Today an intern at a London art gallery emailed me about Light/Sound Workshop, to which I belonged during my time at Hornsey College of Art. Hers was the second such enquiry following one from the author of a book on the Pink Floyd. But she wanted information about events after I left art college and about which I knew nothing.
Better late than never. I had been getting frustrated by the seeming indifference of some experts conducting a survey of the vulnerable Glossy Black Cockatoo, to footage I filmed of a family in December 2008 and about which they had long known. A few months ago the lead researcher got in touch and Steve and I gave him a time-coded DVD of the footage and today he emailed me with his shot selection.
Having emailed Steve the revised script for Supplement 4 which is more than twice as long as the scripts for Supplements 1 and 2 combined, I recorded the first half of the script this evening in the sound suite at Bond University Film School.
Now that I am immersed in scripting the DVDs, I have been busy contacting various curators at the Queensland Museum and their colleagues elsewhere, in order to identify the species we have been filming at night for the past 3 ½ years. Today an email arrived from Christopher Taylor in West Australia who had identified an amazing harvestman we first saw at the end of last year and which had only been described a year earlier. Chris pointed out that he was only familiar with lab specimens and that nothing was known about the species' natural history. So any observations we can provide could potentially be interesting.
Am gathering the necessary fire power for the RADF grant. Darryl Jones sent me a glowing letter of support which I got today.
Today I received the Statement of Significance from Simon Smith, who curates my published archive at the National Film & Sound Archive, on which we had worked together and which is central to my reapplying for a RADF grant. It appears to tick all the boxes, so fingers crossed.
For our 'Rainforest at Night' DVDs, Steve, with Hugh's help, filmed interviews with Jaap, Mark and me talking about our experience of night filming, our favourite creatures, highlights of our 53 night shoots, the value of our night filming. We were filmed in Jaap's back yard which borders rainforest, but which had a handy plug outdoors to power the lighting.
Maybe 3 weeks ago, Ray, a neighbour of mine, told me how a bird had snatched his lower denture off his balcony table and I told him that I had seen a lower denture in mulch in the park a couple of months before. I won’t go into why the denture was on the table, other than to say that the bird was after food. Today Ray knocked on my door, wanting to know exactly where I had seen the denture. Its replacement was causing him discomfort. We went into the park and were looking for the lost article, when Andrew, a friend of mine newly returned from a year-long overseas assignment, turned up unexpectedly at my place to say hello. Catching sight of Ray and me doing inexplicable things in the park, Andrew strolled over to make his presence known and find out what we were up to. After introductions he joined in the search and within minutes succeeded in finding the denture, exactly where I had left it at the end of April. Ray could not have been more delighted.
I have been working away on the Night Life supplements and Steve has been assembling the preliminary shot selection on 3 DVDs. Tonight we managed to do another 2 videos for vimeo, bringing the total on my vimeo page to 75. For technical reasons, not all my elegible vimeo videos have been harvested by EOL. For the past 2 months I have not done much filming. Things quieten down in winter, though, for the first time in a few years, we are enjoying day after day of sunshine and clear blue skies, typical winter weather for these parts. I love this weather and have really missed it. We are planning for Steve to film interviews with Jaap, Mark and me for the supplements at the end of July.