2011 Summary (Part One)

And what a bloody busy year it has been at LateNite HQ! As the year comes to a close, we here at LateNite feel like it’s important to reflect on an incredibly tough but ultimately rewarding 2011. To complement our stories of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (hardly) I have decided to throw in some of the great films that were released over the last 12 months. All of which have my personal seal of approval – which is all you need really!

January

The beginning of the year was a fight indeed with the LateNite team having to start the year by “fighting” for some funds to get them over to Miami to watch their multi award winning film, Fallout compete in the Miami International Film Festival for a spot at Cannes. Nick took charge of the art-show campaign with the very talented Thom Holt looking after the band night. Meanwhile, Chris was left to continue post production for our first feature film Hannah and the Hasbian.

The ever hard working Hocking actually took away all the Hannah footage that we shot over 3 days in December and began transcoding the RED footage whilst he was away on holidays! If that’s not commitment I don’t know what is.

The craziness of the new year swept all the way through January with press releases for Miami, Jacqui and Paula having a mad “tweet off” at the Virgin Mobile - Rolling Stone Awards and (possibly the biggest announcement of all) our very good friend Liam McIntyre working his little ass off to land the lead in the hugely popular Starz drama series Spartacus. The beautiful man currently has his face plastered all over Times Square.

The prep was in full swing too for our Feb March to Miami party with bands being booked, art being collected, venues being locked down and booze being sourced for a typical LateNite blow out - we really do go too far sometimes…

February

We did all but cut our own arm off to get this warehouse screening/party off the ground and boy did it go off like a frog in a sock. A big thank you must go out to all the bands that played, the talented artists that donated their amazing art work to be sold and of course all the people whose hard work made these two events what they were. It was very humbling to know that there are people out there who were willing to take a punt on us and who truly believe in what we’re doing. The venue was jam packed both nights, the bar was fully stocked with all kinds of wonderful drinks (although the home brew didn’t quite make it after a minor explosive accident), the slightly-too-big-for-the-venue PA was pumping with some incredible local bands, DJs and comedians – it truly was a EPIC and amazing weekend, with plenty of sore heads on Sunday morning!

Enough money was made to get Chris, myself and Thom to Miami for the screening so we were absolutely stoked and had so much fun putting it all together. Definitely one for the memory bank.

But of course not everything was fun and games with our very own Jacqui Hocking also working hard to orchestrate her own screening with the Australian Premiere of her very successful doco Spinning Dreams. A massive thank you to everyone at Open Channel for allowing us to use Shed4 for the screening. With over 200 attendees, and thousands of dollars raised for Timor Aid, we couldn’t be happier.

Jacqui had a very busy month as not only did she have her screening to organise, she went to East Timor to film footage for the World Vision 48 Hour Famine campaign, filmed at the Sustainable Living Festival, started working with the incredibly talented team at Inspire9, attended the Australian International Documentary Conference, was a guest at the Audi German Film Festival, helped out on the warehouse party AND had an exhibition set up at Federation Square during the weekend of the Tropfest screening in Melbourne. As with everything that Jacqui does, all went off incredibly successfully and the world had its first glimpse of the Spinning Dreams series.

But of course it’s not only our shenanigans that we like to keep track of and plug. We love a good community and there is no better company that we love working with than Inspiration Studios who used the month of February to launch their very own unique web series Sensible Digital Cinema.

March

The trailer above is for an incredibly powerful film that the LateNite boys managed to catch at the Miami International Film Festival. Not only did they get to see this amazing film (it won the Best Foreign Film Academy Award) but they were lucky enough to sit in on a Q & A with the Director Susanne Bier.

There were movies a plenty during our time at the festival so for a more thorough look at what we saw and what we thought you can check out our previous blog posts here.

