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Other / 02.09.2011

Now that I am immersed in scripting the DVDs, I have been busy contacting various curators at the Queensland Museum and their colleagues elsewhere, in order to identify the species we have been filming at night for the past 3 ½ years. Today an email arrived from Christopher Taylor in West Australia who had identified an amazing harvestman we first saw at the end of last year and which had only been described a year earlier. Chris pointed out that he was only familiar with lab specimens and that nothing was known about the species' natural history. So any observations we can provide could potentially be interesting.

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Other / 30.08.2011

Am gathering the necessary fire power for the RADF grant. Darryl Jones sent me a glowing letter of support which I got today.

 

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Other / 25.08.2011

Today I received the Statement of Significance from Simon Smith, who curates my published archive at the National Film & Sound Archive, on which we had worked together and which is central to my reapplying for a RADF grant. It appears to tick all the boxes, so fingers crossed.

 

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Other / 26.07.2011

For our 'Rainforest at Night' DVDs, Steve, with Hugh's help, filmed interviews with Jaap, Mark and me talking about our experience of night filming, our favourite creatures, highlights of our 53 night shoots, the value of our night filming. We were filmed in Jaap's back yard which borders rainforest, but which had a handy plug outdoors to power the lighting.

 

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Other / 09.07.2011

Maybe 3 weeks ago, Ray, a neighbour of mine, told me how a bird had snatched his lower denture off his balcony table and I told him that I had seen a lower denture in mulch in the park a couple of months before. I won’t go into why the denture was on the table, other than to say that the bird was after food. Today Ray knocked on my door, wanting to know exactly where I had seen the denture. Its replacement was causing him discomfort. We went into the park and were looking for the lost article, when Andrew, a friend of mine newly returned from a year-long overseas assignment, turned up unexpectedly at my place to say hello. Catching sight of Ray and me doing inexplicable things in the park, Andrew strolled over to make his presence known and find out what we were up to.  After introductions he joined in the search and within minutes succeeded in finding the denture, exactly where I had left it at the end of April. Ray could not have been more delighted.

 

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Other / 07.07.2011

I have been working away on the Night Life supplements and Steve has been assembling the preliminary shot selection on 3 DVDs. Tonight we managed to do another 2 videos for vimeo, bringing the total on my vimeo page to 75. For technical reasons, not all my elegible vimeo videos have been harvested by EOL. For the past 2 months I have not done much filming. Things quieten down in winter, though, for the first time in a few years, we are enjoying day after day of sunshine and clear blue skies, typical winter weather for these parts. I love this weather and have really missed it. We are planning for Steve to film interviews with Jaap, Mark and me for the supplements at the end of July.

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Other / 14.06.2011

Steve and I have been working on Supplements 4 to 6 of the archive. They will all be devoted to the rainforest at night. Like Supplements 1 to 3 they will each be about an hour long. This means we have had to  suspend work on videos for EOL. Our night filming season ended on shoot 53 on May 10. Miraculously, given that I am unable to film in the rain, the continual wet weather hardly interrupted our weekly schedule. I have nearly 10 ½ hours of night footage and have finished part of the initial shot selection. Days of watching footage, logging shots and putting them into my lap top converted to Steve assembling them on his hard drive in 2 hours this evening.

 

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Other / 09.05.2011

I was unsuccessful in my grant application. Apparently applications for funding contributions to collections seem to require a Statement of Significance, but this was not made clear to us. I must say I was rather annoyed because we included a letter of support from the State Library of Queensland confirming their desire to include the videos in their heritage collections. The RADF letter appeared to indicate that provided the Statement of Significance passed muster we would be awarded a grant. The deadline for the next round is in September.

 

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Other / 15.03.2011

Steve and I completed another 4 videos from the list of old Standard Definition footage for EOL via vimeo, bringing the total to 54, of which 27 have been uploaded since EOL started harvesting from vimeo. We also made all the older videos devoted to a single species, EOL harvestable.

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Other / 17.02.2011

The grant application was submitted today. We will be informed about the outcome in May.