Back from the first heat of the 48Hr film screenings, which included our zombie/romantic comedy/parody “Brains, Actually.”

The DV decks at the venue had real difficulty playing back our tape. And when one was found that did play it back, the sound levels were kinda munted. Nothing wrong with the video at all – no artifacts or compression glitches (unlike one of the other entries which looked like it was being streamed live via the internet from a server in Grozplatchistan, using RealPlayer) but the sound was borked.

Gutted.

My hopes for us reaching the final, while not at all zero (because it did still get all the right laughs in the right places) have definitely dropped.

And I’m gutted not least of all because I suspect my little XL-1 camera (which the film was written onto tape with) may be to blame for this. As soon as Craig confirms that he’s got all the Making-Of footage from it that he wants, I’m going to talk to Canon NZ about a factory service for it. Time to get everything cleaned and recalibrated for speed and tracking and whatnot.

On the subject of cameras, in this heat there was a film shown called “Taken”. I’d really like to know what they filmed it on, because it looked AWESOME. Great colours, crisp images. tells me it was shot on an HD camera. I want one.