The Troll Bridge

Last week I had the privileged experience of working with an amazing group of people on an amazing film shoot. The film was Troll Bridge and I encourage anyone that can to seek it out once it's done. The story of this film began about 9 years ago when the director Daniel wrote an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's short story 'Troll Bridge' It's set in Discworld as many of his books are. Personally, I'm not a fan of his work but the great thing about Troll Bridge is that it is actually just an amazing story that doesn't require any knowledge of Discworld or Pratchett's work. I won't go into a synopsis of the film here but I do encourage you to look at this link which includes a synopsis and tells you all about the film itself:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snowgumfilms/terry-pratchetts-troll-bridge (yes, it's a kickstarter page, no I'm not posting it here so people will donate - it's just a good overview of the film and the story, donations have closed.)

Last week we shot the bridge scene. The main part of the actually-quite-long short. It was amazing for a number of reasons. For a few of us it was an ending to 9 years of watching this film grow into something amazing. For others it was the first film set they'd been on, or for others their first time working with Snowgum Films. It didn't matter who had done what before though, because we all came together and worked towards the same goal and from what I have seen so far - it is amazing. Seriously.

For this shoot my job was flicking light switches. Literally, that was pretty much it. But then I was given another job - writing down measurements for each shot to help effects guys when they are adding in trolls and whatnot. I also helped move lights and the green screen around. To me it didn't really matter what job I had, I just wanted to be a part of the shoot since I had been on most of the shoots for the film (I didn't get to go to New Zealand) - in the first shoot for this film I was an actor (well, an extra).

The shoot went for 5 days, there are plenty of photos of it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/snowgumfilms/sets/72157629473394444/

Do check it out when it's done.

A sneak preview of what the final shot might look like:

My Top Ten Songs of all time, at this stage.

So I recently made a cd of my top ten songs of all time. It was quite difficult to do and doesn't really reflect what i've been listening to these last few years because it was an all time list and had to include a couple of songs from my past that mean a lot to me. I had a lot of trouble narrowing down the list to ten, so I included 7 bonus tracks, which are in no particular order, although the top ten is in order. The track listing begins with songs 10 to 1, and then the 7 bonus tracks.

1. 10. Father and Son - Cat Stevens
2. 9. Run To Paradise - The Choirboys
3. 8. Life Is A Highway - Tom Cochrane
4. 7. California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade - The Decemberists
5. 6. Footloose - Kenny Loggins
6. 5. Shine On Me - The Lucksmiths
7. 4. The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy
8. 3. Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
9. 2. The Boy With The Arab Strap - Belle and Sebastian
10. 1. Nice Day - The Salteens
BONUS TRACKS
11. Close To Me - The Cure
12. Disco 2000 - Pulp
13. Passenger Side - Wilco
14. Mornings Eleven - The Magic Numbers
15. It's The Nighttime - Josh Rouse
16. Scientists - The Guild League
17. Sister - Sufjan Stevens

If you don't know any of these songs I would recommend giving them a listen. I also recommend making your own top ten list. It's quite difficult to do if you like a lot of music.

Week 2 - My trip

This week was full of work. It felt like it never ended. Working nights is tiring and it feels like I have no spare time to do anything else. I go to sleep late, I get up late, I don’t get a chance to see anyone. There was a highlight during the week though – I had Wednesday off and made it down to the Northcote Social Club to see Gary Olsen from The Ladybug Transistor playing with his Australian backing band. There were 7 up on stage so it was a good complete sound and they played many of my favourite Ladybug Transistor songs. I had a nice meal beforehand and went to Sarah’s place afterwards and played guitar hero for a little while before sleeping on their couch (it’s a quite comfy couch!)

The question i’m getting a lot this week, which is hard to answer is “Did you enjoy your trip?” – Usually not a difficult question, however it is when you had the trip I had. Usually the people asking the question don’t have time for a long answer and are generally expecting ‘it was great’ or ‘awesome’ or ‘it was so great’... the shortest answer i can give is “Didn’t enjoy Africa, enjoyed Europe and London at the time but looking back at my time there makes me depressed”- so obviously that answer usually precedes further questions, however most people are asking in passing and don’t have time for explanations so i have to say ‘it was great’ but i really don’t mean it. Usually I just shrug my shoulders, but most people don’t accept that answer.

