Monthly Archives: July 2017

Property

My Foolproof Home Buying Plan

home buyersSo, it looks like I’m going to break the millennial trend. I’ve been skimping and saving, working two jobs and avoiding both avocado toast AND overpriced lattes. In fact, I see my fellow millennials joyfully opening their wallets and emptying their savings onto both avocado toast AND overpriced lattes. Their joy quickly turns to ashen despair as they realise all that money could SO EASILY have gone towards a home. They are a foolish mass, and I disown them.

One day they’ll all realise, and they’ll come begging at my door for advice. My beautiful, oaken door with a big brass knocker and stained glass at the top. That’s the plan, anyway, and I’m so close to making it a reality. I think I need to seek out a buyers advocate. Melbourne has experienced spikes in housing prices in the last few years, and while purchasing any old regular home- provided you abstained from avocado toast and overpriced lattes- is a thing of pathetic ease, I’m setting my sights higher. My home will have two floors at least, with the aforementioned oaken door and both a front AND back garden that are a proper size for picnics. A pergola with bluestone tiles is a necessity. Exposed aggregate for the driveway, and I want a kooky little third floor that comprises of one room plus en suite. That’ll be the guest room- or at least, one of them- and it’ll add a certain artistic slant to the house with how it rises up above the rest of the property.

Obviously I’ve planned this meticulously. After all this time spent walking past cafes, thinking wistfully of how good it would be to be in there with my frivolous friends chowing down on avocado toast…I deserve this. How many times have I wanted a sip of an overpriced latte, only to force my wallet back into my bag and wrest myself away from the delicious coffee smell.

I’ll have my Melbourne property advocate. They’ll find me something wonderful. And when it’s all done and my house is secure, I’ll eat all the avocado toast I want, ha-ha!

trees

Film Studies and Tree Trimming

tree trimmingEver since I started doing a film studies course, I’ve developed a number of bad habits. I can’t watch a scene without picking apart the composite parts, I criticise every tiny little thing and I cannot stand wasted screen-time. Seriously, you start seeing padding like you’ve never seen it before, and it drives you mad.

On the flip side, I’ve been looking back at a lot of movies I loved when I was younger, and I now realise why I loved them, even if it flew over my head. Just take the Slumber-Works classic, Prunes of Egypt. It’s the underappreciated classic about a man who learns to talk to trees and goes on a divine-appointed mission to prune every tree in his native land. I hear they got genuine Melbourne arborists to not only advise on the correct methods of tree removal, but also to perform some of the motion capture. Didn’t know that was a method for 2-D animation, but hey, there you go. I’m learning a lot from the experience.

I’m actually noticing a lot of 3D work mixed in with traditional animation, even in movies way back in the 80s. They had to keep it subtle back then, but it’s there. Like in Prunes of Egypt, in the big dramatic tree pruning montage they have these wide, sweeping shots of the scenery. You wouldn’t notice unless you freeze-frame, but it’s all CG. Just…really 2D-looking 3D. That’s a real thing, I guess.

I think the key to good animation is realistic movement, which you can usually only do with a bigger budget than your average cartoon. You know, nailing all those tiny human movements that we wouldn’t think add in, but make everything more natural. And I’ve SEEN tree trimming here in Armadale. I can tell they nailed it.

-Harry

Health

Inspiration at the Midnight Screening

dry needling coursesIt’s not every day that I make a booking to see a midnight showing. Actually, if it WAS every day then it’d be a terrible decision, because I’d put my circadian rhythm clock thing out of whack. So no, just an occasional thing.

I don’t consider myself a movie buff, but I can appreciate a good bit of cinema. The flavour of the month is Chill: A Monk’s Story, which is all about this fictional monk who brings his people’s great relaxation techniques to the outside world and his fish-out-of-water story trying to build a business empire when he’s never actually purchased anything in his life. Brilliant stuff, and it’s probably going to win a load of academy awards. It’s also pretty good for people who run dry needling courses, because there’s a compelling B-plot where the main character (Ocelot Moon) tries his hand at business for the first time and teaches a class the ancient art of dry needling. It’s one of those scenes that marks a true turning point in his character, as despite not speaking a lot of English and being nervous in front of a crowd, he finally applies his relaxation techniques to himself and gives a flawless display of dry needling prowess that leaves everyone spellbound.

I think a lot of it is in the camera techniques. There’s an uninterrupted shot of needling that goes for something like three minutes, juxtaposed with a quick series of flashes showing Ocelot Moon’s nimble fingers, showing that dry needling takes the skills of both patience and dexterity. Pretty sure that’s going to be one of those ‘Top X Greatest Moments in Cinema’ scenes in years to come.

Looking forward to seeing what more people think, but it gets two thumbs up from me. Almost made me want to look up a dry needling course in New Zealand…if I didn’t have one of the worst cases of butter-fingers known to man.

-Tyson