Law Revue Video Diaries - Part Three

Let's bring it on home with Act Two...

--

"Intimate Injunctions"

• This was shot in two halves - Grdo's half was filmed the same day as Newsreel; Beck and Sarah's half was shot the same day as Mickey Lyons' bit for the Amazing Race and Bin's bit in St. Lucia Home.
  
  
• I'm positive that at the time Grdo HATED filming this, but listening back to the audience laugh track, I'm also positive that it got me laughs than any other video.
  
  
• We shot it on a Wednesday, meaning the markets were set up around the union complex. Grdo found "The Joy Of Sex" and bought it for the sketch. When we headed down to Wordies to film a shot, some guy came up to Grdo and seemed interested in the book - way too interested - asking him where he got it, how much he paid for it, and if there were any more. As far as I know, Grdo still has the book. We also learned a unique sexual technique that can possibly kill a woman if done the slightest bit incorrectly - like that blowfish episode of The Simpsons, you know? (2009 ed: my memory seems to tell me that it involved blowing on the vagina, but in hindsight, this seems like bullshit or I'm not remembering it correctly...)
  
  
• The insert shot of the clock is just my clock at home.
  
  
• The music is a Kenny G track from the soundtrack of "The Bodyguard".
  
  
• Grdo is smothering his face with a Wonka bar - a coincidence considering the title of the show was a play on "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory".

-

"Dancing With The Staff"

• This was the very last thing we shot and edited - literally, the day before the show. (2009 ed: Not the closest to the wire I've been with video filming and editing, but back then we though it was rushed.)
  
  
• Pizzato was originally meant to tango with Sarah D, but he had to work that day. His stand-in, Gerard, diagnosed himself as VERY hungover and not in any position to dance, so I had to do it - not that I complained. ;)
  
  
• For the record, Bernard Cairns is the absolute sweetest. When we explained it to him, he just looked at us with sad puppy dog eyes and said "But I'm not a dancer." AWWWWWWW, you just want to hug him.

--

"Please Ring For Assistance"

• Another last minute video filler, which substitued for McNab's Restaurants - a video Ross McNab politely declined to do, involving a restaurant chain Ross McNab has set up solely for the purpose of knocking food out of its patrons hands once they've paid for it.
  
  
• I'm wearing Angela's red Cybrary shirt - it was a VERY hot day when we shot it, and for some stupid reason, I'd worn a white undershirt as well. I obviously offered to take it home and wash and iron it.
  
  
• The music is "Jerk It Out" by The Caesars, which was getting a fair bit of airplay in an iPod ad. I think the sketch came about just because I thought it sounded like "montage music" and should be used as such.
  
  
• The Sudoku puzzle answer is real - Marc and I sat down and quickly rushed through it so it would look accurate.
  
  
• Marc and Kate are in Pav's room at college.
  
  
• Marc and I had to take several takes of the beer drinking scene. Ah method acting.

--

"I Still Call St. Lucia Home"

• The most ambitious video of 2005 to do, even though it only came to about 2 minutes of screen time - the editing was easy to do once it was shot, but the planning and preparation was a bitch.
  
  
• First, we had to rewrite the lyrics.
  Then, I had to arrange it, picking the right voices for each line.
  Then, because I couldn't find a suitable backing track, I had to arrange and program a midi backing track as well.
  
  
• Finally, we managed to get Hailey M., Bec Rowling, Kelly, Alex, Pizzato, Gerard, Hayley L, Marc and myself together in a seminar room for about 6 hours during the July holidays to record and mix it - it was a long and arduous process for everyone but an ultimately fun and productive night.
  
  
• There's about 25-30 people that appear in the video - we got it all done on a Saturday morning, thanks to careful planning and shot design.
  
  
• Coles down at St. Lucia were cool enough to loan us a shopping trolley to use as a dolly for some shot, but it never really worked, because we usually didn't have a smooth enough ground to run it on. The only shot we used it for successfully was in Hawken building ("All the crooked lawyers...")
  
  
• Sam got to fulfill his dream of filming a shot from a moving car. Unfortunately, it didn't make the final cut because you couldn't properly see the actors' lips moving.
  
