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| << October26, 2004 - Turtle Essays edition no 108 dated 25.10.2004 |
November08, 2004 - Turtle Essays edition no 110 dated 8.11.2004 >> |
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Turtle Essays Edition no 109 dated 1st November 2004 ** Interested in Internet marketing? Get started with a free course from my friend Mike. It's great and full of tips one can use. http://hop.clickbank.net/?brerrabbit/mcplants ** In this edition Editor's Blurb Huguenot Tunnel A day on a film set ** Editor's Blurb Hi there folks! Welcome to Turtle Essays Travel ezine. It's great to have some new readers this week. Thanks for joining our list and I hope you enjoy the ezines you will receive. This week I have prepared articles on my experiences on film sets here in Cape Town as well as one on the Huguenot tunnel where one of the shoots took place. Turtle Essays is about to get its own online shop. I am putting together a travel section where one can book tours, airline tickets, hotels etc. There will be other sections for music, books and even dog training and gardening, marketing and advertising products. It should be ready in the next couple of days so look out for it. I hope you have all received ezines 107 and 108. The transfer of my list to Zinester did not go off as smoothly as I had hoped but things appear to have settled down now. If you enjoy this ezine please tell your friends and get them to join up as well. The new link to signup is http://www.zinester.com/mpb/ml_fs.cgi?topic=50058 Remember all new readers get access to a free marketing course. Have you visited my blog yet? It's a lot less formal than the ezine and will include newsworthy items and occurrences here in Cape Town as they happen or I find out about them. Here is the link: http://turtleessays.blogspot.com Well thats enough from me for this week. Have a good one. Geoff Fairman ** PS . It's strange how we had this lovely rain free winter and beautiful summery days during our official winter. Its supposed to be summer now and guess what! ???Its raining??? Every drop of water counts and I see that the dam levels have increased to just over 60%. That however has not stopped restrictions and increased water prices. ** Huguenot Tunnel Traffic to the north has always had to use one of two roads out of Cape Town. Either Bain's Kloof Pass which is a narrow road carved out of the mountain slopes high above the Breede River or Du Toit's Kloof Pass which became the main highway to the north and was often blocked by heavy trucks struggling up the long hills to the top of the pass. Both of these roads are dangerous in winter and are often blocked by large trucks driving the hills in first gear. To overcome the hazards facing motorists in these passes another way through the mountains had to be found. It was decided to heed the suggestion of Mr P A de Villiers an engineer to build a tunnel through the mountains to Worcester. It took a number of years to plan the project but eventually in 1984 work was started. At the time it was decided to build two tunnels next to each other so that in the future should road traffic become too heavy the second tunnel could be utilised. Excavation of the tunnels was done using the drill and blast method and teams started on either side of the mountain working towards the centre. A margin of error of only 3 mm was achieved when the tunnels met in 1986. Quite an achievement taking into account that the tunnels are not straight but in the shape of an elongated ???S???. When entering one end of the 3.9 kilometre tunnel the other end cannot be seen. The southern tunnel was completed and on the 18th March 1988 the Huguenot Tunnel was opened. It has cut the distance travelled between Cape Town and Worcestor by eleven kilometres. The benefits of the tunnel have been huge and over the 16 years that it has been in use has saved many millions of litres of petrol and diesel as well as ware and tare on vehicles travelling to and from Cape Town. The second tunnel to the north has yet to be completed. At present it is a shell with its roof and sides having been smoothed by cement blasted against it. The gravel road through the tunnel has not been completed although it is passable should vehicles need to use it for any reason. At present it is used for emergencies to evacuate people from the main tunnel in the event of a fire or a accident. When I visited the tunnel recently I was most surprised to find it in the condition that it is. I was always under the impression that it looked the same a the southern tunnel. What was really interesting in the northern tunnel was the roof. Water seeps through it and drips down onto the road way. In places the dripping waters has caused stalactites to form on the roof. I was always under the impression that they took centuries to grow and yet here in a tunnel that is only 16 years old were stalactites. Most of them were about as thick as a pencil and were three or four inches long. On the Cape Town side of the tunnel there was one that was a good foot long and about as thick as a carrot. As I am not an expert maybe someone can explain to me why these stalactites appear to be growing so fast. The climate in the tunnel was also