This weekend I went out past Ballarat to slightly past the middle of nowhere for a film shoot. We were shooting Troll Bridge. It was a very well organised shoot. I was very impressed with everything about it. The only disappointing thing about was that out of all the crew roles on the set, my role was the one thing I have never done before. I could have done any of the other jobs (except make-up/sfx) but i was given the job of Data transfer guy or something. My job was to transfer the footage from the cameras to a hard drive. Very very exciting. I felt fairly useless pretty much the whole time I was there. On the second day I managed to do a little filming for the making of documentary. I got a couple of good shots, but most of it was fairly average.

And that was my week. How exciting!

Tonight is Oscars night which I am looking forward to. It should be a good night.

Week 1 - The Plan

So i’ve decided to do a weekly blog. Lately I’ve found myself having to answer the same question a lot, to a lot of different people, and I thought, maybe it would be easier if i just wrote it all down and then when i was asked certain things by people I could just say www.glenngreening.blogspot.com.

Not sure how it will work because that would pretty much end any conversation I have fairly abruptly, and maybe being asked the same question over and over again by different people won’t happen all that often in the future. Who knows? Anyway, the idea is to at least start a weekly blog about what I’ve been up to and what’s been happening with me.

So this week people have been asking ‘what’s the plan?’ as i’ve just come back from overseas and am up in the air as to what i am going to do now. I’ve been asked the question so many times lately, which is fine, but it’s annoying when I don’t have an answer to it. I don’t really have a plan. I guess my plan is to figure out a plan?

So at the moment I am staying with Jarrod and Georgia who have been awesome enough to let me stay in their spare room until i find somewhere to live. The plan is to look for a place to live. Today I looked on the internet and i have a big list of places to visit on Monday. I also emailed someone about a share house but I’m still not sure if that’s what i want to do.

Really not much is happening these days, but i’ll try to update this every week if i can remember as i get my life back on track. And if no one reads it, that’s fine. At least it’s something that i can look back on myself if I want to.

Xmas cd

Hello,
Some of you will have received a mix christmas cd from me but without any tracklisting because I didn't have time to make a bunch of cd covers. So I have posted the tracklisting below. I hope you like it.

1. Sufjan Stevens - Get Behind Me, Santa!
2. Mavis Staples - Christmas Vacation
3. Sufjan Stevens - Put The Lights On The Tree
4. The Ravonettes - The Christmas Song
5. Ciao Bella - Christmas Time
6. Sufjan Stevens - Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!
7. The Eels - Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
8. Wham - Last Christmas
9. Sufjan Stevens - Did I Make You Cry On Christmas? (Well, You Deserved It)
10. Bright Eyes - Blue Christmas
11. Calexico - Gift X-change
12. The Handsome Family - So Much Wine
13. Sufjan Stevens - Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!
14. John & Yoko - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
15. The Lucksmiths - The Thought That Counts

My favourites are all the Sufjan Stevens songs, and also track 15. Hope you like them.

My world tour of Libraries!

Our trip is only a few months from the end so I thought I'd put together a little blog of all the libraries we have visited throughout our travels. This blog will take you through photos of many of the libraries we have seen.

What better place to start than the Alexandria library in Egypt!

#1 Alexandria Library, Egypt We went to Alexandria for two days. This library was huge and very interesting to explore.The library is designed in such a way that the windows are angled so there is never direct sunlight shining through them, but there is still plenty of light. The outside of the building is supposed to symbolise a rising sun, with the planetarium (top picture, left) symboling the earth. The planetarium was closed when we were there.

#2 Austrian National Library, Vienna

This library charged people to go in so we didn't stay too long. We got as far as the part where you needed to have tickets and then left. We got in for a second though before we were asked for our tickets that we didn't have. I got a sneaky photo of it but it is out of focus so I didn't put it up here. The photo above though was before the main part of the library so we were allowed there. To see how great it is inside, have a look here - you will need quicktime installed to see this properly.

#3 Prague Library, Czech Republic.

We visited the Prague Library on our last day it Prague. It felt quite uninviting to me and was hard to find (which is why we didn't go till the last day). I liked the statues at the fountain though.

#4 Berlin Library, Germany

The library in Berlin was undergoing renovations, or some sort of work that required a big banner to be put up in front of it that shows what it would look like if it had a huge ad covering most of it. I really didn't see the point. But the interesting thing about this photo is the courtyard. This is where many many books were burned during the war. I can't remember if this is the Berlin Library, or a University library, or if it only used to be. But it definitely held a lot of books during the war. The library below may be the proper Berlin Library.