  
• Gerard had the very last shot of the day, sitting at Merlo with Bec Rowling. Again, unfortunate for him, he was hungover again. This wasn't a habit of Gerard's - it was just bad timing.
  
  
• Bin's shot out at the QUT logo at Gardens Point was done the same day as Beck and Sarah doing Intimate Injunctions, and Mickey Lyons in the Amazing Race. When we got there, there was some ear-shattering construction work going on just out of shot, so I basically had to sing the lines out loud from my dictaphone and Bin would copy it over me. We tried four different faces - "serious", "gay", "spastic" and "seriously gay spastic". I'll let you try and figure out which one we used. ;)
  

--

So yeah, that was my extensive behind-the-scenes coverage of the videos from the 2005 revue, which, in my opinion, were the most fun to do. Each year from then on, they became less and less fun to do, harder to think of sustainable ideas. I wish I'd done the same kind of notes for 2006 and 2007 but I didn't - hopefully when I have the time, patience and the right amount of memory-enhancing ginkgo biloba, I'll do the same.

Good times. :)



xo Jimmy

Law Revue Video Diaries - Part Two

Bugger it. While I'm at it, I'll finish out Act One ...

--

"Newsreel"

• Ah, this one was my baby. My underappreciated baby. I wrote it last year (2004) but apparently, we didn't have enough time to properly edit it or add the effect. BUT NOT THIS YEAR! No siree bob. I knew how to make it and yes, it was time consuming.
  
  I had to find newsreel footage - which I could only find on some library-borrowed VHS tapes. My friend Anthony captured them to DVD for me, then I had to go through and find specific shots to use, capture THOSE shots from the DVD, reformat them and edit them into the video.
  
  
• It was shot in colour, then turned into black and white in editing (effectively turning Grdo's red jack and fez white).
  
  
• Once finished, it was recorded to my camera, then RE-captured through good old Windows Movie Maker to add the grainy film effect. (2009 ed.: If I'd done this today, it would have been about twenty times easier in terms of interpolating stock footage and visual effects, but it was all a learning process)
  
  
• In the writers scene, Adrian has the UQLS typewriter on his lap. I have no idea if it actually worked. In the background, you can see the RE calendar for 2005, and also someone's handwriting that says "Mandy Rulz!" - a reference to then-president Mandy Rowell. Anachronism!
  
  
• I got the music from the end credits of "Newsfront". It's "On The Road To Gundagai", even though I originally wanted "It's A Long Way To Tipperary".
  
  
• I have about twenty minutes of footage of the boys just mucking around and having fun on this one. We've got a pie in the face, a banana peel slip, a Three Stooges eye gouge (or two), a Charlie Chaplin waddle, fake moustaches, etc.

--

"The House Of Lords"

• I remembered thinking how we were going to top the Michael Kirby cameo in the show in 2004, and I remember thinking that the only way to top it, would be to leave the country and go to the House of Lords in London and introduce the show from there.
  
  After numerous attempts at winning various contests to win a trip to London to do so failed, I abandoned the idea.
  
  
• LUCKILY, Marc casually mentioned that Jen was heading to London in the July break and would be happy to film stuff for us. YAY Jen!
  
  
• The whole "neighbour of the House of Lords" was Marc's idea - it also got us some vox pops in the show, which Grdo had been begging for.
  
  
• It's the 80's theme from Neighbours which plays, and a crappy midi version of Rule Brittania. I couldn't find a decent real audio copy at short notice (this was edited the week before the show).

--

"Sync Or Swim"

• I got this idea for this when my sister started uni in 2005 and got a UQ sport brochure. I noticed there was no synchronized swimming offered by UQ Sport - I'm not sure why I was even looking for it, just as a joke.
  
  
• Most of the jokes for this sketch came from myself, Alex, Marc, Daniel and Grdo sitting around a table in the Red Room after an "official" scriptwriting session.
  
  
• This beat out three or four other mockumentary ideas, including a quite funny one by Nick about Suri taking on stand-up comedy. I really wanted to do that one but we couldn't for three reasons: one, Jonathan Crowe (who was a Gareth Keenan-like supporting character) was VERY hesitant about how much he wanted to do for the show; two, Suri was hardly ever available, and; three, we had Sync Or Swim.
  
