Ringer Celebriel talked with Bruce Hopkins at Dragon*Con about his new projects. In February 2005 Bruce formed indiPact Films, an independent film production company based in Auckland, with partner Amarbir Singh. They aim to produce films with private investment and help further expand the country’s film making base. Their plans also include TV series, commercials, and music videos. Mr. Singh comes from Bombay, India but has lived in New Zealand for eight years.
Their first film, “1 nite,” was released on DVD in New Zealand in late July. It was made in 2003 and first shown at the International Film Festival in Auckland in July 2004. At the 2005 New Zealand screen awards the film won the award for Images and Technical Contribution to a Digital Feature (Cristobal Araus Lobos, cinematographer) and was a finalist for the Sony Best Digital Feature award.
“1 nite” is an 80 minute film that tells four stories, all taking place in and around Karangahape Road (“K’Road”) in Auckland in the course of one night. (K’Road is lively, ethnically diverse area with lots of clubs and restaurants.) The film was produced, Bruce explains, with a budget of $400, a crew of two using a hand-held Canon XL1 digital camera, and some willing actors. The cast worked without a formal script and relied on improvisation based on suggestions given by the director and close interaction among the actors. Bruce commented that he’s very comfortable working this way, as he has a good deal of experience in TheatreSports.
IndiPact hopes to reach several target markets for “1 nite,” Bruce explained. His fans and fans of Lord of the Rings are one obvious segment, but they also want to reach film schools and film libraries around the world, given the film’s innovative filmmaking production and storytelling techniques. A third segment is the Indian independent film market, given Amarbir’s Indian background and the large Indian film market.
IndiPact is working to raise $1.5 million to complete their second film, currently titled “P120,” made in a fusion of film and digital. Like “1 nite,” it will be filmed in and around Auckland. This second film traces the story of a character that embarks on a journey to fulfill what he sees as the potential in his life. At his Sunday panel with John Noble, Bruce screened both the trailer for “1 nite” and the teaser for “P120,” giving Ringers a good introduction to indiPact’s work.
Find out more about indiPact Films at indipact.com. You can order the 1 nite DVD, which includes bonus features, online through the website in formats for ALL regions. The price is NZ$29.95, and Bruce and Amarbir will sign it for you if you want!
Bruce is also hosting a New Zealand call-in radio program called “The Dawn Parade” that airs from midnight Saturday to 6 AM Sunday. The show is on a new network called RadioLive and, best of all for Bruce’s worldwide fans, it’s available on the web at radiolive.co.nz. Listeners discuss a different topic each week. Another program feature is called Chance of a Lifetime, in which listeners call in to sing or play music, sharing their talents with the community. One blind singer who phones in regularly so impressed Bruce that he put him in touch with a major New Zealand sports team, with the idea of singing the national anthem at games. Ian Brodie, author of The Lord of the Rings location guide, was also a recent visitor.
As many Ringers know, Bruce is very generous with his time and makes himself available to fans at various gatherings. He explains, “My experience in the films was so wonderful, I don’t mind reflecting on it.” Be sure to also visit Bruce’s official website at bruce-hopkins.com for all the latest news on his work and appearances.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – For most actors, having two of their films opening within a week of each other could spell career suicide, but for
Elijah Wood, who played Frodo in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, it is a stroke of good fortune. The roles he plays in “Green St. Hooligans” and “Everything is Illuminated” are vastly different, and Wood, 24, wants his fans to see him as something other than forthright ring-bearing, pointy-ear, fat-footed Hobbit Frodo. [More]
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TORN Regular Roheryn sends along more scans from the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. This time looking at Orlando Bloom’s latest film ‘Elizabethtown’. Take a look! [More]
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TORN Regular Roheryn sends along these scans of Viggo Mortensen in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. Take a look! [More]
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Emma writes: My apologies for the delayed report – going Edinburgh straight to Toronto, home for a week, then Hooligans premiere (I’m throwing a line party) followed the next day by leaving for Toronto Film Festival – I’m a bit strapped for time! I arrived in time to see the second showing of Billy Boyd’s “On a Clear Day” with a few other fellow travelers who were there early (others came in later that night or the next day). After the movie, we were lucky enough to be able to still get tickets to a talk with the writer, Alex Rose. [More]
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Emma writes: My apologies for the delayed report – going Edinburgh straight to Toronto, home for a week, then Hooligans premiere (I’m throwing a line party) followed the next day by leaving for Toronto Film Festival – I’m a bit strapped for time!
Anyway, I had always planned to go to London for the Green Street premiere, but when we heard that it was, in fact, going to premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival, I figured I’d just have to forget going. But with the help of a last-minute airfare drop (from “preposterous” down to merely ridiculous) and the assistance of some friends with a room and travel plans, I was able to go.