#5 Staatsbibliothek (State Library) Berlin, GermanyWe didn't spend too much time in this library. Had a quick look at the catalogue but couldn't understand much of it due to my not knowing any German.

#6 Small local library, Berlin, GermanyThis was our hostel located between a library and a record store, which you'd think would be great. But it was a terrible, terrible hostel. Great library though. I didn't get any photos inside. But they had board games! What a great idea!

#7. Amsterdam Library. This library is easily my favourite so far of my world tour of libraries. We spent a lot of time here as Liz was applying for a job in Scotland and was making use of the free internet quite a bit. You didn't have to sign up or book in to use the computers so that was handy. This library had more dvds than a dvd store, more cds than a cd store, and I think they had some books too! They also had so many computers that no one ever had to wait. More than I have seen in university libraries. They also had a nice little cafe with newspapers from all over the world, and any magazine you'd ever want to read (but the coffee was not that great).

#8. British Library, London.
Yes, it was a little windy on this day. This was a pretty awesome place to visit, inside they have original and handwritten writings from all sorts of people from history- Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, Captain Cook, old maps, and even some Beatles lyrics written on the back of coasters and plenty more interesting stuff to check out. To get into the proper part of the library you need to be a member, to be a member you need to be researching something.

#9 Salisbury Library, England.

This was a really nice little library. In fact it was a really nice little town in general. This library had RFID in action and it was the first time I'd seen it being used. Looked very interesting and I can't wait to see it happening back home. They also had other ideas that I liked. I stole a bunch of flyers from this library so I could steal/borrow some of their ideas.

#10. The Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Scotland

We were in only in Glasgow for a weekend so this library was closed. Looked nice though. Around the corner was this...

#11. Anderston Library, Glasgow, Scotland

This library was closed also. Didn't look as nice or as interesting as the Mitchell Library, just a door in the wall.

#12. Library inside random Highlands castle, Scotland.

We stayed in a haunted castle during our tour of the Highlands. There was a small library in the castle. Didn't find many good books there though, didn't find any ghosts either.

#13. National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.
We didn't go inside this library. We didn't have a lot of time in Edinburgh. Although, we did get a chance to see the place the first Harry Potter book was written and some of the places that inspired it. We also saw Dolly the sheep in the museum, and the Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle.

#14. Belfast Central Library, Northern Ireland.

We only popped into this library for a minute to check if they had free internet, which they didn't. But around the corner we found...
Library Street! Our hostel was on this street and down the end of this street was the...
Library Bar! The night we went to the library bar it was pretty much empty except for us. In fact most of Belfast seemed empty (and also closed) the whole time we were there. I thought the library bar would be full of rowdy librarians, but there was nothing! I hope their libraries aren't this quiet!

#15. Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland.

This library was basically one long room that looked amazing! I would have loved to get a photo but couldn't so I bought a postcard instead. It's the first postcard of ever bought without the intention of sending it. I just needed a picture of the inside of this library. Oh, and the Book of Kells was interesting as well. It was quite awe inspring seeing the work that went into books made so long ago. So much tiny detail used and so much care taken.

#16. National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

We didn't actually go inside here because we were on our way to see the bog men in the archaeological museum but I had to get a photo of me here anyway.

#17. The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland.The Chester Beatty Library houses an amazing collection of writing, books and art from all over the world. The work on display encompasses many different regions and religions. All of it is very old and very very interesting. Well worth a visit if you're ever in Dublin. Unfortunately photos were not permitted. It also has a very nice roof top garden with nice views of the surrounding area.

#18. End of the Road Library, Larmer Tree Gardens, England.

This small library was in the middle of the hidden away part of the music festival we went to. They had some good books here, and they somehow survived the rain on the first night.

#19. Liverpool Library.

The three pictures below are all from Liverpool, and are all the same building. Not sure if this library has 3 different names, or if it's 3 different libraries. It was all closed when we were there (a Sunday) so I guess I'll never know unless I go back.
#20. Xaghra Library, Gozo, Malta.
This library was only open about three days a week, in the mornings. I went back another day and checked it out. It was the most bland library I've ever seen. But it was great that this Village had a library at all. I wish I'd gotten a photo or two of the inside.