  
• All of the pool scenes we shot at the Somerville House pool, after Daniel pulled some strings. Not only was it heated (which we needed in July/August) but it also had a grandstand. The UQ pool, at the time, had neither of these. Giselle was the only person who ever mentioned that the pool was not the UQ one.
  
  
• Alex wore my boardies. I was late for filming because I was racing around the city trying to find a pair of red DT's (at Alex's request) and ended up getting children's ones accidentally. Needless to say, Alex felt they were uncomfortable and impractical, so we went with the boardies.
  
  
• Alternate songs I'd thought of for the performance were "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen, "I Would Do Anything For Love" by Meatloaf, "Run To Paradise" by the Choirboys, "I've Had The Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by Pat Benetar and "She Drives Me Crazy" by The Fine Young Cannibals.
  
  
• The underwater shots were filmed through a viewing window in a gym underneath the pool. Even Giselle - who went to Somerville - didn't know about this viewing window.
  
  
• Despite popular believe, the appearance Tom's arse crack at the end was completely unintentional - I didn't even realize it until I was editing the sketch that night.
  
  
• A training montage WAS actually planned, but scrapped for time - you would have seen Mick dunking their heads in buckets of water, doing star jumps in the dance studio, etc.
  
  
• There was also a Kill Bill homage that was cut involving a prior coach, spoofing the scene when Lucy Liu chops off a guy's head.
  
  
• The sweet orchestral music at the end is called "Milk and Cookies", written by R.E.M. for the soundtrack of Man On The Moon. I'd used this in the very first video I ever edited on Windows Movie Maker. Hayley L. asked me if this was Thomas Newman's score from Meet Joe Black, and while it wasn't, I totally gave her props for liking that soundtrack.

--

So that's my audio commentary that could have been of the videos from Act One. I'll post my notes from Act Two soon...

Law Revue Video Diaries - Part One

So, tonight I was cleaning out my My Documents folder and came across something that I had COMPLETELY forgotten about.

2005 was my first year doing the videos for the UQ Law Revue, and at the time, I wrote down little bits of trivia for each video for the show that I thought would be useful for a DVD commentary if Marc, Daniel, Bin and myself ever got around to doing one (which we didn't). To this day, there has been no produced DVD of the Law Revues for the cast. That I know of.

So, for nostalgia's sake, I thought I would republish a few of these as they were written at the time (with a few updated edits), with the embedded videos.

It's self-indulgent yes, but I will probably never get to do a DVD commentary so this is it. :p

--

"You Wouldn't Steal"

• A very random and silly way to start the show. We didn't know what structure it would have or what the punchline would be at first - all we had was a series of very silly things you wouldn't steal. Fortunately, we had gotten that shot of Ryan walking into the UQLS office, and, when it came to the editing, it just seemed like the right place to end it. I came back later and filmed Karen at the photocopiers to bookend the sketch.
  
  
• It was the second video filmed, after Dugongs, and surprisingly quicker. Dugongs had taken practically a whole day. This was done in an hour. Probably because there was no dialogue for the people to learn - we could just direct it like a silent movie.
  
  
• The very first "you wouldn't steal" we shot was "You wouldn't steal a wheelie bin" but I accidentally taped over it with "You wouldn't steal a building". Oops.
  
  
• Nick actually broke the handle on the door of Forgan Smith on the first take of him "stealing a building". Oops.
  
  
• The video featured my favourite special effect cheat - the video rewinding effect.
  
  We originally shot Tom Gole lurching out of the library stacks with the pile of books, but when I went to edit the video, I discovered that my editing program could not reverse digital footage. (2009 ed. - times have changed) The same day we shot Newsreel and Intimate Injunctions, Grdo re-did the shot and, on my cue, he physically reversed his actions, walking backwards.
  
  In editing, I sped it up, and added with the sound effect on the audio track - ta da! - it looked like a video rewinding on itself!

