team tyrie

28. Tri-ing again

If you scroll down this blog to around this time last year you'll see, perhaps to some surprise, that I took part in a triathlon. Yes, a whole year has passed since I did that crazy thing and, guess what, I've gone and done it again! But this time, no chickening out and only doing half of it. It was all or nothing this year. I didn't train quite as hard as I imagined I would. In fact, although I knew I could complete each section as a stand-alone activity, I'd never actually joined any of the three together before. So I surprised myself by finishing, and in pretty good time.

My friends Joanne and Aline formed a relay team and took part too - their first ever triathlon. They're obviously now addicted and will be doing the whole thing next year too!

I did the swim in 20:18 (not bad for breaststoke!); my cycle took me longer than last year (not enough spinning in preparation!) at 01:04:05; but I was particularly pleased with my run time of 33:55. The whole thing took me just over 2 hours - 02:03:23 - and I ranked about half way down the 691 participants.

Here are some photos as proof of our success. (Note the bright red face in the last shot - some things don't change!)

Looking nervous at 5am

Soggy, but still smiling

Post-swim transition

Woo-hoo!

Running is serious business

Three cheers for the triathletes!

27. Grand Canyon Hike Movie

Quick note - Martin shot a bunch of footage of our GC hike back in March. Here's his little film....

26. I Am Legend Trailer

Our first trailer for IAL went online today, very exciting stuff.

You can view it here http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/iamlegend/

I animated the deer you see running off between the parked cars...

It will play this weekend in the US before "Oceans 13".

25. Nick & Gabriella's wedding

Some friends of ours tied the knot this weekend and we were there to witness the joyous event! And, almost as exciting, Emily made an entry into the professional floristry world by making her very first bridal bouquet, a bouquet for the bridesmaid and a full set of buttonholes (or boutonnieres as they say over here!).

Here are some pictures:

The beautiful Gabriella - with a rather nice bouquet ;-)

What a smashing couple!

Nick and his best man, er... Nick (oooh, what a lovely boutonniere!)

Yummy yum

24. Modest Mouse Video Contest

Over the last couple of weeks Jonah, Tiff and Em and I have been crazy busy making the following music video.

Epic records, in conjunction with Apple, have run a competition to make a video for the new "Modest Mouse" single titled "Missed the Boat".

Using green screen footage provided by the band we cut a simple music video. We then degraded the images and printed out each frame sequentially (all 4133 of them). We then nailed each "shot" of 50-100 posters to various structures and posts. Then using a digital SLR camera with a long exposure we frame by frame shot each poster. Oh, and there's a little video projection (again, frame by frame on the SLR) just to mix it up. There is no compositing, no shortcuts: just lots of blood, sweat and tears, and a huge Kinko's bill!

The video can be viewed on the Apple website below -

http://edcommunity.apple.com/epic/item.php?itemID=64

NOTE: their site (Apple's!!!) doesn't seem to be too stable and we've had a problem viewing the vids. We know you CAN view them in Safari or Internet Explorer (you click on the thumbnail and WAIT - be patient it WILL appear) but it doesn't work in Firefox... Also apparently you can vote on the video which will help it to win - but I can't for the life of me see where you vote??

The easiest way to see it is through YouTube (which has nothing to do with the contest). Anyway, check it out and let us know what you think...

We've had some really good feedback, and we got featured on woostercollective.com
(look for the May 24th post). So I was very excited about that. We're right above a feature about Banksy! As of today we've had nearly 8,500 hits on the YouTube page, which is pretty good considering it's only been on there for 4 days!

As I said, it's a competition, so if we win our video is the official video and gets shown on MTV and the like - we also win a new computer and a couple of goodies. We have no idea when they will announce the winner, we're just waiting about with our fingers crossed.

Hope you like it!

Labels: apple, boat, Contest, missed, Modest, Mouse, Video

23. Max's New Film.

Okay, not "my" new film, but the film I'm working on is an adaptation of Richard Matheson's novella, "I am Legend". (or "I'm a leg-end" as we have affectionately dubbed it)

It tells the tale of Robert Neville, the last man left alive after a virus turns the rest of mankind into blood thirsty sun-fearing vampire zomibie monsters!

Sounds like old hat now, but its worth pointing out that Mathesons novel was written way back in 1954, which means it pretty much defined the zombie genre.

Its a great show to be on, loads of zombies to animate. Also, the novel is one of my favourite books of all time, I thoroughly recommend it, it's only 160 pages or so, a real quick read. Obviously the script is a bit different to the book, and initially Will Smith seems an odd choice as the lead, but I'm willing to give him a chance, I just hope it doesnt turn into "I, Robot" with zombies.

Heres the cover of an old copy of the book, gotta love that artwork.

Current release date for the film is 14th December '07...yikes, better get some work done!

22. Aloha from Hawaii

Max surprised me last Wednesday night by announcing (with the aide of a doctored fortune cookie) that we were going to Hawaii early the next day! It was the last of my birthday presents, a complete surprise and a real treat. Max had booked the flights and our wonderful friend Margie had given us the keys to her beach house and truck on the Big Island.

We did some hiking, lazed a little on various world-renowned beaches, snorkelled with masses of turtles and saw a humpback whale every time we looked at the ocean. Max made us eat spam and eggs - the Hawaiian 'delicacy' - every morning for breakfast.

We didn't take as many photos as we should have, but here's a few to give you a taste of what we got up to.