Since Cambodia. The beginning of a new journey.

I recently told someone that I don’t think reflection is important – everything is so unstable with what I do, simply pouring the most of everything into the current moment, for me, seems to work out best. Reflecting on past work, or looking forward to upcoming projects, seems to be less productive. Here’s one of my favorite quotes;

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.” ~ Chuck Close

However – for the sake of argument and more than anything else a resource for others out interested in documentaries, film or art in general, I’ve decided to reflect, in dot-point form, what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months since I returned back from filming in Vietnam and Cambodia (July-ish).

I have been pretty intensely busy and excited – for a million reasons.

One of them: WE’VE MOVED INTO LATENITE FILMS HQ! Which is kind of exciting. The office already looks like an indi-filmmakers heaven, and a spankin’ new shipping-container to live out the back for all our film-equipment will be moving in shortly, so we’re a little bit excited. *yay!

Preparing the “Spinning Dreams in Cambodia” doco for the edit has been incredible, and although it’s been a huge task just getting everything transcoded into the AVID, I’ve been loving watching the rushes and re-living our incredible experience to support CfC.

With no Australian-based producer for the concept onboard yet – I worked with our Singapore team creating RedBull and Canon proposals, and managed to already score our AMAZING music rights (to be announced soon!) #indifilmmaking WIN

I have to add a huge shout out to all the support and awesome tweets and feedback I’ve been receiving for our first “Spinning Dreams” on the FairFax Digital network in Aus and NZ! Cheers to FilmVic, SPAAFringe , and especially Ricky Sutton!

Always looking around the world for inspiration – I found and funded an incredible project on indigogo – “Forgotten Slaves – The Comfort Women of the Philippines”, to be directed by Björn Jensen, Germany.

Forgotten Slaves – The Comfort Women of the Philippines (Trailer) from Gingerfootfilms on Vimeo.

Sadly I’ve been missing the incredible Doco3000 events the last few months due to the fact I’ve been interstate or OS. It’s A MUST do for any film-doc interested up’n’comer ~ “Doco3000 brings melbourne based people interested in documentaries together for screenings, feedback, networking and collaborating. [we] meet monthly for our main event 10 x 10 as well as hosting other events.”

Although I did manage to see Doco3000 founder, and talented Melbourne Film-maker Genevieve Bailey at her film premiere of “I AM ELEVEN” – one of the best indi-docs I’ve seen in a loooooong time. Did you manage to check it out at any of the 3 sold out sessions?

I Am Eleven – trailer from I Am Eleven on Vimeo.

After months of docos, meetups and travels, I responsibly caught up on some much-needed mula by working as an AE (assistant editor) at the Butchery and editor with a local agency. Also had a ridiculous amount of awesomeness filming/editing and screening (in one night!) a world first “DigiHunt” event – more info to be released soon!

***Quick shout out to the wicked guys at Inspiration Studios for holding “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Film™ – A Digital Cinema Discussion! Awesome!***

Less responsibly, filming the talented Stuntman “Brett Solomano” do stunts in trucks… Big Trucks… is highly recommended.

(We didn’t get arrested, so that was nice.)

HIGHLIGHT of the last few months has been working with the AOP – (Austr alian Orangutan Project ) - on their latest campaign video. To be released soon! I am seriously so excited about this – can’t wait to share it with you!!

Fellow sailor and Director of Photography who joined me in Cambodia, Michael Lutman, has also recently completed his feature documentary “Plasticized”, which will be premiering at EFF later in the year. WOO!

I think one the best events (perhaps also experience) I’ve had since returning to Melbourne, among many other things, was attending the ADG conference with speaker David Bradbury - “KEEP THE CAMERA ROLLING NO MATTER WHAT!” – which kind of changed my life. Meeting David, and talking to him about all the places I’ve loved filming – Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam – was so unbelievably amazing. I bought 7 of his documentaries, and have been devouring and analyzing them ever since.

If you haven’t seen his films – you should. If you haven’t heard of him – you must. I can’t tell you my favorite documentary he’s made – but his first ever film “Frontline” (1981) certainly has stayed with me ever since.

I have to also mention that the Documentary Short Film night at #MIFF was amazing. A wonderful selection of some of the worlds best short docos. LOVE short docs – can’t wait to see more of them online. Loving witnessing the race to see who masters the curation of online content!

Can I also quickly mention a great meet-up I had with talented German Film-maker Nina Spilger who is currently living and looking for production work in Melbourne. We had an inspiring conversation about all things film and doc – watch out world!

But I think all of the events over the last few months have led to one incredibly awesome moment – WINNING THE AWESOME FOUNDATION grant of $1000 to finally fix and repair my cameras for the Tour De Timor. Awesome.

Yup. I’m heading off to Timor-Leste (again!) to film the Tour De Timor (again!). After last year, I couldn’t imagine being able to justify or afford coming back – I broke and lost so much gear last year (the usual way, falling off motorbikes and crashing into things, you know what it’s like…) that I couldn’t justify going this year. And with so many other projects to focus on, like the Spinning Dreams Cambodia project – HOW could I possibly afford to go to Timor-Leste again?

Well, with the awesome foundation encouraging me with their holy awesomeness, I am now in Darwin with my “like-new” camera packed and ready to be broken again! WOO! This time I wont be there with the GoneCyclin team – but instead joining the JungleRun-ners to shoot all coverage of the epic race!

So, tomorrow I fly out into the beautiful city of Dili – and on behalf of the awesome foundation melbourne team – I’ll make sure to be taking plenty of photos, videos and keep everyone updated on the awesomeness!!

Here’s some highlights from last year -