Its Nice 2 Know...

So Fast & Furious 8 comes to theaters on April 14th, 2017 and the ninth and tenth films would be released on April 19, 2019 and April 2, 2021, respectively.

Have you ever wondered how they do all those crazy, dangerous and super cool stunts they have on all the The Fast and Furious movies?

No man I'm not talking about the CGI (Computer Generated Image) stuff mna. 

Felix Gary Gray is going to be the next man sitting on the franchise director sit. You will recognize his name from the credits of Set It Off 1996, The Italian Job 2003, Law Abiding Citizen 2009 and the recent Straight Out Of Compton. Now we wait and see what he has in store for us.

Out of all the franchise directors, Justin Lin has to be the craziest of them all when it came to the stunts. I mean la bhuti just took it to another level every time. He is the ultimate destruction-savant. 

He was quoted on screenrant.com saying “what I’ve learned is that [CGI] never replaces the real thing. There is something very special and unique when you crash a car”.

Mhmmm that might explain why he got to direct half the franchise, because at the end of the day, Fast and Furious is all about the adrenaline of the street racing, the speed,, the car chase and the car crash. Lin took over from John Singleton in 2006 and directed Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, up to Fast and the Furious 6 2013.

Now back to the stunts, lets start with the last movie Fast 7.

The stunt coordinators were Andy Gill and Joel Kramer and this is what they had to say about the stunts. “Now, everything may be choreographed, But it’s all real. There’s no cheating the audience. Our goal is to try to get as much in camera real as you can.”

 A total of 340 cars were used in the film and more than 230 cars were destroyed in the making of the film. The mountain-highway chase scene on Colorado's Monarch Pass proved to be the most damaging sequence with over 40 vehicles being destroyed. Only 10 percent of the action sequences in the film were computer-generated, and even then, much of the CGI was employed simply to erase the wires and other contraptions that were used to film real cars and drivers or to add a background.

While everybody was going on and on about the flying cars when the movie came out, my favorite stunt in the movie had to be that of the crashing bus. 

Surprisingly, one of the most insane stunts in the film was almost never filmed, because the whole thing was so crazy expensive to do that the producers almost backed out at the last minute in favor of CGI.

HOW?

There was no green screen, it was all done practically. Only the wires and safety harnesses had to be digitally erased.

For this scene, the filmmakers had almost no margin for error and only one shot at getting it right. After all, you can only crash a bus off a cliff so many times.

On action, they pushed the bus off the cliff. But first to begin, the crew bolted the bus in place with steel girding, securing it to the side of a cliff. With the bus secure, Paul Walker’s stunt double, wearing safety wires, began his run up the side.

For the next part of the sequence, three disparate things had to come together at exactly the right time: The bus had to slide off the cliff, Letty’s car had to spin close to the cliff’s edge, and Brian had to leap from the bus towards the car at   the very last second.

For safety reasons, the crew tethered Letty’s car with a 35-inch thick cable to the back, meant to stop the driver from accidentally spinning out over the actual cliff. As the driver moved down the road, the bus gets pushed off the cliff, and the stunt man, suspended six feet up and 15 feet out and hanging over a 160 feet drop, started his mad run up the side.

The entire sequence, filmed over the span of one week in a quarry outside Atlanta, Georgia, only ends up being a few minutes long, but is incredibly awesome and worth it. 

Ja neh! Timing is very important! No, actually timing is everything!

There’s a careful degree of planning and execution for each stunt. Gill estimates the 2nd unit stunt crew did about seven to eight months of work, with another four just for planning. The second unit director was Spiro Razatos..

Ok next up is the stunt that got everybody talking, the skydiving cars. I wasn't  really impressed though. Ok I was a little but I feel like we've already seen that before. However, what did catch my eye and impressed me, was the planning, preparation and the execution of the whole thing. 

HOW?

The "air drop" sequence was conceived by second unit director and stunt coordinator, Spiro Razatos, who also supervised on the franchise's two previous installments; Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6.

