27 days till shoot

Hello friends,

You'll be happy to know I avoided accommo madness by sending a few fake emails and generally "looking" busy. Works everytime. Not sure anyone bought it though, and they definitely won't now. Although at this stage my followers are mostly my own pseudonyms, so not too much harm there. My god, pseudonym is a hard word to spell. Thank god for that little red spelling line, although when it comes to words that sound like they start with an 's' and in fact start with a 'p'... Little red is really kidding himself.

Rachael Taylor (our lead actress) had a lengthy violin lesson yesterday, which sounds like hard work in every sense. Her character plays the violin throughout the film, so she's training up with a top teacher at UCLA. Our composer (Alies Sluiter), who's currently performing in China, has been sending through draft tracks and listening to the eventual score of the movie makes me very, very happy indeed. It's all happening.

Alies and I went to Uni together -- kinda -- she was at music school, I was at film, and we had this one class where the music students played their individual instruments (live in the theatre) to film scenes of our choice. Westerns, comedies, action, romance. Was awesome. Alies brought her violin and began playing to scenes from Elizabeth. I was hooked, not only by her talent, but also on the image of a woman playing the violin. Mesmerising. Loved it, and that's why you'll see it in Summer Coda. I really adore when score is done well in films. Have been collecting soundtracks since Dances with Wolves -- okay, you may think uncool, but it was my first and John Barry's a GOD. Don't even get me started on Chaplin or Out Of Africa for that matter. Man I love, Chaplin, if you haven't seen it for a while - go get it. Robert Downey Jnr. Enough said.

Camera tests tomorrow, shooting the film on the RED ONE which will certainly prove interesting. The more I see it projected, the more I love it. Don't get me wrong, budget-wise I held out for Super 35mm for as long as I could, but as far as compromises go -- it's a great one. I'm not going to make an ass of myself by talking tech, but if it's good enough

for Soderbergh and Peter Jackson, the end of this sentence doesn't need to be said.

Speaking of the man, HOW GOOD does the Lovely Bones trailer look. That's gonna be my xmas treat when we wrap. But back to these tests; We're filming in some seriously stunning locations, so the key is to know what your camera and lens can and can't do. It's gonna be cloudless, and bloody sunny and the difference between the dense black shade of an orange tree and the bluey-white hot Mildura sky is a tricky one. So we gotta test test test. Fun though, as long as I don't have to pick oranges again. These city boy hands were made for typing. More about the $26 I earnt from a full day picking later.

Heading to the airport to get some dusk plane landing shots tomorrow too. Hope we have a Pushing Tin experience!

I'll let you know,

Ricky

PS. I'll get back to the story of the Sheriff and the generous people of the land ASAP.