strange. When I entered the tunnel at about 3.00pm it seemed to be misty inside and very cold. At about 8.00 pm in the evening I had to go back inside and it had warmed up considerably. I don't know whether the film crew in the tunnel had anything to do with the temperature but I doubt it. The worst part of my visit was the fact that I did not have my camera with me so I am unable to show you photos of the inside of the tunnel. Cape Town has many interesting places to see and visit. Why not come and see for yourself. See you here soon! ** A day in the life of a film crew. Making films has always been something that happened elsewhere in the world. Of late, however, Cape Town has become one of the destinations that film makers love to use when shooting Ads, movies and documentaries. I'm not sure what it is, the beauty, the scenery, or the strange sets that abound in and around Cape Town that attract film makers. Suffice to say, on any given day you can find two or three crews doing their thing in Cape Town. I have recently joined the ranks of extras working on some of these sets and I am quite amazed at the time and effort that is put into producing a movie. Depending where the days filming is to be shot, the call times differ. On the last two movies I worked on I had call times of 4.30am and 5.30 am. As an extra one only gets a day or two at a time to start work at these unearthly hours. The crews, however, appear to start at these hours every day for months on end. They don't appear to get tired and seem to have more patience than Job. What amazes me even more is the planning that must go into the making of the movie. Who chooses the sets, and negotiates with hotels, harbours, cities to close roads etc? Who plans the shooting sequences and where they will be shot? Who passes all this info onto wardrobe and makeup, who have to prepare costumes, and be ready when the directors call the stars onto set. Often extras arrive looking like a right royal slobs and its wardrobe and makeup's job to turn them into soldiers , businessmen and any other character that might be required on the day. To do this some people need to have their hair cut or beards shaved off. Some people object and then cannot be used on the film. This means late replacements and delays on set while waiting for the replacements to arrive. Of course, while all this is going on the film crews are setting up for the days shooting. Cameras have to be placed, lights set up and props put in place. It's insane the amount of equipment that cameramen need just to get the right shot. Who would want to be a caterer on a film set? They really have their work cut out for them. It's part of the job to arrive long before the crews, set up their kitchens and get cooking. When the crews arrive on set coffee must be ready and if it's an early morning call breakfast as well. Once breakfast is complete ??? the craft table??? as it is called has to be moved around to where the shoot is taking place so that if anybody is thirsty or hungry, food and snacks are always available. In between all this shunting around, lunch also has to be prepared and on a large set there could be hundreds of people to feed. When the actual filming begins, there are a number of calls made by the directors to stars and extras. First call is for sound after which someone calls out the scene number, take number and then snaps the clapper board in front of the camera. The call is then ??? Background Action! ??? Thats where I come in and depending on what I have been instructed to do pretend to be doing something or walk up and down or just stand and look pretty. After that there is a call of ???Action??? when the main stars do their thing. Everyone waits for the call ???Cut!??? and then back to first position. The whole process is done over and over until the director is happy. That can take hours! One thing every one on set must learn to have is ???PATIENCE.??? Everything works to this rule ???Hurry Up and Wait??? Something else I find strange is that the directors actually have to plan scenes on their feet. People are placed in their positions on set and after the first shot has been completed are moved around to improve the shot. I suppose it is only natural for this to happen but I would have thought that the director would know in his mind what should be happening before any filming takes place. After a long day either waiting to go on set or filming everyone is waiting for this call. ??? IT'S A WRAP. ??? What does the call mean? Different things to different people of course. For us extras and the stars, its going off set, handing back props and clothing and going home. To the crew its the start of a packup of all their equipment which might have to be be moved to another venue for another days shooting the next day. What a life! See you on the sets around cape Town soon! ** Lotto Loser?Change your luck today Give yourself a winning chance http://hop.clickbank.net/?brerrabbit/shaneomac2 ** Please read the disclaimer at http://www.turtlesa.com/Disclaimer.html See you all soon Geoff Fairman ** |
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| << October26, 2004 - Turtle Essays edition no 108 dated 25.10.2004 |
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