Over 10 cameras were used for the sequence. In addition to cameras on the ground, there were cameras remotely operated inside the plane and another three mounted outside each car. Additional cameras were on the helicopter, where Razatos was stationed watching monitors. Three skydivers used in the shoot wore helmet cameras to help shoot the sequence from multiple angles.

A 58-year-old Lockheed C-130 Hercules was used in the film to carry the vehicles that would drop from 12,000 feet high, above the Sonoran Desert, making cars plummet at a speed of about 130 to 140 miles per hour.

To get the cars to land safely, Gill and his crew got advice from the U.S. Army. They suggested the production team use military chutes with GPS systems. They tested them but didn't like the outcome because the aesthetic wasn’t what the film makers were going for. So the team movedd onto BRS chutes, smaller and more compact versions of military parachutes that are actually used for small airplanes. BRS chutes, also enabled with GPS, were secured to the cars before they were dropped 12,000 feet out of the C-130. At 5,000 feet, the chutes deployed.

Cameras needed to be mounted onto cars in a way that they would not be destroyed when the cars landed, and the crew had to figure out a safe way to get the cars out of the plane. They performed a dry run with a single car falling out of a plane and did this six times. Cars were dropped from the plane high above the Arizona desert, but close up shots that show the cars landing on a mountain road were filmed in Colorado. BRS parachutes enabled with GPS were secured to each of the cars before dropping off the C-130 plane. At about 5,000 feet, the parachutes deployed.

Sky divers would either jump out before cars or after them. While all the cars landed on their drop zones, 70% landed perfectly and 30% didn't For the close-up scenes which shows the actors inside their cars, a giant gimbal with a 360-degree range of movement were attached to each of the cars and was filmed against a green screen to reproduce their tumble through the sky. While Gill and Razatos were more than willing to drop cars out of a plane, they drew the line at drivers sitting inside the cars.

The last part of the scene, which shows the cars hitting the road was shot separately. To get that right, the team set up a pully system that had cars six to ten feet above the ground. When they were dropped from the cranes, the stuntmen who were sitting in the driver's seats raced their engines at about 35 to 40 miles per hour and slid to the ground at full speed. Those cranes were then later removed from the film with computers.

Tell me that was not impressive.

With the following stunt, Im still trying to figure out if it was more about the stunt itself or the car. 

The car is a Lykan HyperSport, a $3.4 million supercar with custom rubies and diamonds in its headlights and a gold-plated roof. It’s the only supercar produced in the Middle East, and there are only seven in existence. It is the most expensive car to feature in the Fast and Furious franchise. The HyperSport is powered by a Porsche-sourced, 3.7 liter, twin-turbocharged, flat-6-cylinder engine that's tuned to produce 750 horsepower. As a result, the hypercar is able to blitz the 0-60 mph run in just 2.8 seconds and reach an incredible top speed of 242 mph. 

See.....very easy to be in awe and get lost in all of that. To tell you the truth, that car didn't look real to me, but now I know better.

Now back to the stunt.

HOW?

Of course, the car didn’t crash through a building. 

“You’re not ever jumping a car from a real building” Gill said in one of his interviews. 

So, if the team couldn’t jump a car from building to building of the Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi, they did the next best thing. They built 40 foot tall glass and steel enclosures inside a giant sound stage in Atlanta. Once that was complete, a stunt driver crashed at high speed through each “tower.

See how in the video below.

"SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING, I GOT A TANK ON MY ASS."  

Hahahaha who remembers this line in Fast 6? 

Nobody can make loud and panicked dialogue sound so smooth, sexy and funny as hell at the same time, like Tyrese Gibson does. Ohw sorry ma bad, that would be the character Roman Pearce.

*Ahem* let me behave and get back to the stunts.

HOW?

This part of Fast & Furious 6 was shot on the Canary Islands. The government officials pretty much issued him Justin Lin carte blanche to take over a major road and start blowing up everything in sight—from bridges to staged oncoming traffic—in the name of good cinema.

