brief overdue update

So.

I am in Dunedin until the end of February, working for Natural History New Zealand, editing a show for Animal Planet called Dark Days in Monkey City. It will be going to air in the States from January 5th, though you won't see my name on the first few episodes - the production has been going a long time before I got on it.

My role on the production, at least for the moment, is fine cutting, visual effects editing, addressing network notes, preparing for the online, that kind of thing. As somebody who's used to sitting on the "sift through 100 tapes looking for a story" side of the equation, it's a different set of muscles, but I'm enjoying it a lot. Also, I'm very excited that this will be, to the best of my knowledge, the first program that I've worked on to air in the US.

I'm living in a beach apartment 10 minutes from town in what is either Anderson's Bay, Ocean Grove, Tomahawk, or just part of Dunedin. (It's closest to Tomahawk Beach, but there's nothing called Tomahawk on most maps, even though people refer to it in passing; the mailing address says Anderson's Bay, but when I drive towards it, I take the road towards Ocean Grove, not the one to Anderson's Bay. I'm sure you couldn't possibly care, but anyway.) A little 2-bedroom apt to myself, and any visitors who may decide to drop by between now and end of February (minus the two weeks over Xmas where I'll be back around Auckland, plus stray weekends here and there).

I'm also using this time to work on writing a feature script - making some good progress so far. I hope to have a first draft complete by the end of my time here with an eye to production (and post-production) in 2009. Hopefully the numerous interesting and lovely people that I'm meeting and Scotch bars that I'm discovering, along with intermittent explorations of the South Island, shall not prove to large of an impediment.

At the end of it, I'll be driving back to Auckland with the car I bought (as I didn't own one in Auckland; even longer more boring story than the whole Anderson's Bay/Tomahawk thing), and filling in some gaps in my South Island explorations (goals: climbing Franz Josef or Fox Glacier, kayaking in Abel Tasman, exploring Marlborough Sound).

After that? No idea, though a couple production companies have been scraping on the door - will depend on what the pace for production for the feature looks like, whether one or more of the international trips I'm plotting are possible (which in turn is contingent on whether the Kiwi dollar returns to its prior strength or continues to outstrip the peso; Americans, best time to visit in a long time, other than that bit where the crash in the economy destroyed all your savings), and the usual unknown unknowns. Regardless of all of those things, will be stationed back in Auckland for a while, I'm sure.

Well, as sure I can be of anything.