I’ll come to Knowing shortly, but first, talk about cutting it close. Before working at Animal I had heard from good sources that Baz has a reputation for working on a film up until the last moment, but this seems to me to be pushing it to the extreme. Having said that, I did hear a good quote once:

“A film is never finished - it is delivered.”

In any case, the trailer mentioned previously is now up in glorious HD on the apple site. The film is released to the public in two weeks, and I’ll finally be able to show my work on this site.

Now that Australia is long gone, work is currently under way on the Alex Proyas film, Knowing with perennial audience favourite Nick Cage in the lead role. Incidentally, it turns out that Nicholas Cage is Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew. Who knew?

The trailer (which actually came out a long time ago) can be seen here.

Tomorrow’s the day, ladies and gentlemen. A day where America can start to rebuild its credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world that it has lost over the past 8 years.

Poster design by ISO50.

I followed the 2004 elections quite closely and was deeply dissappointed when it went to Bush again (How does that happen?). This time around, though, there doesn’t seem to be any question about the outcome.

EDIT: The guys over at fivethirtyeight.com have their estimates of Obama winning sitting at a whopping 98.1%. This is of course assuming that there are no voting irregularities, shy tory or Bradley effects.

I’ve also been testing the site for mobile device compatibility, which works quite well, although a mobile specific CSS would be nice… iPhone users should check out the showreel to see some nice integration in action.

I wish every holiday video was like this. It’s just beautiful, gentle and very nicely done. Damn I wish my SLR did video. A walk in the mountain with Julie by Sébastien Abes on Vimeo.

Keith Loutit has an awesome series of shorts up on Vimeo that utilise the ’tilt-shift lens’ effect where the depth of field of an image is dramatically narrowed and gives the illusion of everything being miniature. I first saw this technique in Thom Yorke’s Harrowdown Hill video clip and was sure that I was looking at miniatures. It’s remarkably effective and surprisingly easy to achieve. Keith’s videos, Shot around Sydney harbour, are a lot of fun and well worth a look.

The second trailer for Australia is up online, but strangely enough, not on the official site nor the Apple trailers site. Interestingly, one of the shots I worked on is in there. Exciting stuff!

Pictures from the live show by Ophelia of the Spirits the other night at The Basement in Sydney.