According to second unit director Spiro Razatos, that sequence was the hardest because they used real tanks, and if the tank hit something it was not supposed to hit, it's destroyed. And there is no forgiveness,

The marvelous Herculean vehicle is a custom-designed, pimped out battle tank that the Fast & Furious team tricked-out to drive 60 MPH—twice as fast as the original battle tank's top speed. The American Hero who drove the tank is Lee Millham, a highly regarded and award-winning stunt performer who also worked on The Dark Knight Rises, Snow White and the Huntsman, and World War Z.

This scene was originally intended to use CGI to portray the vehicle crushing cars along the highway, but the final scene used practical effects as the tank really ran over approximately 250 cars during filming. But the segment's finale that sees Roman leap to a nearby car and the tank flip was created digitally.

Check out the behind the scenes video below.

The first 17 seconds of the video....mhmmmm......He might as well been talking to me when he said  “Fix your face”......Thirst trap yodwa le!.....Enjoy!

Remember the flip car? More like a pimped out go kart if you ask me.

Lin tasked the film's vehicle designer Dennis McCarthy with developing a car capable of driving head first into moving vehicles and flipping them into the air. McCarthy and his team designed a fully functional, low to the ground, formula racing car with a ramp on its front that allowed it to catapult other cars into the air while keeping the Flip Car driver safe

HOW?

It's a mobile weapon, a beastly machine that attacks by flipping other cars over. For the actual movie, a cable and winch system is used to flip the cars and trucks to their fiery demises.

It took four weeks during August and September of 2012 to shoot the flip-car chase in the U.K. Over that time, the crew would capture about 300 individual shots and wreck about a dozen Vauxhall cop cars.

Traditional ramps made out of tubular steel trusses and under-car cannons launched the cars into the air. 

Some of the scenes were shot with up to 12 different cameras running, some of which were mounted to high-speed Porsche Cayenne, Cadillac Escalade, and Mercedes M-class high-speed camera cars. Cameras were also mounted to the action car and on cranes and dollies. Meanwhile, the actors were shot on a process stage in Middlesex, England, sitting in cars mounted against a green screen on multidirectional gimbals. They would be digitally inserted into the scene later.

Every single shot in this chase has been touched. They re-speeded some shots to give it a little bit of a boost, making it seem like the car’s moving faster.” The effects crew also digitally deleted camera cars from the background and camera rigs from the sides of cars. But not only were the camera cars and rigs removed, their reflections had to be digitally erased from surfaces, too.

And then last but not least we had the vault heist, car chase in Fast Five. 

HOW?

Six versions of the 8-foot high vault were built, each with specific uses. One of the vaults was a façade built onto the front of a semitruck and was used for filming close shots of the vault destroying street cars. Another vault was a reinforced, four-wheel self-drive vehicle that was connected to 30-foot cables and dragged through the streets of San Juan by the two stunt Dodge Chargers. The four-ton vault was driven by stunt driver Henry Kingi, who had to wear a temperature controlled suit to compensate for the temperatures within that could exceed 100 degrees. A scene where the vault tumbled as the cars rounded a corner was a practical effect, and the result was more violent than the filmmakers had anticipated. Over 200 vehicles were destroyed by the vault during filming. Several stunts had to be cut including a final scene that would have seen the vault hanging over the edge of the Teodoro Moscoso Bridge. This stunt was abandoned when it was determined that even the powerful Chargers would not be able to support the vault's weight.

The primary stand-in vault used was actually a shortened pick-up truck chassis with a vault-shaped case that fit over it. In essence the vault was a steerable single-driver mini-car hooked to Walker and Diesel’s cars to make it look like their characters were dragging it

Hayno if all this doesn't impress you, then I don’t know what will.

This has to be my favorite scene in the whole movie, where Tris (Shailene Woodley) jumps off a  74-foot ledge. Ok ok it wasn't really her jumping, it was her stunt double Vela-Bailey. But I so totally think she was more than capable of doing it herself, if it wasn't for insurance reasons.

Stunt coordinator: Garrett Warren

Cinematographer: Alwin Küchler 

I don’t care who you are or where you from but everybody knows this movie. Released 6 July 2000, such an amazing and memorable film that combines intense action and incredible beauty.

