Back in Joburg

Back in Joburg...

Off to safari in a few hours...

Will blog again soon...

In the meantime, here is a shot from Cape Town...

Table Mountain

Hey all --

Sam here. Guest blogging while Quyen gets some beauty sleep. (As if she needs it!)

Yesterday we took an extremely scary cable car ride straight up the side of Table Mountain, the gorgeous mountain that surrounds Cape Town. The cable car rotated for excellent views.

On the top, we gazed at the beautiful vista, took pictures, and watched funny Japanese tourists all say "Ooooh" and "Aaaaah" in unison whenever their guide pointed something out to them. From the top, you can see both the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. It's quite cool.

Later, we dined at the ultra-exclusive Madame Zingara restaurant, which is famous for its Chili Chocolate Steaks. And we ended the day at a dance club called Sliver.

Walking to our car, I was curious about these men in yellow vests that patrol the side streets of Cape Town, looking after people's cars. There's one on every block in the city, but I was told they are not hired by the local government, nor do they work for any company. They're just dudes with yellow vests who roam the night streets helping people parallel park, and asking for tips when you leave. Apparently, you're supposed to give them 2 or 3 Rand (30-40 cents) if your car hasn't been broken into. It's an interesting career choice for any of you who want to live in South Africa and happen to own a yellow vest.

By the way, as you can probably tell by their lack of amazingness, these photos were not taken by Quyen. We don't have the cable you need to upload photos to this computer, so these will have to do for the next two days.

BYE FOR NOW!

-sam

Capetown

Sam arrived Wednesday morning safely, in spite of the rain, and Thursday morning we flew to Cape Town. We're staying in a suite at the most amazing hotel in Bantry Bay - The Ambassador - with an amazing view of the ocean. The sunsets are absolutely stunning, but what else is new, hey?

Today we drove around Cape Town's wonderful wine farms, sampling the wines and eating the local delights. (Sam enjoyed braised Springbok -- a type of deer, and I had some linefish, a white fish like a cross between bass and halibut.) At one Vineyard, The Morgenster, we also chugged some delicious olive oils, many of which we purchased. It'll be tricky getting them home, what with the whole liquid prohibition on airplanes, but we'll see. Sam thinks we can freeze them, thereby making them "solids," not "liquids," but I'm not so sure that will work.

The flight from Joburg was actually quite nice. We flew on the equivalent of South African Jet Blue... so all the flight attendants were cracking jokes on the intercom the whole time. When we landed they said, "Welcome to Zimbabwe."

Sam is picking up little bits of local language all the time. "Lekker" means "cool." "Sharp" means "okay" or "good." "Eish" means... well, I don't exactly know but they say it a lot.

Tomorrow we plan to climb Table Mountain, a flat-topped mountain that surrounds the cape. We might also check out Robben island, where Nelson Mandela was locked away for 27 years.

By the way, Sam wrote this post, but Quyen just edited it. Enjoy!

-Sam

DONE!!!

We are DONE with shooting as of Sunday night. WOW. I can't believe it's over. Well, I can because we've been shooting for 2 weeks and have been on nights for the last week, but it feels f-cking amazing to be done. What an amazing experience we've all had. Here's a quick rundown of the last couple days:

HILLBROW--We were shooting in an apartment in the heart of Hillbrow for a couple days, both exterior and interior and rooftop, but the so-called "landlady" of the place (total bullshit) freaked out so badly that the head security had to, let me just say, put her in her place. Shame. She was a crazy bitch, though. As I was walking by with the camera equipment I thought she was going to sucker punch me, but I had about 6 Zulu security dudes backing me up. Pretty sweet. Now how often do you have security watching your back? Unfortunately the lift wasn't working, so my poor crew had to carry everything up 5 flights of stairs. And I was feeling bad for not going to the gym. I think 2 weeks of handheld makes up for that :)

ANOTHER DEAD BODY--Wow, that makes three. Thabo and I both try not to look, but it's near impossible not to. Eish.

CAR MOUNT--Finally happened without a hitch, (except for a couple of dings in our rented BMW prop/production car.) Can't wait to see the footage tomorrow morning at the telecine. We had Johannesburg Police escort...we felt so badass until they abandoned us at 4 AM in the middle of Hillbrow. Not a good place to be, but we managed just fine so long as we ran all the red lights.

TELECINE--We are over halfway done with the telecine, and we're uber excited!! So far no hairs in the gate. The operator offered us a free online today, as well as a free online correction for the trailer which a friend will be cutting next week. I don't know why they're being so generous, but I don't ask. Probably because our colorist mostly works on commercials and he likes my American...accent. Hopefully we'll be able to come back for the online.

WRAP PARTY--Everyone on the crew came. Amazing. I don't think I've EVER been to a wrap party where the whole crew came, down to the script supervisor and wardrobe assistant (who were totally rad.) The crew freakin' rocked--how amazing that only the DoP and Director were American and everyone else was South African. Goes to show that America still is the Super Power. Ha ha ha just kidding. We know we're just bullies...

Tomorrow morning Sam finally arrives, and then Thursday morning we're off to Cape Town!! Can't wait. The whole family is super excited to meet him. He arrives at 6:20 AM and then I'm off to telecine, but don't tell him so. Yikes.

I'll try to post stills from the production as soon as we get them, but I am so happy we're finally done! I swear this has been the most amazing film experience--I feel so blessed to be working with these South African filmmakers. They worked so hard to make it happen. I will miss them dearly.

