Documentary - Days One, Two & Three

I started filming a documentary on the weekend (actually, I started it on Friday afternoon). It's going to be a four-part mini-series that will screen on the ABC late next year. I deliberated for months on the topic I should use for my documentary, because I am torn between equal-parts "The War on Terror" and "Japanese Whaling Ships", so I flipped a coin (heads: The War on Terror; tails: Japanese Whaling Ships) and it got stuck in a ridge between two pieces of concrete when it landed, making it come up 'edges'.

After checking with Sportsbet, I discovered that the subject matter that was listed under 'edges' was Adam.

The first day of filming was marked by several set-backs, which I hope will not continue into the schedule. First, the weather was pretty bad. Second, my research assistants had done all this work on Japanese Whaling Ships and the War on Terror, but had little-to-no information whatsoever on Adam. I had them fired for their lack of foresight, then their union came in and roasted me for unfair dismissal, so I had to allow the research assistants back. (Not that they work anymore; they're on a good wicket and they know it, so they just sit around drinking coffee all day for $26 an hour.)

When the weather cleared and I'd put the lack-of-research issue behind me, I discovered more problems. First, Adam lives in a completely different city to where we were, and second, the man himself didn't know we were filming a documentary on him. This last point in particular raised all sorts of legal issues such as permission, rights, royalties, use of likeness, affiliation, defamation, copyright, industrial relations, voluntary student unionism, immigration, transport, finance, consumer affairs, foreign trade, cut-backs, cut-downs, cut-offs, let-backs, let-downs, let-offs, and of course free donuts on Tuesdays (I fired my legal team only to have their own legal teams force me to reinstate them; now they sit around drinking coffee all day for $685 an hour). But this wasn't the worst of it. No way. Not by a long shot.

The long shot came from a building 6 blocks away, but thankfully it missed - and then the police were all over it anyway.

There was no simple answer to the fact that Adam lives in Sydney (or possibly Melbourne - he's quite vague about this), but because we had expected the subject of our documentary to be quite different, we were currently in Baghdad. With tickets to Tokyo, if the coin had landed on tails. So this was slightly inconvenient.

I began by filming 'man on the street interviews', asking people for their thoughts on Adam anyway, but encountered the following problems:

1) I don't speak Towel-Head;
2) The Towel-Heads didn't speak English;
3) The Towel-Heads didn't know who the hell Adam was anyway;
4) I got severely bashed when I was overhead calling them 'Towel-Heads';
5) While I was in hospital, our hotel was bombed. Thankfully, the only people from our team who were in it at the time were my research assistants and legal team. That's what you get for not working when you're being paid to! (Note to self: Work at work.)

Upon our arrival back to Australia on Saturday night, I immediately set about hiring new research assistants and a new legal team. However, as the next day was Sunday, I could only get the heathen ones (which worked in my favour as far as the legal team was concerned - who wants a moral legal team?).

The next day, filming was due to start at 11am, but I was still asleep (I'm a lazy bugger) so it wasn't until 4:30pm that we were actually ready to roll. Unfortunately, at around 7:15pm (after filming some fantastic shots and interviews), it was discovered that no one had purchased any film for the camera. Instead, I sent the camera crew home (I knew enough by now not to try firing them - plus, it was my responsibility to buy the film) and decided to concentrate on collating the relevant documents my new research assistants had obtained for me while I was sleeping earlier that day, with the view to recording the first of many voiceovers. As I'm generally the best at speaking out of all the people I know (and my worthless flights to Baghdad had used all our entire budget - don't tell the crew!), I decided to record the voiceovers myself, using an old 8-track I found in some old guy's garage (he was doing the lawns as I passed and saw the garage door open, so I helped myself).

The first voiceover goes like this. Tell me what you think:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Space: The final frontier. Call me Ishmael."

To say I've borrowed liberally from other people's work would be an understatement, but given the weekend I'd had, I was clearly going to get nothing done if I relied solely upon my own abilities.

Hopefully things will improve when we try again next weekend.