Weta: "Formal Friday"

If you work in our industry then you know what our standard dress code is like, but if you don't work in our industry, the standard dress code for the Digital VFX/Computer Animation industry is "none" whatsoever! :) It's pretty much wear what you wanna wear to work. I've seen everything from flip flops and board shorts, to tear away/warm up pants, to jeans and khakis. But the last thing anyone will wear to work is proper business attire...no suits, no ties, maybe a dress shirt but it won't be buttoned up or tucked in. I've rolled into the office wearing a golf shirt and golf slacks before and people asked where I was going "so dressed up"...haha. Ummm..."who's dressed up? I'm going golfing in the afternoon?"

So yes, here at Weta we have a tradition called "Formal Fridays". Apparently it USED to be every Friday, but now it's slacked off to only once in a while. An excuse for us to "dress up". Any of you who work in the Banking or Finance/Accounting industry are probably laughing at me right now, cause you probably pay money to be able to wear jeans on "Casual Fridays" :P

So here at Weta Formal Fridays means an excuse to pile into the photo studio to act like school kids at photo time. That's one of the benefits of our building, is that WE have the photo studio. The other buildings have to make do with taking their Formal Friday photos in the office or outside on the lawn...although Wexford did a great job this year getting everyone onto the grass hill for some great shots. Props to them for that. Anyways, here are just a couple from our department, and a few others of some friends in the building. There's way too many photos to post here. Oh, and not everyone bothers to get dressed up. This was my first time. I thought it'd be fun to participate cause Kristie wanted more numbers from our department this time around...so I went half and half.

I guess this would be my "Frat Boy" or "Movie Director" look...wear a jacket and tie, but still wear a baseball hat because I want to :)

Malcolm "Chocolossus" Thomas-Gustave.

Dana and Malcolm...and yes, Dana is my boss :)

Clowns :)

Jogle...aka James Ogle.

Super Ogle?

And some of the peeps from downstairs...I just like this one cause of Matt's look on his face (sticking his head in frame).

Below are some of the fun pics from Wexford...I'm not sure who took the photos though.

Weta: Wexford Office

Apparently someone at work is putting together an online monthly newsletter at Weta, and I guess they wanted to feature the different office locations. So they asked one photographer in each of the Weta buildings to photograph the exterior of their building, and the front reception area and receptionist. However, they asked myself and James without realizing we both work at "The Recordpress". I think they missed someone from "Wexford" or maybe they thought one of us worked there...so I volunteered to take the long journey over the hill to the Wexford office...it takes me longer to walk to my car and get in it than it does to actually drive to Wexford...but Recordpress and Wexford are on opposite sides of a hill, and I wasn't about to walk over the hill with my camera gear...plus it was "Formal Friday" at work and I was wearing dress shoes and didn't want to get all sweaty...what a baby! haha :) ...more on Formal Friday later...

So this is Jasmine Wong...no relation...I think? Although her family is from Hong Kong/Southern China, so probably 'family' from back in the day. She's the Receptionist at Wexford, this was the first time meeting her. She's got a younger brother who works as a "Runner" at the Manuka office. I've never met him. Oddly enough when people find out she has a brother that works at Weta, they think it's me...haha.

Someone was supposed to let the Receptionists know that someone would be stopping by to photograph them at some point this week or next, but I think Jasmine found out about 5 minutes before I called her to make sure she'd be around when I went over. She knew I was coming, but had no idea why I was taking her photo. A natural ham for the camera though meant I got a few humorous photos of her and Chris, the Runner for Wexford.

The "Official" photo.

The "Attitude" photo.

The "Angry" photo. I love Chris' expression..haha :) I don't think they'll be using this one.

The "Venting My Frustration" photo.

And one more "Official" photo just in case.

...and a couple of panoramics of Wexford from the front lawn. You'll notice that they are perched atop a hill, overlooking Evans Bay (North) which essentially attaches to Wellington Harbour. On the far left of the last photo you'll see the Northern end of the Wellington Airport runway. Yes, now you know just how close we are to the airport. If you were to drive East down the other side of the hill, that's where Recordpress is located.

"First Light" by Simon Brown

This weekend my colleague Simon Brown filmed his movie "First Light". A short film with no dialogue, featuring 3 local Actors (Renee Cataldo, Phil Peleton, and James Butters). James (Ogle) and I volunteered to be the "on set Stills Photographers" for Simon. Originally I was to do Saturday's shoot, and James would do Sunday, but luckily for me they let me double team Sunday with James as well. I've always wanted to hang around on set to see what happens behind the scenes of shooting a movie, and after listening to my friend Matt Mueller's comments about his job (he's one of the Photographers that works in the Camera Department, he's usually on set shooting stills for lighting reference but he also doubled as the Stills Photographer on The Lovely Bones film shoot), I figured this would be a totally fun opportunity, and it was!

My alarm clock went off at 4am Saturday morning, no, not by mistake. It felt like I almost pulled a muscle in my neck cause the alarm scared the crap out of me. My master plan of going to bed 'early' the night before was foiled, by me fooling around with some other photos I had just taken that day for Jess until around 1:30am. Anyways, it was pitch black, cold, and to make things more interesting it was also raining! First call on set was for 6am, but I had to get to Simon's house by 5:15am where the Actors were getting their makeup done.

On set at Princess Bay, about 5 minutes from my apartment, the rain had let up thankfully and the light was just starting to emerge. We started shooting the first scenes until the weather turned really bad around 9:30am. In less than 2 mintues it went from being OK to being a storm. So we all packed it in and went home. It didn't last too long however, so we all met up at 1pm to shoot scenes at the second location until around 6pm, and then moved back to Simon's house to shoot the one evening scene until about 9pm. At that point we all went home after a long days work. I uploaded my pics to my laptop and TRIED to go through a few of them...I was soooo tired I found myself falling asleep at my computer with my hand on the mouse, so I shut it down and went to bed...10pm, woohoo!

Up on Sunday at a leisurely 7am. First call was 7:30am, but since it was James' day I knew I could sleep in a little. We returned to Princess Bay to finish all the shots that got rained out on Saturday, and when I showed up at 8am, they had just finished setting up "unit" (the on set area that has all the food, etc.). No bad weather on Sunday, and by lunch the sun had actually come out and it was relatively nice out. So James and I double teamed shooting from opposite angles, and taking turns holding reflector cards on the Actors while filming. The day finished up around 6pm with the last shot filmed just minutes after losing available light (from the sun).

Overall a super fun weekend for me. Hey, someone wants me to run around all day shooting photos on set...sign me up! Now I know why Matt likes his job so much :) The only black spot on my weekend...somehow managing to lose 250 photos, and to make things worse they were the ones I most wanted to see! ...%@*&!! Candid shots of the Actors running back and forth along the beach in between takes, and a few still portraits of them under a tree. I think when I was dumping my cards onto my harddrive at lunch, somehow it didn't copy the entire card over. It said "Copy Completed", but I've now learned my lesson the hard way and will verify the contents BEFORE wiping my card clean...ugh. Well...I still came away with a few shots that I liked, so it wasn't a total loss.

And so ends the first day of filming...on to the next day!

This is me goofing around in between takes.