The secret of comedy is believability

<---Wednesday's Shoot for school was fun :)

The Secret of good comedy is believability, jokes coming out of the characters situations and reactions, good pacing as well as writing gags with detail, anyway thats what my research is telling me. I'm still rewriting my episodes for Ivy Investigation. I'm gonna research props (for my character at least) tommorrow and i will take some photos and post them here, i wanted to make my character socially awkward but he knows martial arts. Thing is martial arts over time makes someone confident (speaking from experience) so now i have changed the character (which is why i'm rewriting the episodes) so Ken is instead a loudmouth (confident to the extreme) and doesnt show much tact hence his lack of friends apart from Anna (the other lead) who is quite the alpha female so shes always the leader when it comes to the team. I dont know. I'm working on the believability behind their friendship, its not as easy as creating the characters themselves :) Who knew writing comedy isn't all that funny ;)

In other news we have finished filming the majority of our scenes for our class project at school around Auckland and i have posted some of the pictures that my classmates took during the shooting (which was great!), next week we will start adding the 3D elements and special effects but so far it looks worth it, plus its great to be directed by other people and felt pretty encouraging. Was a very fun week :) See you next week when i report on how shooting 'Everyones a Loser...' went after it wraps on Sunday night :) (PS. I am the hooded one in the pix below, the other actor was awesome too, the trenchcoat suited his old school magician character against my street magician version :D)

I'm looking down the barrel but things are looking up

(the pic above is from aBe Yoshitoshi, my hero when it comes to art- from Despera)

I'm waiting for my fortunes to turn round but i keep up with the Bad Decisions. It's the Second time this year i've disobeyed my instinct and paid for it. (the first was 48hrs 2011-so much i felt like doing but didnt) Its only hit home now how broke i am, i was supposed to fly to christchurch last week and the ticket price was $116 all up (jet star incl 99 flight plus insurance and seat and credit card charge) This was my entire budget for the week but thought thats ok, when i get to christchurch i can get my footage, catch up with family and finally sell my assets (couch, fridge etc since cheaper to sell then move here to Auckland) Then the Ashcloud turned up, again. Jetstar said when i bought the ticket if the flight is cancelled they will txt and email me and offer a ticket exchange or refund. I turn up at 5 am at the airport and its no go.

What happened to the Air NZ transfer i read about? Its been 4 days since my friday am flight was cancelled and i have neither the txt,email nor the refund. So i've had to live on like 12 bucks from which i bought crumbed fish pieces and lambchops. I sooo can't wait til Thursday so i have some money again lol. I hate missing any JKD class and being stuck inside all weekend really brings out the vampire in me.

On Marriage. Don't marry young, thats my advice, the last 3 months have been drama drama and more drama. Its my fault, me and my dream but i dont need drama, I need action, things happening, solutions to problems not troublemakers....I really want to finish this course but i might have to drop out and get a full time job so the wife can move here cos Christchurch is turning her to the dark side lol, and then i'll just hope to start it again in a different semester. (In all likelihood i would probably quit and move on so i am doing everything i can not to)

On Film Projects. Had to rewrite my Everyones a Loser SAE short film since i can't find a door. Funny considering how This city is home to a million of them. So now shooting in front of the mueseum, Looks nicer anyway. Nervous about the fight scene as first time I'll be fighting with anyone outside of who I've worked with before, but the guy is cool so it should be fun.

After Location scouting yesterday for our class project we shot some scenes today, One where i chas the protagonist into a railyard and another where we meet in an alley. It's fun but pretty nervewracking...I'm not good with imaginary trains lol You'll see when the film is finished, hopefully we use one of the good takes :)

Anyway to finish up with, I'll write again next weekend. I'm Finishing alot of scripts at the moment so expect some cool videos in the coming months and that no matter how bad you feel sometimes, you know someone else in the world has it worse lol as in the cartoon below.

