One minute it’s Christmas, then zap! Next minute, January is nearly over. How times flies! Hello everyone, and welcome to our very first entry for the new year – even if it is slightly late. I hope you all have a fantastic holiday break, and a terrific New Years Eve! And, if you’re in Australia – I hope you’re enjoying the ridiculously hot weather! Although we personally do love the sun and the beach – when you’ve got a week with temperatures on and above 40 degrees Celsius, things start to get a little bit scary, as the Sakooz headquarters is in the middle of the Dandenong Ranges (i.e. a forest). But as terrifying as it is, it also forces you to think about something very important – backups. What would you do if the worst happens, and your studio burns down? Do you have your camera originals off-site? Do you have backups of all your past and current projects? How quickly can you “recover” from a disaster? There are also scary, but terribly important questions we’ve been asking ourselves over the past couple of weeks. Although it’s probably not the most ideal way of handling things, we currently have a box which we call “the mobile vault”. The vault contains all our original camera tapes (MiniDV, DVCPro50, DVCProHD, etc.), DVD backups of Final Cut Project Files, printed copies of EDLs, Hard Drive’s containing project backups, an equipment inventory, copies of important documents (i.e. CVs), etc. The vault is always kept as the safest possible location – normally the grandparents, as they’re generally always home. In a perfect world, it would be great to have LTO tapes containing all this material instead of cheap hard drives and DVDs, and also to have multiple vaults, just to be extra safe. But unfortunately all these things cost money, and at the end of the day, as long as we don’t loose any “current projects” (i.e. project we’re currently working on), life will go on. Although it’s great to have the original project files of past projects – the chances of going back to them are fairly slim. So anyway… just something to keep in mind. If you are in a bush fire area, make sure you have a good strategy in place in case disaster attacks.

On a happier note – 2009 is already looking very exciting! We have been working around the clock on the Sakooz website, and everything seems to be falling into place. If all goes to plan, we should be able to go live some time in February. In other Sakooz news, we are still negotiating away with various high-profile people in regards to getting someone on board to write the feature film script. We also have a lot of other projects in the pipeline for this year, as well as a few more unique projects. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be fixing up the website a bit, putting more energy into our Facebook presence, and also jumping fully on board the twitter bandwagon. This year is set to be the year of “new media” – so we are definitely keeping our ear to the ground, and eyes to the sky on the lookout for new treads, technology and, well, basically just cool stuff. We’ll continue to improve upon Melbourne Rebels, and also try and come up with other ways to help Melbourne-based film-makers get their ideas off the ground. This year is all about innovation and experimentation for us. We’ll be trying and testing new things, developing as much new content as we possibly can – and maybe even consider jumping into the wonderful world of professional podcasts.

So, as always, exciting times certainly lay ahead – as we have very big plans for this year. Keep an eye out on this blog, keeping visiting our website and Facebook Group, follow our twitter, and keep in touch! If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or ideas, please, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us – especially when it’s about projects such as Melbourne Rebels. We love your input!

Until next time…

Chris!