So that's all I've seen so far. Still have Africa to go though so I may see some more, but I'll be on a tour so I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to. I'd thought I'd finish with this last shot of me holding the hand of Demetrius Phalereus (350-280 B.C.) who was "The inspirer of the Foundation of the Ancient Library" - This photo was taken in the foyer of the Alexandria Library. I hope this blog wasn't too boring for you. I hope at least someone reads it.

Glenn 2.0

Scotland and Ireland

Hi all, it's been a while since I've written a group email so here's one that Liz has written recently. It covers our Scotland and Ireland trip. Hopefully I will find the time to write my own version with some other stories and info. Hopefully this will be enough for now.

Glenn

Hello everyone, I know it has been a long long time. I have been meaning to send out an update on my whereabouts for the last 3 months, but there was so much to tell I never found the time to tell it, so you can imagine how the cycle went.

So ignoring that we spent a few months in mainland europe staying in hostels, living out of our backpacks, abandoning our daily hygeine routines, the regular backpacker thing, we are now living and working in London, and have also done much travelling about the Isles.

Most recently we spent 1 week each in Scotland and Ireland. In Scotland we started out in Glasgow for two days and one night where we visited the cathedral, which was so huge it was like 5 cathedrals in 1. One of them was called Blacader's Aisle, but all the signs pointing to it said Blackadder's Aisle, so that was funny. That seems to be the only attraction we deliberately visited, as the other highlights of our short stay there were, in keeping with the style of our whole trip really, accidents that we stumbled across. For example, our hostel was a little way out of the city, and we had to hang around there for a few hours early in the morning before we could check in, so we wandered around what we later realised was the nice part of the river (in the city centre it was pretty ugly), and found an old flint mill ruin. Then later we went to the botanical gardens which were pretty standard except there was one section on carnivorous plants and all the ways they trap their prey, and actually it was quite amazing.

From Glasgow we went to Edinburgh where we left on a 5 day tour of the Highlands. We did alot of stuff everyday, so I won't give you a day by day account, but highlights included visiting Culloden battlefield, where the last Jacobite rebellion was annihilated by the British. The morning we went it was very cold, and the whole place was covered in mist, which kind of helped to set the mood for hearing all the stories and seeing all the grave stones. I got totally lost, but luckily Glenn was able to keep his sense of direction and we made it out of there okay. Another highlight was the little cruise we took on Loch Ness, where the captain of the boat showed us some interesting photos and was surprisingly convincing in his stories about creature sightings. The night after that we stayed in a castle which was hard to get good photos of because it was surrounded by forest. Glenn and I tried to follow one of the walking tracks, and this time I got both of us lost, but in the end we found a beautiful, still, isolated loch with fish jumping in it (well, a fish, the rest was just Glenn throwing rocks to trick me), and it was lovely. The castle was supposed to be haunted, but the ghosts were not very mischievous.

We also spent an entire day on the Isle of Skye, where we did everything from stick our faces in the River of Youth and Beauty to climbing one of the Bens (spectacular views were had). The morning we left Glenn and I attempted to visit the ruins of a castle where a Viking Princess (allegedly she used to flash sailors so they wouldn't complain about the tolls) used to live, but we were thwarted by high tide, rain, and slippery rocks.

Returning to Edinburgh, we soaked up some of the Fringe festival atmosphere without actually paying to see a show. We climbed what we thought was Arthur's seat until we got to the top and saw the much bigger real Arthur's seat, so we climbed that too and got some incredible 360 views of Edinburgh and surrounds. Our last night in Scotland we went to the castle to watch the Military Tattoo, which, when described with words is nowhere near as cool as it actually was. As we have grown accustomed to saying alot on our holiday - "Could not wipe the smile off my face". It was basically 2 hours of bagpipes, dancing and marching, with the odd explosion of fireworks, but there was also something in the air. The main legion of tourists there seemed to be from other parts of Scotland and the UK, so there was lots of deep, scottish love about.

We nearly weren't allowed on the ferry to Belfast, because there was something wrong with our tickets (which we still don't really understand). Still, we looked innocent enough so the girl let us on. We arrived in Belfast on a late Sunday afternoon and there was therefore nothing to do. Up until now apart from from the odd bit of rain and mist, Scotland had been quite sunny (we could actually see the summit of Ben Nevis which is only visible 50 days every year), once we hit Belfast the weather turned teary. We still managed a Black cab tour which took us round two of the Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods, and we saw murals, memorials and the "peace" wall which is the hugest fence I've ever seen, that separates the two areas. The gates used to be closed all the time, but now with the peace talks it's only closed at night.