Sparring, Writing and Chris Tucker

Thats me in black, Nelson in red and sifu in traditional clothes. Awesome session. (EDIT: The link to this video is now online, click HERE to view )

Watched Rush hour 1 and 2 for like the hundredth time this weekend. Every line that Chris Tucker speaks is comedy gold :) i also have been researching alot of action movies in my quest of making my feature film as entertaining, exciting and "holy shit did they just do that?" as possible.

Also sparred again on Wednesday night which was fun, Nelson was pretty good and gave me a run for my money, once i make the file smaller i might upload the 2 rounds to youtube, depends if i can can get this weeks video beforehand. As you can see from the above photo of the side kick the back guard needs to be up so been working on that since Monday, I didn't realize til Chris showed me the photo so that was awesome of him.

Finished writing 5 of the 10 episodes for Ivy Investigation. That's 5 episodes away from organizing a camera, locations and cast :) That's also 60 some pages, so many late nights this week. Even had a nightmare a ghost was watching me while i slept, not cool, not cool at all.

Handed in my digital assignment this weekend as well, I remixed showbiz by muse, wish i hadn't - there had to have been easier songs in my collection to choose from lol.

Photocopied my storyboard for my short film for SAE, ill probably take pictures of it sometimes this week since i don't have a scanner, but its good to know i can still draw, ever since martial arts and film aspirations have taken over my life i don't have the patience nor raw motivation to do some art. but priorities right?

Anyways, til the next update, thumbs up and fight on :)

PS. I've been living here for 3 months now and have 3 light-bulbs blown up on me, maybe there's too much positive energy in here for one room :P

Have Batteries, will travel.

Finally got hold of some batteries for my camera (as i left the rechargables in chch) SO finally here are the 3 pictures we took during the 48hr project before the camera died at the worst possible time. Hoping to head back to christchurch end of the month to grab the rest of the video footage so i can finish editing it with souneffects, sountrack and pacing,but in the mean time enjoy the pics below;

Ivy Investigation Logo :)

Finished the logo for Ivy Investigation, the new action comedy Web series I'm working on right now.

Thats exciting as my series gets for you so in the meantime heres an inspirational quote from the Dale Carnegie book i finished reading today...

"Two men looked out through the prison bars,

One saw Mud while the other saw stars"

I am the captain of my ship

So my short film entry for 48 hours showed last week and here is all 3 reviews by people who saw it in the theater. An average of one stars but hey it was a rough rough cut, at least they mentioned they liked the fighting which is all i can ask for really.

Like i said, i entered it a)to show my actresses and actors something for their time, and b)out of pride, i mean i missed out by half an hour which was great considering the family drama and technical divas involved. When i get the footage in late june i can finish editing it and post it online as well as give my team a copy of the dvd for their great work and input.

I finished writing my SAE script in about 2 hours, not bad for a 3 minute film lol. Its entitled "Everyone's a loser when it comes to love" and its about a guy seeking redemption from a girl over a breakup, it took me ages to finish it over the last 2 weeks because i have been busy working on my webseries project I've assigned myself.

The Webseries i'm working on is going to be called "Ivy Investigation" cos the detective team is on it like a rash lol. It will be a rom com action series of 10 episodes. I'm writing the episodes now as i post this and i have finished 4 in random order out of the 10 in the complete series. My plan for this series of mine is to sell it and raise my profile, enter some competitions, and have a body of work to show people when i pitch them my movie idea later in the year.

Apart from my filmcourse work and finishing Burn notice (i always suffer from withdrawl after a great series) i have been hard at work on my martial arts. Here is a pic Chris took of me at JKD class and the team put it on their website too. I look tired as (cos i was) but i was hoping it would turn out cool, what do you think?

Anyways until i have more news keep up whatever work you are doing to follow your own dreams and you will inspire others in your lives to do the same, I'm chasing mine in my leaky boat, but a leaky boat still floats. :) Peace.