--

"That's What I Want"

• The way I understand it, Daniel had wanted this idea to open the 2004 show (which he convened), but there had been uncertainty between himself and Sam (who was in charge of the videos that year) of how it could be done. I loved the idea and actually thought it was better suited to the 2005 show, since it would be opening the show in an actual movie theatre. (2009 ed: prior to 2005, the Law Revue took place in the intimate Cement Box theatre in contrast to the large theatre space of the Schonell)
  
  
• The other great thing about it was that it got our obligatory staff video done and out of the way. We were also able to get much more staff than usual to do it - they barely had to do anything, just say the words "That's... what... I... want" to the camera and do some hammy action. Very little organization in the planning of it - just walked around to their offices.
  
  
• The staff appearing in the video were (2009 ed.: since some members of staff don't actually know I've uploaded this video and may be sensitive about their names turning up in search engines, out of respect, I won't publish them here. Sorry.)
  
  
• I remember telling Daniel about all of the staff we had wrangled and expressing my disappointment in the fact that Suri was never in his office - I'd unsuccessfully visited his office four times! - so we'd just have to go without him. Five minutes later, Daniel calls me back and says "he's down here now". So, we were damn lucky to get him!
  
  
• I recorded the actual song on a digital dictaphone at a screening of Star Wars Episode III, just to get a sense of how it sounded. I made a simple midi backing track to edit all the shots to, then recorded Gerard and Hailey M. about a week before the show.

--

"The Amazing Race"

• This was originally Grdo's idea, and was written by Grdo, myself, Marc, Daniel and Bin in a scriptwriting session.
  
  
• Originally, it was going to take place in the city - in Waterfront Place, up through the mall and ending in the court complex. When Chris (our video assistance dude who had just graduated from the VCA) informed us that we'd probably need to get permission and pay fees to the council, we baulked. Since we also lacked an office to film in, we restructured the sketch so that it would be situated around UQ.
  
  
• On the day we shot it, there were graduates in their gowns all around the uni, which was perfect since it fit in with the theme of the video.
  
  
• As the IT guy, I'm wearing the same tie that Marc wore as the snooty Photoshop assistant in the 2004 revue.
  
  
• The "chase" music is a track from the soundtrack of Alias. Originally, I was going to use music from the soundtrack of 24, but when I returned to the shop to buy it, someone had bought it! So I bought the Alias soundtrack instead and this track worked perfectly. The "staying awake" music is from the main titles of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo".
  
  
• I think this video unanimously won the directors' prize for best blooper - Kavita fully stacking it as she crosses the finish line. (2009 ed.: you can see this video on my YouTube channel) Interesting, since only minutes before, we were all stunned by Adrian's amazing flip onto the ground, which he did THREE times.
  
  
• Mickey Lyons makes his only appearance in the 2005 Law Revue, but - come on - who else were you going to get to play a yuppie devil? He even brought his own smokes (although I provided the soul patch and horns). We shot his bit the same day as the girls' half of Intimate Injunctions and Bin's shot for St. Lucia Home.

--

"Puns Ahoy!"

• Very quickly done the week before the show. Ex-Law Revue cameos include Toot Sivyer (at the bar), Colette Bots (the crazy egg smasher) and Carly Fox (girl who's "not with him")
  
  
• The egg shell smash was done in one take and it was done with a lot of people around. As soon as Colette smashed the egg on my head, everyone around gasped in horror. If that footage went for one second more, you would have seen me burst into tears of laughter.
  
  
• You can even see the paper toweling on my lap.
  
  
• The joke about the "cab rank rule" was intended for a sketch about The OC that never eventuated. ("Why do I fall for every man who comes along?" "Three words: cab, rank, rule.") It was adapted for this format instead.
  
  
• Unfilmed puns include "Extinguishment of Native Title", "Estoppel" and "Hump Ahead". We ran out of time to do them properly. (2009 ed.: to date, these have not been done. In 2006, I actually sought technical advice from a fire extinguisher expert on how it could be done.)

Ladies, Butts To Camera Please

A short (and I'm sure flawed) observation I just made with regard to posters for action movies. Paramount have released their new character posters for the upcoming G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra and I couldn't help but notice similarities to the promotion of Watchmen and its character posters...