That same day we took a boat ride around and saw all the places of interest to do with the Titanic and its sister ships. At night, faced again with the fact that everything was closed by 7pm, we sought out a few pubs. One had the most delicious pub food we had had in a while, as well as large statues of politicians. The other we had to be buzzed in by the barman, and inside we were met with a small room chocked full of Elvis memorabilia, and about 5 elderly patrons who got drunk and sang along to old rock and modern dance tunes alike. They spoke to us, but it was difficult to understand their drunken Irish accents. I think one of them asked if I was chinese!?!

We spent the next day getting rained on at the Antrim coast. We visited a rope bridge that fisherman used to use, but it is now tourist-ised so it is not scary or dangerous like it was advertised as being. The line was long but it meant we got to visit a small island for a while. We also visited the gift shop of a whiskey distillery before the main event which was the Giant's Causeway. We arrived there just in time for the rain.

The Causeway is an interesting geological feauture caused millions of years ago by cooling magma. The way that it cracked during the cooling looks like huge paving stones, and they descend in to the sea looking very cool. What is also interesting is that the only other place in the world where this has happened is on the coast of Scotland, so there is obviously a legend associated with it. The legend we were told in Scotland was that an Irish giant built it to go visit his Scottish girlfriend, whereas the Irish version says it was to fight another giant. Either way it was brilliant, and even though we got soaked through our raincoats it was fun and we even risked the longevity of my camera (but actually that got stolen just last weekend so it doesn't really matter anymore) by getting really great photos of it - photos are up on facebook (if you want to see them but are not a member ask me to email you the link), or you can wait until we get home to see it.

We left Northern Ireland the next day for Dublin. We had planned to visit the Western coast of Ireland first and see some of the places where my convict ancestors once lived, but public transport seemed determined to thwart us, so we headed into the Republic, where prices suddenly soared, but we were still glad that we went there anyway, as there was more than enough stuff to do there with our extra days.

We found lots to do in what I suspect is a very touristy but was still very charismatic area of town called Temple Bar. The pubs there were warm and cheery and they all had some form of live music playing every night. From Dublin we took a day out of town to visit Newgrange and Knowth, which are both huge Neolithic earthen monuments made out of stones and earth. Because of time, nature and continued occupation through later time periods, the mounds did not stay untouched for so long, but have been reconstructed. Newgrange is the more famous one, and seemingly more spectacular until the guide tells you that the stone pattern on the face of it is how the archaeologist "thought" it should look based on the amount of stone they found. Knowth was interesting and needed the least amount of reconstruction so was therefore the most authentic. Both mounds had tunnels built in to them to align with various solstices and equinoxes, similar to Stonehenge (which we did visit on the summer solstice, but that's another story). There was also a third monument nearby with a similar kind of thing, but they don't really know much about it because it is being "saved" for future archaeologists.

Back in Dublin, we tried our hand at getting lost once more before the end of our trip. We had bought tickets for the ferry from Dublin to Wales where we would get the train to London. Being as our tickets were virtually identical to our Belfast ones we were a bit worried, but our city map showed the ferry terminal as being quite close to our hostel so off we trundled to check our tickets in advance. 2 hours later we arrived, and the man did not even look at our tickets - just said, "they're fine". We forced him to look and he okayed them, then we found a bus to take us back to the city. It wasted an entire afternoon but the good news was that we now knew that the ferry was not a short walk away, and so the next morning we didn't try walking it with our backpacks on, but caught a cab instead.

We also visited Kilmainham Gaol, famous for its political prisoners, and has been in movies because it is a good example of the panoptican, 'we can see you but you can't see us' approach to correcting undesirable behaviour. It was very educational, and taught us a bit of Irish history but also put it into context because we got to see the cells, and the wall where people were executed. In the museum there they also had a section called "Last Words" which had letters and artefacts from some of the political prisoners that had been executed there. The handwriting of the letters was hard to read, but it was worth the effort to do. It added a lot to imagining what it would have been like in Dublin before the Republic.

I am sure we probably did other things too, but this email is already very long, so I will stop now and sign off. Congratulations if you made it this far in one go, please reward yourself by replying with your own indulgent account of how things have been going down your end. As much fun as it all is, and living in London is pretty neat, I miss home lots so would be good to know what's going on.

Cheers, Liz (and Glenn).

Below is a video of Liz at the Notting Hill carnival.