# Off-topic Rants

First up… some people are a tad confused as to why I’ve called this blog post Filmapalooza 2011, and not 2012. No, I haven’t forgotten what year it is (surprisingly!) – it’s just that the competition is for films we all did LAST YEAR. Given that our film was shot and competed in the 2011 national competition, it made sense to label the blog post 2011. Hope that makes sense! Now… on to the blog…

Great Story. Check. Solid Production Values. Check. Performances………whoops. Time and time again I see this problem with low budget filmmaking. And it’s a problem, that as an actor and a filmmaker, really annoys the shit out of me when it comes to indie film.

So just before Christmas you heard about the first 6 months which were very exciting at LateNite HQ, so who would have thought the next 6 were going to be even busier…

And what a bloody busy year it has been at LateNite HQ! As the year comes to a close, we here at LateNite feel like it’s important to reflect on an incredibly tough but ultimately rewarding 2011. To complement our stories of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (hardly) I have decided to throw in some of the great films that were released over the last 12 months. All of which have my personal seal of approval – which is all you need really!

Some of you might be wondering why Ryan Gosling is worth an entire blog post. Or perhaps why a young man in his mid 20’s (and not a horny girl/woman between the ages of 15 - 40) is writing about Ryan Gosling at all. The reason is this. On reflection this year (arguably 2-3 years even) has been all about the Gosling Factor. His choice of script, director and in turn film has been impeccable with him being involved with some of my favourite films from the past few years. To add to that not only have they been great films in their own right, but a diversity of films from the star studded dramedy Crazy Stupid Love, to the disturbing but artistically beautiful Drive, to finally the taut political thriller The Ides of March.

What an absolutely exciting and intense few days it’s been! For those that don’t know, I was fortunate enough to be excepted into the Emerging Producers Scheme, allowing me to attend the SPAA Conference in Sydney, which has literally just wrapped. The Scheme is designed to subsidise and assist newer members of the industry to attend and participate in the Conference by offering a carefully selected group of producers the opportunity to attend the festival at a reduced rate of $770, as well as giving participants the “tools” they need to best “work” the conference.

What an incredible weekend it’s been, and it’s only going to get more exciting as the days and months go on! For those that don’t know us – for the past three years we have entered into the 48 Hour Film Project competition in Melbourne. We absolutely love it – because it forces you to “bash out” a film over a weekend, with no excuses. You can’t delay things, you can’t reschedule, you just need to make it happen – which is what we’re really all about.

Back in October last year, I was invited to speak to the 3rd and 4th year students at Swinburne University about Post Production Workflows (if you haven’t already, you can read about everything I discussed last time here). A couple of weeks ago I was invited back again to cover the same sort of thing with a whole new bunch of 3rd year students.

UPDATE (26th January 2017): As Brad mentions in the comments below, you can now download the TC.XLAM 2.0 beta, which is no longer password protected and works on modern versions of Excel. For those that no longer use Excel, there’s also a Google Sheets version explained here.

I would like to firstly apologise to all our teamsters out there who have been disappointed with our lack of blogging in recent times. It has been a busy one for the whole team so we have unfortunately been snowed under with work. Also, for those of you have been long time followers of this blog, this is the first time Chris has let me (Nick) actually write something – so that’s exciting in itself!