Well what a week its been. I was flown out to Poland for work. It all started out fairly normally; stayed in a hotel , went to the airport, caught a plane. So far so good. Then, in Warsaw, we caught another plane. One made of canvas and wood that wouldnt have looked out of place in an Indiana Jones movie. It was about the same size as a transit van and not much more air worthy. At several points during the flight it would drop 10-20 feet like the fly button had been switched off. The pilot was navigating with a road map and I swear to god parts of the dashboard were held in place with tape.
An hour of hell later we landed, thanked a whole host of deities and ran screaming from the plane. But it wasnt over. We were whisked away in army jeeps by men dressed as WWII soldiers to a chateau, one along from Eve Brauns (Hitlers missus). A short break later and we were back in the jeeps to see Hitlers bunker during the war. Half way there we stopped to move a tree out of the road at which point there were explosions and a lot of angry, shouting Nazis rushed out of the forest and kidnapped us. We then had a very odd few hours. One minute a kind Polish guide would say here is the room that would be the place of Hitlers planning, then one of the Nazis would shout GET IN THE ROOM! whilst hitting us with rifle butts. Odd. After the history lesson we spent the evening sitting around an open fire, roasting apples and drinking Polish vodka. The next day involved visiting more war sites, riding in an amphibious tank and an evening of games in a casino.
All in all a pretty good time. Except the flying. The flying sucked.
An hour of hell later we landed, thanked a whole host of deities and ran screaming from the plane. But it wasnt over. We were whisked away in army jeeps by men dressed as WWII soldiers to a chateau, one along from Eve Brauns (Hitlers missus). A short break later and we were back in the jeeps to see Hitlers bunker during the war. Half way there we stopped to move a tree out of the road at which point there were explosions and a lot of angry, shouting Nazis rushed out of the forest and kidnapped us. We then had a very odd few hours. One minute a kind Polish guide would say here is the room that would be the place of Hitlers planning, then one of the Nazis would shout GET IN THE ROOM! whilst hitting us with rifle butts. Odd. After the history lesson we spent the evening sitting around an open fire, roasting apples and drinking Polish vodka. The next day involved visiting more war sites, riding in an amphibious tank and an evening of games in a casino.
All in all a pretty good time. Except the flying. The flying sucked.
the suspect deal is still 'simmering'.... but I'm not going to take it - they're not prepared enough, unrealistic in their scheduling & expectations of what can be achieved with the time & money they contend they have, plus frankly they're plain not reliable
all the specific detailed info I ask for is never given, they've being saying 'we'll finalise contracts tomorrow' for 6 weeks now. In so many ways they either don't respect me or just don't know what they're doing or actually don't have the production finance in place.
Either way it's a 'walk away' tho I have to admit I've not flat out told them that yet.... it's now a kind of facinating game for me to see how close they get to starting filming before they actually get down to details and the nitty gritty - something they needed to do a long time ago.
The kind & complexity of stuff they want me to shoot, enhance and create needs alot of prep; well in advance, a crew in place and reasonable amount of testing time, not to mention an amount of collaboration & discussion before generating a filming schedule - none of which they have allowed for despite me repeatedly emphasising it
there's always other projects