Entering Dunedin

Been a busy week (yes I've now been in New Zealand for a whole week!!!), and as of such not a lot of posts...

Okay so last post I'd arrived in Dunedin (techinally a week and a day ago, but as I slept right after the events about to be described I don't count my arrival day in my total).

Arriving at the Dunedin airport 3 hours late my prearranged transport was of course no where to be seen. It looked bleak for about 5min as there were no cabs or shuttles out front. Talking to a very helpful help desk attendent I learned that a shuttle had just left, and he called it to see if it would loop back to come grab me. Fortunently the equally nice driver doubled back to nab me, and I was on my way into town!

Now Dunedin Airport is far out of town (Dunedin is in the top 10 urban city land areas. It is ridiculously spread out!) and it was a 20 min drive just to get "into" town. On the way I got a great view of the local agricultural setup.

It was funny as everyone says New Zealand is NOTHING but sheep. Yet the first 20 farms we went by were cow farms. It didn't feel all that much different from Alberta.

Then we finally hit some sheep paddocks. A lot of sheep paddocks in fact!

Now fun factiod is that contray to popular belief the sheep industry is actually on the decline in New Zealand in recent times. Wool prices are declining in face of synthetic fabrics, and their meat is in far less demand in modern times on the international market. The sheep population has dropped from some 60 million in the 1970's to a mere 40 million in modern times. So as you can see sheep will be a thing of the past in about 60 years.

The vegatation around Dunedin reminded me of BC. Having wandered around I LOVE the forests in the area.

This just added to that very BC feel on the drive into town LOL.

Well that's it for right now. Next I'll show you my current place of living, and then soon there after a tour of Dunedin!

Getting Down Under

Okay so I said check back in a day, and it's been two. It's not my fault for once. The internet's been down for the past day and half which has mucked up a few things. In particular my banking communication with my parents (I like to eat is the thing...).

Of course it has also messed up my blogging abilities :P

So might as well get to that right now, as I'm piling up net worthy stuff by the hour. The trip from Canada to New Zealand has a few noteworthy occurrences and stories.

Got up on the 5th all packed and ready to go. We hit the road pronto for the airport with about 4 hours to go before my flight. Getting my flight pass was nice and easy due to the early arrival. However my luggage weight was a problem!

I got a giant hockey equipment bag from Santa, and had stuffed it to the max. Unfortunately turns out each piece of luggage can only weigh up to 32kilos. My hockey bag was at about 40. The good news was my 90 litre backpack was lightly packed. Full but but light. So after some article exchange we were good to go (with a $35 overweight fee).

My first leg of the flight was from Calgary to LA. The flight was nice and uneventful.

Had some nice last views of Calgary as we went though.

Including a great fly over downtown.

Even more fitting was heading over my house. I've marked as best I could on this machine (not my laptop sadly. It won't be online till next week. Have to make due with on of my res' machines). The yellow star marks roughly my house while the green boxes mark Silver Springs Gateway and the Skating Rink and Pool down the road for confirming landmarks (in case you though I made this up).

Arriving at LA 3 hours later I had to hang around there for about 6.5 hours. I managed an hour nap, and then got really hungry. So I popped into a nice little restaurant called Route 99. The waiter recommended I have the Philly Cheese stack as apparently they were really good that day. It wasn't bad. Not the best thing I've ever eaten, but not bad.

While waiting I was noticing a bunch of people wandering around in crazy worldly clothing. These would turn out to be a bunch of Kiwi exchange students returning home from their various placements (through the Rotary club). I would end up sitting beside two of them, including the girl in the Swiss dress from this pic.

We ended up waiting and hour and a half to board our plane due to the late arrival of a connecting flight from England. This is where things got interesting in my trip. The one nice thing was it gave me a great chance to take a photo of the plane. Unfortunately the glare on the window was unavoidable due to the intense lighting at LA-X.

The flight itself was about as pleasant as a 12 hour stint on a plane can be. I even managed to sleep 9 of those hours.

Arriving in Auckland is where things got interesting. Due to the delay I'd missed my flight to Dunedin well before we landed. In theory I would have had 30 min between landing and boarding my Dunedin flight had I been on time. I don't think I would have made it had that been the case.

New Zealand customs is a little timely to clear due to the bio-security check. Having a used pair of sandals (which got VERY sanitized!) and a Tyrannosaur hiding in my luggage (stupid Traumador!!!) it took me about 20 mins just to clear that part of customs.

So due to a lack of clear directions I missed my replacement flight by about 5 min. Turns out that Auckland's domestic terminal is in a completely DIFFERENT building on the OTHER side of the airport rather then the other end of the International building.