Most notably, I noticed the stark contrast in their poses - the token female characters tend to have the emphasis on their posteriors. I thus noticed that in action movie posters, men generally never pose with their backs to camera.

Not really a spectacular epiphany I know. But it's mine.

Now you observe the butts and chests of the Watchmen and the G.I. Joe team.

Kirby Is Our Homeboy

In less than a week, the High Court of Australia will say goodbye to the Honourable Justice Michael Kirby, when he leaves just prior to his constitutionally stipulated retirement date of his 70th birthday.

To many, his Honour will be remembered for his liberal views, high rate of dissenting judgments (and being damn proud of it) and advocacy of gay rights.

For me, I'll remember him for doing some ripper cameos in the Revue for us. He was a great sport about doing this one in 2006...



He also did a quick direct to camera spot to open the 2004 show (which I don't have access to unfortunately), where he said something like

"Hello, I'm Michael Kirby and welcome to the Law Revue. Sit up, pay attention and no messing about in the stalls. That's a unanimous decision of the High Court. No dissents.

And while that was cute, I felt it was a comedic opportunity wasted.

So luckily, he happened to be coming back to UQ in early 2006 to give a speech about his ten years on the High Court, and we snagged him for about ten minutes before he had to give the speech. He nailed it in one take, even ad libbed the banging of the table and "think original" (which happened to be the theme of his speech).

He talked to us about his fondness for the recently deceased Harry Gibbs (the former Chief Justice after whom the moot court at T.C. Beirne was named) and we had a photo snapped of us in front of Sir Harry's portrait. I never did see that photo, but it was very cool thing of Justice Kirby to do for us.

Happy retirement, Your Honour.

Christopher Walken's Three Little Pigs

If you've ever seen that classic scene from The Simpsons with "Christopher Walken" reading Goodnight Moon to children ("scooch closer children... chop chop..."), here's the real deal.

Hilarious.

The "Me" In Melbourne

I'm writing this entry from an internet place on Elizabeth Street in Melbourne, where two seats away from me, some weird overweight guy is watching porn. Decorum, dude. Seriously. There are dozens of peep shows and private booths on this street you could be at - I think I even saw a sign for a place for internet porn viewing called "The RAM Lounge".
Nice porn pun.
A pornpun.
A porun.
Stop James.

Hehehe... RAM...

Anyways.

I'm in Melbourne for a few days. And just thought I'd share a bit of my trip.

Wednesday - woke up at 2:15AM for Barack Obama's inauguration. Loved the Dr. Strangelove references about Cheney in his wheelchair. Aretha Franklin was great but not the powerhouse performer she usually is. Maybe it was the cold. The stumble was akin to the Olympic torch stuffup at the Sydney Olympics. The world held its breath, but in the end was okay. I thought it was a beautiful moment. Obama knew something was wrong. He's smart. It felt like a beautiful metaphor for the overall picture - after years of president who's terrible at speaking in public and made some pretty bad calls, this is a guy who's smart and on the ball. It was a relieving moment.

So I didn't go back to bed after that - I stayed up and watched the sun rise. We left the house at 5 to get on a 7AM flight, landed in Melbourne about 10AM. Our apartment was in South Yarra - excellent location for public transport because it was very close to Toorak Road and the South Yarra train station (which has a tram stop right in front of it).

We all split up for the next few days because I'd done the tourist thing of Melbourne already - I just did my own thing.

During the day, I checked out the Australian Centre for Moving Images' exhibition called "Setting The Scene" - a German-originated exhibition that was added to by the Centre about art direction in movies. Some cool exhibits that give a bit of insight into the choices made by the production designers of loads of movies including Metropolis, The Shining, The Matrix, Dogville, Dark City, The Terminal... the centrepiece of which was Baz Luhrmann's Australia. They had the living room of Faraway Downs recreated, a whole load of diaramas, schematics, blueprints, productino photographs, and a theatre where the movie itself was playing.

Wednesday night, we went to the Regent to see Wicked. Great production values - you could see why it costs $110 a ticket. We got a performance with understudies for Elphaba, Fiyero and Boq (no Millsy or Anthony Callea! :( ) and Lucy Durack (who plays Galinda/Glinda) had to pull out at interval. So we ended up with FOUR understudies. Oh well. It was still very good. Patrice (who played Elphaba) was excellent.