Anyway it was an incredible month away for us but one which was too EPIC to put into a short month long blog summary so instead I’m gonna give you some dot points:

  • Our filmed screening as part of the International Competition for the 48 Hr Film Fest. Unfortunately our screening (as well as the Sydney teams) was riddled with technical issues so needless to say we weren’t the happiest filmmakers in the cinema.
  • The boys spent their days at the movies and their nights networking. Met some inspirational filmmakers from all around the world including a Mexican indie filmmaker who made his film on 10,000 with only himself and his actor in the back of a truck. Amazing Stuff.
  • The winning film from the 48 Hr was SHIT HOT and starred the ever amazing Martin Freeman (trailer below). The filmmakers were a great bunch of blokes to boot which made us happy.
  • Nick & Thom discovered a Cuban way of drinking Corona’s. Roll the top of the bottle in salt and drop in a touch of tabasco - Massive Win.
  • Seeing Chris’ little face at Disneyland - he’ll always be a kid at heart!
  • And of course, there was the day trip to incredible 6 Flags with our good friends Damien Csehi and Jared Daperis!

The winner of the International 48 Hr Film Festival:

After such an epic month we thought we might get some downtime over April until…

April

…we found out our feature Hannah and the Hasbian had been accepted into a massive Film Fest in San Francisco called Frameline for it’s big World Premiere.

Unfortunately for us the copy submitted in was an incredibly rough cut of the movie so now it was up to Post Master Hocking to get the film rollicking along so that it was ready for its June screening. Chris and Jacqui locked themselves away with Director Gordon Napier to really push out the film and make it the best it could be with the little money and time we had available to us.

We were lucky enough to have the support of The Butchery, the sleepless and unstoppable Eugene Richards at The Refinery, the incredible and beautiful Nidhi Chanani, Justin Viney, all our bands and of course the always amazing Craig Jansson at The Magic Sound Company – who personally went above and beyond what I ever thought was humanely possible.

April wasn’t all fun and games though as we were all very sad to hear of the passing of John Bowring ACS, the founder of LEMAC. John did a hell of a lot for the Australian film industry and his passing was a sad day for film in Australia.

May

What better way to kick off our May summary than with a solid Australian film from 2011. Snowtown was as brutal as it was tense, obviously not a film for the light hearted, it was really made for me by the solid, often frightening performances of its lead actors Daniel Henshall and Lucas Pittaway.

Anyway it was another crazy busy month with lots of exciting announcements and more projects in the pipeline. Our first few announcements were that we were moving into our shiny new office at the much lauded 16th St Acting Studio, a place which has been our home ever since. And also that a film that we supported and were quite heavily involved with called There’s A Hippopotamus on the Roof Eating Cake by Jamie Snyder and Joel Sharpe was to screen at the very prestigious St Kilda Film Festival during May. Very exciting stuff.

Jacqui was busy preparing for the next month, whilst at the same time filming events such as the Mindful Conference.

We continued to push through with post on Hannah, spending more and more time with Craig and Eugene - trying to get the sound and grade locked down before the end of May. It was go go go for most of the month but we pulled through with shining colours. Despite Craig’s unfortunate altercation with a roof, Hannah was in the mail and off to San Francisco…

June

Another month another couple of international festivals to be had.

Not only did Nick, Director Gordon Napier and the Hannah cast head over to San Francisco for the World Premiere of our feature film Hannah and the Hasbian. But our good friends over at Pocket Bonfire Productions, Joel Sharpe and Jamie Snyder, made the long trip to Edinburgh to see their film There’s a A Hippopotamous on the Roof Eating Cake in the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

For us though the month was all about Hannah.

The Frameline Film Festival was an incredibly successful trip with the film playing to a near sold out audience at the famous Roxy Theatre in San Francisco. We got great reviews and some very interested distributers to boot so we were all smiles.

By all accounts the Hannah team had the time of their lives and with the excitement and buzz behind the film, were all ready to send it off around the world.

Although, while Chris & Nick were busy with Hannah & The Hasbian – Jacqui was off to Cambodia with the amazing Michael Lutman for the second instalment of Spinning Dreams.

So that was the first 6 months – you’ll have to wait till after Christmas to hear about the second 6 before we launch into a New Year. But what the hey, we may as well give you a little treat while you wait over the next few days.

So here my friends is LateNite Films Music Video for Melbourne based band July Days