Cheers,
Q

HAIL in Jozi

OK. Last night was HECTIC. The winds were picking up (of course on our car mount night) so badly that we had to cancel. I asked a professional engineer at the WITS School of Arts where we based camp whether we should work and he said "hell no." I think that when it started to f-cking HAIL that that pretty much confirmed our decision not to shoot, even though my totally rad crew were trying hard to rig while I watched on from inside sipping a latte. OK, that wouldn't have been cool but that's what I wanted to do, eh? Oh well. Luckily, we'll make up for the lost day of shooting on Friday night, courtesy of the understanding equipment houses and also our amazing and talented actors. August is the windy month after all, but this is nutz!

So...we all got trashed instead. End of story because I can't recall the rest of the night.

In the Thick of It

Hey Sam and Lillian (and all my loyal blogger fans)--sorry I haven't written in so long, but things have been quite HECTIC here. (Everything is hectic around here, not crazy, not insane, not rad, but HECTIC.) Anyway, we are in the middle of production, and now we're on a night schedule now, so I'm a tad bit exhausted from having a 50kg camera on my shoulder while trying to operate on no sleep (since the birds are chirping when we get home). BUT, things are going extremely well and Thabo's doing a fantastic job with his actors. The lead actor is quite a charmer, and a brilliant actor as well. Never mind that he is extremely handsome as well, but I do fall in love with him every time I look through the eyepiece, so long as I can see. It's quite chilly at night so the eyepiece tends to fog up :)

So much has happened in the last week and half since I last wrote you, bloggie. Here's a quick rundown:

DAVID KAU--a f-cking brilliant comedian. Phil was doing security so we hung out in the green room afterwards with him and I think I told him he should call me when he's in LA later on this year. Oops. I was SLIGHTLY wasted. I had the following drinks:

3 glasses of red wine
3 shots of absynthe
double vodka tonic
glass of amarula (it's like kahlua but without the coffee flavor)

McDONALD'S--We paid at one window and I swear the cashier walked parallel to our car, picked up our order, and delivered the goods 2 windows down. Thabo asked, "Do you have a twin?" Normally service takes FOREVER here and things are ALWAYS screwed up. Even the day before it had taken 20 min at McD's, but I guess you had to be there...and don't ask why we were even eating there in the first place. (The boyz wanted their morning cheeseburgers.) Yum.

COFFEE--Even though I don't drink Starbucks at home, it seems a lot of people here drink instant coffee. I bought a latte at a shop the other day and it took 10 minutes.

ASIAN COUNT--is now up to 16. The other night at dinner we scored with a table full of 4 Asians and 2 whities. Also at that dinner, it took us an hour to pay our bill, plus we got the server fired because he was trying to swindle us. He said, "You have to pay the tab on credit, but just pay for the alcohol with cash." Whaaat? So then we called the manager over and he thanked us for telling him that the server was stealing from his company. Then we totally booked it out of there in our sweet BMW production car (which is also the prop car) because Thabo was afraid he was going to kill us, seriously. The African themed decor reminded me of a Rainforest Cafe or Disneyland, but the food was actually divine, even if the server was the dodgiest fellow I'd ever met in such a fine establishment.

POOR SOUL--We drove by a dead body on the highway. It was the second one we've seen--it had JUST happened as we were driving by. Sad.

I can't think of anything else right now because my head is in a funny space (I feel jetlagged all over again) but I will try to write again soon when I can recall the events of these past couple weeks.

Cheers,
Q

STILL FREEZING

Oh my goodness it is FREEZING still here! Craziness. I am ill prepared, but hope to purchase a scarf and beanie for the weekend of shooting. We're going to try to shoot on the Nelson Mandela bridge, although I'm afraid it may collapse from all the copper and material that's been stolen over the years. Insanity. Very tired right now, so I will just leave you with yet another landscape photo of the city taken from "the office." I apologize. Also, a sign for ROBOTS, i.e. traffic lights. I find that very cute. By the way, anyone besides Sam and Lillian can respond now apparently, as I've changed the "comments" settings, not that I don't love Sam and Lillian.

JOBURG FREEZES

Was the headline today in the papers! Believe it or not, it SNOWED today in the city--not a snow to blanket the ground at all, but snow nonetheless! Apparently it hasn't snowed here in almost 3 decades, so this was quite a spectacle. Unfortunately it will suck if it is overcast or snows during the shoot next week, so we can only pray, but this is very unusual weather here, apparently. This weekend we're shooting B roll of the city, mainly just the lead character walking home from work, as well as camera tests. We visited a couple of telecine houses today as well, and had great success, although we're not sure if we'll be able to transfer to HD. There's also the issue of PAL, but we think that we'll be able to standard convert to NTSC once we're back in the States, since no houses transfer to NTSC. Anyone have any insight? Most of the houses have only one telecine machine...again, we are SO SPOILED.

Here's a pic of the city at night. It was raining at the time, but the clouds were amazing, even at night. I also am excited to share a photo of my favorite drugstore. I mean, if a drugstore is going to use a unicorn as their logo, then these magnificent beasts must exist, hey?

This morning we stopped at McDonald's to grab breakfast for the boys. I swear it took 20 minutes to get our food from the Drive-Thru. Aiyah.

The pic of the hill with the lone bush was taken from the highway. As you drive along you will see manmade hills formed by gold mine excess.

Bedtime. Sue made delicious ostrich filets tonight for dinner. So ordinary by now :)