, and needless to say, I was hooked. I have currently about 30 items on my watch-list... but I've only won 2 items so far. So I'm not THAT crazy over it - I did manage to control myself at least.

The items I went after, and won, were some Pentax primes. I just needed some glass to put on the end of my beautiful k7... it had been out of action for 2 months, and my trigger happy fingers were getting restless. So, now I have a SMC Pentax-A f2.8 28mm, and a MC Vivitar f1.7 50mm. Got them both for AUD$160.00, so not too bad. Maybe not the best types fo lenses out there, but I'm not that anal, and I'm more than happy with both of them for that price.

Was thinking of selling them after I get my 16-50 back, but I reckon I'll hang on to them. Primes are damn useful, especially since I'm considering investing in a lens adapter for digital film cameras. I'm looking at the SGPRO at the moment... *sigh* need to save up more money.

Below are a few photos taken with the 50mm 1.7. Not bad. I was debating between the 1.7 or the 1.4, but I just didn't have the cash for a 1.4, so just went for the 1.7 anyway. $56 versus $300+ ? At the moment, anything cheap and good will do. And as you can see, it ain't that bad :)

The night shift on Friday...

...fun times...

...watching the Friday night crowds walk past...

The depth-of-field on the 50 is awesome.

I like how the colour turned out on this one - no PS, just a different white balance I guess.

What the? All the best to that guy in the cab, driving with karaoke-style singing in blaring from the back seat ;)

Never knew that karaoke was that big a hit in this town... but I guess there have been ALOT of new karaoke bars opening up around town. Catered mainly for Asians of course, but I reckon they're trying to break into the mainstream market as well.

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