There was some promotion where you could get some Wicked stuff sent to your phone but I couldn't get the goshdamn bluetooth on my phone to work. So I missed out.

Thursday morning - we all slept in till 10:30. We were all awoken by a guy with a chainsaw next door hacking down a tree. Thanks man.

Spent the day looking around the shops again. Met Daniel (Pizzato) for dinner - a Chinese restaurant which serves its food in quite sizeable portions but for very cheaply. Very good.

On a whim, I took my brother to see Shane Warne The Musical at the Athenium (directly opposite The Regent where Wicked was playing). It was pretty damn good - a lot of the same crew as Keating! The Musical, and some very good songs and performances. It's not as controversial or defamatory as it could have been - there's nothing in it that isn't already public knowledge about Shane Warne. If anything, it still paints him as a loveable hero. A flawed loveable hero. Eddie Perfect is fantastic - he wrote and composed the whole show, and there's some very good songs - and Rosemarie Harris is excellent as Simone Warne.

In the interval, I walked over to the Regent to try and get that Wicked stuff on my phone again. I failed again.

Today we did the Australian Open. Mum and Harry (my brother) already went on Wednesday to Rod Laver to see my mum's celebrity crush Roger Federer. Since he did not come with us to dinner on Wednesday, I will assume he was just too far away from her to hear the invite.

I spent about two sets in Rod Laver Arena watching Delic v Djokovich. We had pretty good seats considering the seats across the aisle were corporate seats paid for by Australia Post. Since nobody was there at the start of the match, Dad pinched one of the thick tournament programs worth $15 sitting there.

The feisty Serbian contingent in the crowd had a chant for Novak (Djokovich) that sounded eerily like 'Nicorette! Nicorette! You can beat the cigarette!" Lazy. I just saw an episode of Malcolm In The Middle where Malcolm spends two days writing a beautiful love song only to realize he's ripped off the Meow Mix jingle (I love chicken, I love liver, Meow Mix, Meow Mix please deliver.) This is what I thought of immediately.

I noticed there were five ball boys - well, ball people, I suppose.
Including one ball lady.
I'm sure I saw a thong poking out the top of the back of her pants as she leaned forward in anticipation of chasing a stray fuzzy yellow tennis sphere.

Five ball people at one end seemed excessive. Three is a good number. Not five.

I casually asked Mum who ended up winning the Brisbane International. She mumbled something with food in her mouth.
"furdutchshto..."
"The Dutch Star?" I asked.
"furdatchko..."
"The Death Star?" "Wha?" she garbled, swallowing her last bite.
"The Death Star won the Brisbane International? That's what you said."
"No."
"I didn't think so."
"Fernando Verdasco won."
"Right... don't know him anyway."

When I gave my seat over to Emily (my sister), I went over to Show Court 3 where the Williams sisters were playing, but the crowd of people, the heat and the hostility that is the result of the combination of these two elements made want to seek shadier places. I went back to the city to have another look around the shops and write all this in a blog before I forgot.

And that's pretty much my life up to this moment.

Flying home tomorrow evening into a storm and backed up videos to make.

The saga continues.

Love from South Yarra,

James

P.S. With the Oscar nominations announced last night, the Houston Press linked to my Crash/Avenue Q mashup in a blog post about undeserving Best Picture winners. Cheers. :D

Google Owns It

A quite random song about Google I wrote in ten minutes then spent several hours recording and editing a video for.

Spontaneous and fun to do. :D

But I really should have spent the day doing other things. :p

Chris Noth Officially Has The Creepiest Headshot on IMDB

(from this page at IMDB.com)

Random bits of news and trivia

A few random bits today...

--

First up, I just voted in the At The Movies poll for the Viewers Choice best movies of 2008. I didn't do a "My Top 10 movies" list on here, because frankly, if there's one thing the world needs less of, it's top movie polls.

The five I nominated were ...

