Am currently editing a video for my friend Sash and introducing his Samurai Movie marathon this weekend, which is just fun and a good excercise to keep me working. Especially since I’m currently sick from work, which is really annoying, cause I get sick only once a year during the seasonal change from Summer to Winter, but that shouldn’t happen for a few more months. This flu is way too early and I blame it on global warming. To be fair, I do blame everything on global warming, well, I do if I can’t blame it on the robots first.

Last week there was a screening of the short film collection It Came From the Swamp at the Hamilton Gardens Summer Festival. I tried to attend it, but somehow got lost in the gardens and it seemed everyone I inquired had a different opinion of where exactly it was on the grounds. But from what I’ve heard, most screenings have gone down very well and Spit-Takes is a real crowd pleaser, which is great.

At the insistence of several people I’ve uploaded an old video made several years ago. Shot on no budget and for a university music video competition, this was just fun for all involved and turned out to be pretty much one of the only videos I can rewatch without cringing for some self concious reason.

So, without further blathering, I present “I Think I Can” with music by The Pillow.

Forgot to mention the second Hamilton screening of It Came From the Swamp was on last night. There will be an Auckland screening tonight at the Wine Cellar, so if anyone isn’t up to anything and in the area up there, head on over and check out some quality films.

Alternatively you can check out this new Microsoft Zune ad. We don’t have Zunes in New Zealand and its pretty doubtful we ever will, but that doesn’t matter. Just watch this video and be amazed… hehehe.

Kick off screening of It Came From the Swamp went very down very well last night with tickets being sold out and a second screening planned for next week to accommodate futher viewers.

I got there late myself and forgot to grab a copy of the DVD, something I’ll probably have to pay for, but from what I hear, apart from being on sale during the tour, the DVD will eventually be available in stores like JB Hifi, which is pretty exciting.

Part of last night was also the first time I had sat down with an audience watching Spit-Takes and though I was nervous to begin with, people started laughing from the first gag and kept laughing in almost all the right places which is great. There are still bits and pieces which I wish I had spent a little more time polishing and shortening to really get the laughs across, but ah well.

Just to note about Spit-Takes: the version that’s touring is actually the ‘clean’ version. Where the one on youtube at the moment is full of dirt and film artifacts, the one thats on the DVD is free of all that due to the fact I couldn’t complete all the effects in time before it had to be in for the DVD mastering. This I don’t mind, I’m still half and half if it should be either clean or dirty, but I must point out that the countdown timer appears to have been cut from the start of the short which is a little miffing as it sets up the whole ‘educational film’ format, but them’s the breaks I suppose.

But anyway, It Came From the Swamp will be playing in Raglan tonight, not that anyone I know from Raglan will be reading this, but I actually wouldn’t mind being there right now as the weather for the last few days have been ridiculously hot and I’ve got a feeling I’m not looking forward to summer this year.

Have been spending the last few days (and nights) tinkering a slightly new web design that utilises CSS which is something I’ve been meaning to do for a very long time and now I know why I’ve been putting it off for so long. Ugly HTML coding is so much easier, but most definitely one ugly bitch. Anyway, be a while before thats fully up and running and also more than enough techno mumbo jumbo bullshit for one post.

Tonight is the Hamilton kick-off of It Came From the Swamp! so if your not up to anything tonight, feel like watching some high caliber short films and want to support the local film making community, come on down to the Victoria Cinemas before 8pm tonight. I’ll the be one drunk out front making rude gestures to old ladies and small children.