Nevermind the weather

Today is official. Filmfondet and Fond for lyd og bilde have approved the budget for shooting my new short film. That means that I go into production next february, shooting in location here in Bergen. I will be directing, editing and most likely making the VFX.

Cast is ca 8 people and I think the crew will be part from Bergen, part from Oslo.

Final length is expected to be 10 min and we should be able to a 35mm copy with Dolby Surround.

More here (in Norwegian): http://www.flimmerfilm.no/

New job

Since last week I am officially part of Frø Film & Media. We are a company based in Bergen, Norway working with... er... film and media ;-)

This is an interesting step and I cannot wait to develop new projects in the context of a team. The last 3 years have brought a constant increase in work for me, both in quantity as well as in complexity. I expect this new phase to be no different and I am already setting my mind to work with new concepts for documentary, short fiction, animation, etc. This is an exciting time!

Concerts

To some of my friend's sadness I have to post that, for the second time, I went to a Roger Water's concert... some pics coming soon. There is a video taken from a local newspaper; click here

And to break their hearts completely, I have to say that I just bought tickets to go to Oslo next september to listen to Dream Theater!

Phiew!

Just one year ago if someone would have said to me: "all of this will happen", I would have not believed it.

The hard work is slowly but surely paying off. For the first time, and despite being a foreigner, not knowing the language completely, and working in a very tough business (independently) I am saying NO, quite often, to jobs. It is not the fact the I say no, but that there is people constantly ringing and wanting my work... it is really priceless: specially when you work within the creative market.

I am proving myself, after some psychological abuse (females, you are wrong) that males ARE CAPABLE of multitasking... he he. Right now I am editing and postproducing a music video, have some hours workhopping students at UiB, editing a short film, marketing an animation film, developing a documentary, developing a short film, writing 2 scripts, having a wife and a house, playing tennis... and trying not to get bored ;-)

All of this involves at least 5 different film companies in Bergen. Which is great cause one of my goals is to be able to establish a much more inclusive and participative way of making films here in Norway... a true creative environment in which we all work together and see others not su much like competitions, but like partners.

New song

Finished a new song. Despite the load of work, "all work and no play make Paulo a dull boy". Here is the link:

Nothing left to understand

I used reason for all the programming and linked it to Protools to do the recording of bass and guitars. Voice samples taken from the Freesound project, taken to Reason and were heavily eq'ed.

Teaching... good bad and the ugly

There are many things happening now, and interesting projects waiting for a decission from Filmfondet, Fond for Lyd og Bilde and NRK. Plus, there is lots of people wanting me to join projects and work for them. At the same time, Im teaching quite often (everyday now) for the University of Bergen.

Said first: I DO like teaching.

BUT, it is difficult to cope when you have elements in your group that are not really into learning... no matter what you do. If, on top of that, I think of all the time spent preparing, and the effort I put on trying to give a personalized, fresh attention to all of them; then I get, like now, pissed off. I would like to be spending my time with all the many projects I have now with different companies around.

The even worse thing is that often I meet students with such talent and potential, but with such a bad attitude, or just, as often I see: plain laziness. The worse thing I know is seeing talent being wasted.

The end of this year

As tomorrow, Im declaring myself on vacation. Linn and I are travelling once again to Costa Rica to visit my family for a month and I cant wait to get there.

This year have been amazingly productive. New office, worked in projects for Lutelandet, SiB, the Norwegian Army, Embla Film, Norsk Dokumentar Film, Airview and Sjotroll. The tasks were so varied; from directing, photography, script advice, editing, digital compositing, DVD authoring, sound mixing, music composition, color correction, animation, print design, package design... I was a teacher at UiB and at Jolster Highschool. My students in Jolster won the award for best direction at the Students Media Festival in Sogn and Fjordane for an Oddvar Torsheims portrait. Im so proud! :-)

If this is not enough I now have two projects under development: The Fable of the Leaf catched the eye of Arild Mehn Andersen who is now producing the animated short. The Norwegian Film Fund has given us funds for developing the project further.

The other: "Gustav Stromsvik, the forgotten archeologist" is now under the roof of Flimmer Film and I hope next year we will see the start of the development phase. They have received, as well, a script for a short fiction that I wrote this year; they liked it a lot. If everything goes ok, I wish to be able to work with them with this project also.

Jose, on his own in Costa Rica, has been producing "Con camisa y sin camisa", a short fiction film. He has started the shooting and this january I will be taking one day to help him with the last scenes. We hope to have this one ready for the next Costa Rican Film Festival.

An so it is, that I now pull the plug for a while and take some rest before next year comes. Enjoy the holidays, wherever you are!