I arrived in time to see the second showing of Billy Boyd’s “On a Clear Day” with a few other fellow travelers who were there early (others came in later that night or the next day). After the movie, we were lucky enough to be able to still get tickets to a talk with the writer, Alex Rose. It was fascinating to hear about getting a book from paper to screen, and overall, Mr. Rose’s experience was generally a very positive one since he and the director (Gaby Dellal) had very much the same vision for the movie. He did mention that Billy was very funny and quite good at ad libbing, and originally quite a bit of what Billy added was used in the movie. But when they picked up a distributor after Sundance, it was felt like there was a little TOO much humour, and it changed the balance of the movie. So the version we saw in Edinburgh (and which everyone else will see), has some of the humour (and in particular, some of Billy) excised. Not to worry, though – Billy still plays a huge role in the film. I heartily recommend the movie – it was so much better than I expected, and very engaging.
The majority of the group I was with – we called ourselves the Edinburgh Hooligans, and were 25 women from 10 different countries who met via LiveJournal – decided to meet outside the cinema at noon for the premiere of “Green Street.R21; 3 of the ladies who only arrived that morning decided to forego checking in to their hostel and instead went straight to the cinema – so we had a presence there from 9AM onwards, with the majority arriving at noon, and a few stragglers later in the day. We spent the day getting acquainted, listening to “One Blood” (Terence Jay single from the movie, available on ITunes), and the latest Gogol Bordello album (some of which will be on the “Everything is Illuminated” soundtrack). I had some t-shirts made from the promo poster/postcard for the movie in the US, and also made some laminated badges with the same image, and the location and date. Another of the group designed a button, and we had a supply of those as well – which would prove very popular, well beyond our group!
A couple of hours before the movie, after we had been standing there all day, they finally began setting up the area – and advised us that we had to stand on the other side of the street! Much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth ensured, and eventually, the Powers That Be told us that, indeed, the early arriving fans are normally allowed to stand against the actual barriers – so, those of us who’d been there all day took our proper places, hurrah! I will say that the actual film festival staff couldn’t have been nicer – there were a few security people (not with the festival itself) who seemed ill-informed and occasionally a bit brusque, but the people who mostly worked with us were unfailingly helpful and polite. And most of them went home with our “Stand Your Ground” buttons!
About a half hour before showtime, Lexi Alexander showed up, followed by Leo Gregory, Elijah Wood, and Charlie Hunnam, in rapid succession. (There was one other actor – I think it was Christopher Hehir – there, but I somehow missed his arrival.) I had met Lexi at the Tribeca Film Festival, and she remembered me – which made it really easy to talk to her this time, and to have a better chance at the others. Everyone was very nice and signed for as many as they could get to, at least on our side of the barriers – Elijah also crossed the street and signed for those who hadn’t been there early enough to get to the actual barricades. And of course, he happily stopped for several minutes to sign and chat with a group of women in wheelchairs.
Although Edinburgh has now strictly banned camera phones and cameras from the theatre during the screening, they have a procedure whereby all such items are claimchecked, then brought back into the theatre immediately following the movie so that you can have them for use during the question-and-answer period. Thanks to that, I do have a few photos from the Q&A as well. It was only lit by houselights, so the quality of the photos isn’t quite up to snuff.
Everyone had quite a lot to say and the Q&A was lively; a lot of questions centered on how the film was being received in various quarters – USA vs. UK, by the firms themselves, by West Ham United, and so on. Having seen the film first in the US, I did notice that the British audience did tend to focus on a few different aspects than we had over here, but while I had been worried that they would be turned off by the way the film was pitched at the US market (Matt Buckner serves as our introduction into the world, and things are explained to him so that they are also explained to us), it didn’t seem to bother them much. They seemed also willing to overlook (to an extent) that all the accents weren’t quite accurate, because the dialogue itself seemed to ring true to them.
It was interesting to find out that Charlie Hunnam, who plays Pete (the head of the GSE firm), had no background in football at all – he hadn’t been a fan as a child, despite coming from Newcastle (a hotbed of football fans). Leo Gregory, on the other hand, obviously supported a London team other than West Ham, but he wasn’t saying which. Lexi herself had a brother who was in a firm in her native Manheim (Germany), and she was somewhat of an affiliated member of it for a time (they didn’t allow her to actually fight, since fighting either with or against a girl was felt to be demeaning). Elijah talked a little about how this level of passion for a sport is beyond anything he’d seen in the US.
After the Q&A was over, Lexi stopped by our group again to thank us all for coming and supporting the movie, and posed for a photo with us.
Then, it was time for bed for some, and for the pub for the rest of us. Little did we know that we were only a few bars away from where the director and cast were celebrating a successful premier – oh, well! Then it was off for some to the London screening (the following day) or home, and the rest of us stayed on to see the movie again the following evening, minus the celebrities.
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