In the process of getting my ticket stuff sorted out I had a very interesting encounter. Walking past the ticket vending booth was a dead look a like of Roy "Heron" Strum from Kiwanis. He should seriously look to see if he has relatives down here cause this guy was 96% identical! (Though the picture I tried to take didn't turn out so well, but he's the one with the red arrow pointing at him)

I then was transferred to a slightly slower flight that would stop in Christchurch before I'd get to Dunedin. Adding yet more time to my at this point very long trip.

However there was one unexpected bonus. As I sat down in the plane (I was the 4th to board) I stowed away my camera. Oops it would turn out! Suddenly sitting in the seat 2 ahead of me is none other then Jack Black himself! Turns out he was playing a concert in Christchurch the next day. Sadly I didn't get any evidence of this event due to my thinking my camera would be useless (New Zealand was COMPLETELY covered in cloud that day. I saw the ground three times during my flying over it, and that was landing at my destinations), but Mr. King Kong was on my plane I assure you (or jetlag hit earlier then I though in the form of a mirage. A mirage everyone else on the plane saw too!)

So after landing in Christchurch and a fairly uneventful final plane transfer I was on my final leg of the journey. An hour and some later we landed in Dunedin. My last crisis was that of transport. Due to my various delays I was in total 3 hours late in arriving at Dunedin. The problem was I'd booked a taxi through the university for my original arrival time. If I'd have made it I would have had a major discount. However if you failed to warn them of your being late (which was kinda hard as I was in customs at the time I was supposed to phone them) it in theory incurred a penalty charge.

Well I wasn't going to have to worry about the fine at the moment. No taxi was there. By the time I settled that fact the one shuttle to town had left. Fortunately a VERY awesome and helpful airport employee used his sway with another shuttler to radio the one that had just left. The driver who was equal awesome hearing she had another fair 2 minutes back track came back and picked me up!

That concludes this post at moment. Stay tuned for my initial exploration of Dunedin, and an installment on my home Salmond Hall...

I'm Alive

Everyone can relax (or tense up I guess LOL) I have landed on the other side of the world, and am okay.

I think as of today I've finally over come my jetlag. I only needed a little one hour nap in the middle of the afternoon (and I think that was more heat induced then anything) compared to the 3-5 hour ones of the last few days.

Now of course this is my third day in New Zealand, and there are many cool interesting stories, adventures, and photos to relay. However I'm just figuring out how my internet stepup is working at moment, and as of such I'm not prepared for proper posts on my travels. Yet!

Seriously checkin tomorrow for at least one good post. Possibly more then one. I've got enough stuff for like 5-10 LOL.

The Big Goodbye!!!

This marks my last blog entry from Calgary or Canada for that matter for a LONG while.

The buildup to this departure has been eventful to be sure, but not too painful (minus some of the goodbyes). Hopefully once I get some photos of various events and gatherings I'll have them up here.

Keep checking back here as I'm sure I'll have MUCH to report soon.

Given I'm heading out and striking it on my own this is just like Nightwing my fav superhero who left Gotham as Robin to goto a new city and make a new destiny for himself...

Last Day of Work

Well today is marking several big cross roads.

First being it's my last day of work for hopefully a year. This last week has been fairly slow partially in part due to a 3 day week, and second slow business world. Unlike last week which was crazy I had 13 guests (a record by far) including a day with 5 of those in a row (I had to switch guests in the tight commercial breaks... I'm really really good at micing people now!)

Second is that this marks the beginning of my last week in Canada. I'm as of today about 95% packed and ready to go. Mostly (hopefully) just small details that need tending to at this stage.

Check out the Traum Vlog

hey there people of craig's blog. i'm traumador the tyrannosaur, and i'm just taking this oppurtunity to tell you not only about my blog but also my first ever vlog! i made it with not only the help of my agent peter, but also my good friend craig! so i don't think he'll mind me posting it here as it is kinda his work.

Uh Traumador, I do actually mind you posting this on my blog, and more to the point I mind you POSTING ON MY BLOG AT ALL!

oh hey craig! i didn't know that a blog could be used as a chat board like this...

Technically Traumador you can't. You posted this, and then I edited the post, and you did it again. Thus here we are AGAIN. Why are you posting things on MY blog?

cause my agent peter said that i needed to advertise myself more. so i hacked your blog with that list of passwords you used to keep in in drumheller. pretty clever eh...

You stole my password sheet?!? TRAUMADOR!!!

hey don't blame me if you left it lying around in that locked drawer in your desk hidden in a craved out copy of stephen j. gould's wonderful life.

This is not happening. Wait a minute. You've made me edit this post how many times?!? Enough of this Truamador get off MY BLOG NOW!

okay! phew good thing i wasn't on your blog just then. otherwise i might be in trouble...