• Lars And The Real Girl
• Not Quite Hollywood
• Slumdog Millionaire
• Son of Rambow
  
• Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

I picked Walk Hard over Frost/Nixon - controversial decision I know. I picked movies that I thought were really deserving of an audience but may not have necessarily have gotten them. Walk Hard was one of the best parody movies I've seen in years and John C. Reilly's best performance yet, showing just how versatile he is.

If The Wrestler was on the list, I probably would have bumped Slumdog for it. It was beautiful. One of the best movies I've seen in years.

--

Second, my sister got into med school today. YAY!

Also, my brother got accepted into a Business/Law degree. YAY! Except now, mum will be expecting me to tutor him. Bad move mum.

--

Third, Dad tells me that you should strive to learn one new thing a day.

Today's fact (which I actually learned yesterday) was that there was a dance craze based on Roger Rabbit after the release of the movie. After watching this video, I do not remember when the hell Roger did this move in the movie.

Quantum Leap On Rape

This was an abridged version of the Quantum Leap episode that dealt with a serious subject in the way a PG-13, early 90's primetime, network TV show would: simply repeating it over and over.

Why?

At the top of the escalators leading down to the King George Square stop of the busway, I noticed these. Had to take a pic of them...



What's the point of that? Can you not see which way the escalators are going? Who's going to look at those before they look at the escalator themselves?

Well done Hugh!

I just discovered, glancing at the nominations for the Peoples' Choice Awards, that law revue video dude and now viral video sensation Hugh Atkin's Barack Roll has been nominated for a People's Choice Award! Yes, THE People's Choice Awards.

Other nominees in the "Favourite User Generated Video" category include Corey Vidal's awesome Star Wars acapella video with Moosebutter, Where The Hell Is Matt, Fred Goes Swimming and Wassup 2008 (an update of the famous Budweiser ad).

So big congrats to Hugh! :D

My Condolences for Jett Travolta

My thoughts and prayers go to John Travolta and Kelly Preston and their daughter Ella this morning as well too, who lost a son and brother in Jett at the age of 16 at the start of the new year.

Such a devastating thing to happen for anyone and I send them my deepest condolences.

Med Student Videos

I was just casually browsing the interwebs and discovered what became of some videos I did editing work on for AMSA, the Australian Medical Students Association, last year...

A*M*S*A*


Get A GP (parody of The Prodigy's controversial Smack My Bitch Up video)


Early Streaming


Student Training Capacity (a spoof of the climax of The Thomas Crown Affair)

2008 In Fireworks

Happy New Year everyone!

On the 6PM news bulletin last night, the fireworks organizers in Brisbane (or "pyrotechnists" as they called themselves) said that the midnight fireworks display over Southbank would be a display titled "2008: The Year That Was".

Most unoriginal title ever.

But I thought to myself how on earth they would represent the events of a year in firework form and in such a way that people could actually identify the events they were depicting.

3... 2... 1... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

[sing Auld Lang Syne]

[play Coldplay's Vida La Vida now]

Oooooooh... pretty.

There's Heath Ledger's death...

... and that's Kevin Rudd apologizing to the Aboriginal people...

Look out!! The Corey Delaney firework is going to destroy some property.

WOAH!! 250,000 fireworks just appeared at once in the shape of a crucifix? Must be World Youth Day. They're probably going to make the other fireworks sick with the flu.

Kevin Rudd: "Is this Bill Henson's part of the fireworks display? Disgusting..."

Here's the ABC Learning Centre fireworks segment - now Eddy Groves has insisted that, despite rumours, these fireworks are fine and solvent and parents don't have to worry. ... oh ... oh no, they've stopped them.

OOooooooh, that Barack Obama firework is MUCH bigger than the John McCain one. The McCain firework is probably nearing its use by date.

That brown firework... that must be the poo flavoured ice cream from that hotel...

Oooh, that pretty red one must be the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. But I think they're using the sound of a less attractive but actually talented firework.

Look out!! The Corey Delaney firework is coming back! It won't go away! It just keeps coming back.

Okay... big finale ... wait... wait... here comes the Baz Luhrmann's Australia firework... it's going to be huge... wait for it ... WAAAAAAIT FOR IT.... ...
... ...

... huh ...

.... well, that was disappointing.