The Butterfly Ball and a bunch of new vids

G’day folks,

Been ages since we’ve just sat down and nattered. Sorry about that.

The big news around these parts is that after many years of applying, I’ve finally been lucky enough to get government funding (from Film Victoria) for one of my feature film projects – The Butterfly Ball.

Now if the name seems familiar to you, perhaps you’re remembering either the old 1973 concept album by Roger Glover, or even the film clip for the single from that album “Love is All”, which was very popular, and got a very regular airing on the ABC out here in Australia, where it was used as a between-show filler. As a reminder, here’s the film clip from YouTube:

So what’s this feature film then? Well, the album was always intended to be turned into a feature, but it never happened, save for a concert film that Roger Glover himself has somewhat disowned. Enter Anthony Woodcock from Puffafish, who I met last year at the SPAA conference. The Ball has long been a passion of his, and he wrote an stage version of a story utilising the songs, which remains unproduced. But he’s now pouring all his efforts into getting an animated musical happening, and believe it or not after browsing through this very blog, engaged me as screenwriter.

So we knocked together an Outline document and proposal, submitted it to Film Vic, and have been modestly funded to turn it into a Treatment (which for those of you unfamiliar with the term is a 20-40 page screen story document which can be used as the basis for a screenplay). Guess what? I’M EXCITED!

Lots of other stuff is still taking place over here at the Empire. Mat and I are continuing to write for the good folks at the Ministry of Truth. Most excitingly we very recently co-wrote a short piece about the fictional emo band Forlorn Gaze which will be showing on ABC’s JTV in November. But prior to that we wrote a bunch of things for the Ministry’s pilot episode on Democracy. There was the Fly Air Aussie sketch:

Mat also did an animation on Why Democracy is Better:

while I did another one on a little known mathematical proof about the inherent flaws of democracy – Democratic Logic:

With the Australian federal election just around the corner, those shadowy toe-tapping terrorists New Horizons In Violence have emerged from their spider holes with a tribute to our Prime Minister, Who Do You Trust?

An album is imminent and a movie/DVD not far away either – stay tuned to NHIV.com for details.

And while we’re talking N.H.I.V., why not spend 52 seconds checking out the funky oppression of “Come Outside”:

Of course The Sideshow is still going strong at 9:25pm Saturdays on the ABC. You may have read a bunch of our jokes on this ‘ere blog, but maybe you’d like to check out a sample – someone put this clip on the Creation Museum up on YouTube but the jokes are 100% Holt & Blackwell:

(Click on the little “YouTube” link in the clip to read loads of fundamentalist Christians getting very upset. If that’s how you like to spend your time.)

Is that all? Of course not. But I figure you probably have something else to get on with by now.

Cheers
Wok