Merry Xmas!

As a present to you my blog readers this Xmas I give you the WHOLE of Action Figure High.

Included are the links to the actual Youtube postings. Be sure to pop on there and give them a rating (you don't even have to watch them to do that!)



Part 1



Part 2





Part 3




Part 4



Part 5

Final Action

The final chapter of Action Figure High Part 5. Also comes with end of story of its production. Note: Good grammer or compelling narrative not included.

Our drunken filming from the night before gave us the bulk of the movie. However many of the key cool scenes were needed. Just going to show how important and key action sequences are to movies today.

Our first order of business was the Pooky Wooky battle. This was stressful for me the story editor as if it turned out we had missed a scene with the monster after our torching it there was no going back. In the end we proceeded.

First we filmed all the action figure vs. Pooky Wooky clips. Then it was onto the actual flame thrower. This was accomplished by borrowing gasoline from Cam's neighbor Claymore and filling the Pooky Wooky's mouth to the top, and spreading it around Cam's front porch. We had everyone's still cameras filming it as well as my camcorder to capture different angles of this ONE time shot (kinda made us feel like a real production company filming that one multi million $ sequence). Unfortunately the other cameras would prove unusable.

The good news man did that thing burn! For 9 whole minutes! So well in fact we were worried that the fire department might get called in. Didn't happen. I had more then enough footage from the camcorder to pull off the scene in editing. The one bad side effect. The toxic smoke that rendered me and Cam coughing unhealthily for the rest of production (and in my case for 2 more days).

Then it was on to Dinoworld and all its fun. By far the most entertaining was making Yoda's car fly!

With that wrapping up me and Peter hastily set up Futureworld in the computer room using all available funky things in the house as well as 2 boxes worth of XMas lights.

Lastly too the basement we went to film the Sally confrontation. Was a fairly simple set up as Cam's basement is among the creepiest places in the world (still mad I couldn't rent it as my summer home!).

As we wrapped up Cam had to fly off to work, and me and Peter had to hit the road for Calgary. Was by far the most intense and efficient shot Prehistoric Insanity has done, and we have MANY short shots like this under our belts.

Enjoy this among our greatest achievements (though I wonder how much better it could have been had Dan been around that summer).



Stay tuned after Xmas for our greatest experiment and possible only folly. The Hardcore Apocalypse After Next Tuesday

Action Stations

Onto Part 4 of Action Figure High. Here's what happened next.

We began filming at about 8pm thursday evening. We had exactly 24hrs to complete the shot as me and Peter needed to be back in Calgary Saturday to attend a wedding.

The production plan was simple make up the story as we went around a general premise of Luke and friends get throw out of their typical nerdish/outsider existence at skool, and thrown into a wacky adventure/quest.

All the lines and comedy are improvised (not unlike our other movies LOL just this stuff is comparatively better). Helping fuel this perhaps was the beer we were all drinking as the night went on. If you watch the scene in Part 2 where Luke starts running to Yoda's hill you can see a brief cameo of a Carlson beer can (the official beer of Prehistoric Insanity... if only they still made it).

By the end of the first night we had the majority of the film done. Our only incomplete scenes were the outdoor shots of Dinoworld, the crazy Xmas lights of futureworld, and the confrontation with Sally at the end.

Though this was a short list of unfinished scenes complicating production the next day was Cam having to work his day shift at the museum followed by an evening shift at the Bar. How did we pull it off?

Tune in for Part 5. First watch Part 4.

Jumping into Action

Time for Part 3 of Action Figure High. Its story already in progress.

With our cast of props gathered (one of the few instances that having your props means you have a movie together) it was time to come up with a story and setting.

The initial idea surrounded a murder mystery in which characters would be killed off scene by scene. In the end the murders were going to have been perpetrated by the Ninja Turtles, but as we'd bought the Pooky Wooky (whose name won't be invented till filming) it was realized that we were going to need a whole new premise.

Cam and Peter came up with the fitting setting of a high school, and that we should have the cast be a group of questing students. Now I started on a first draft of the story which was a LOT more complicated and convoluted.

This story would have had a subplot of Thor's dad being overthrown as the mayor of action figureville, and multiple potential villains so that Sally's reveal would be a "shocker". Fortunately I was vetoed as filming began. The production motto was "keep it simple".

Cam and Peter eagerly spent an hour designing set pieces on the computer printing them and making the school. All the doors, windows, lockers, flags, and posters were made in this fashion. I was kinda third wheel during this process. My major contribution was gathering the AstroTurf from the basement.

With the school set up and two days to film we cracked open a few six packs of Carlson Beer, and began the filming.

The rest of the story to follow on Part 4. Till then enjoy