Cumaaaaaan....... the film was adapted into a video game, a comics series and a 34-episode Taiwanese television series based on the original novel was produced. It was released in 2004 as New Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the US and Canadian release. The film is ranked at No. 497 on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time and at No. 66 in the magazine's 100 Best Films of World Cinema, published in 2010.

Mxim haymaan baf'wethu la film yamatshayna ababhabha emithini maan, nithen na nina?

It has been praised for its martial arts sequences, story, direction, musical score and cinematography. It won over 40 awards, one of them being the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

So you can’t use language as an excuse for not knowing the movie.The fact that awukwaz'theth isi ching chong won’t work.

Ang Lee (Director) personally edited the subtitles himself to ensure they were satisfactory for Western audiences.

Fifteen years later after the original film debuted, at long last a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Sequel (The Green Legend) is finally here.

The Green Legend will be Netflix's first original movie and the first to premiere simultaneously on Netflix and in select global IMAX theaters on August 28.

 Next week baf'wethu.

The sequel is directed by martial-arts choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping. Dammit lo baba’s directing goes waaaay back to 1978, that’s when he achieved his first directing credit in  the movie “Snake in the Eagle's Shadow”, starring Jackie Chan (wait unangaphi uJACKIE Chan?)..........Tjeeeeeeer lo bhuti is older than my mom mos! Ya neh I need to get me some chines tea.

Ok so Yuen Wo-Ping has directed the classic “Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, Drunken Master and Tai Chi Master ”just to name a few.

He choreographed fight scenes in “The Matrix” trilogy, Cradle 2 the Grave,  The Forbidden Kingdom and the first two “Kill Bill” movies from Quentin Tarantino.

He is renowned as one of the most successful and influential figures in the world of Hong Kong action cinema.......RESPECT!

The film’s director of photography is Tom Sigel (“Drive,” “X-Men: Days of Future Past”) with the design team led by “Lord of the Rings” collaborators costume designer Ngila Dickson, production designer Grant Major and visual effects supervisor Mark Stetson.

The scene below always makes me cry every time I watch it.

( If the script is bad in a drama or soapie I can change it, I can make it look good..........Half of me sometimes feel like shit I wanna break that rule, I wanna see what happens if I break that rule )

“Work hard in silence and let success make the noise” - author unknown

This quote perfectly sums up this man’s work ethic towards his profession. 

You’ve probably heard of him or have seen his name on the credits of Isidingo on Sabc 3, Scandal on Etv, My perfect Family on Sabc 1 or Gauteng Maboneng on Sabc 2, but I’m sure as hell you don't know anything about him or how he started with this whole TV thing. 

I dare you to google him and tell me what comes up, actually no, I DOUBLE dare you. Pshhhhhh heck! I might as well go all the way and TRIPLE dare you. That's how confident I am that you wont find anything but his nominations screaming :Hol up, we dem boyz                                                       Hol up, we dem boyz                                                       Hol up, hol up, hol up, we makin' noise

and that's what prompted this interview. 

Besides the fact that I always want to know whats going on inside a directors head when he’s busy with his craft. So this was like a treat for me.

I found it really funny that he couldn't recall which year he graduated from college but he remembers every scene he’s directed. Speaking of college Sanele is an alumnus of Boston Media House Sandton (ohw yeah) guess where I went to college?.........and the crowd goes wild yeahhhhhhhhhhhh

Ok sorry ma bad, back to why we are here.

Q : Have you ever googled yourself? it’s like you never existed and then Boom! nominations nominations nominations. Who is Sanele Zulu, where is he from and how did he get into directing?

A : I’m from Pietermaritzburg in KZN, born and raised there until I was 18 and that's when I left for Johannesburg to go study. I started knowing about TV and film through my cousin’s husband who was Tumisho Masha at the time. During high school I was in a dilemma, around grade 10/11 you hit a place where you don't know what you gonna do with your life. So I started talking to Tumisho around that time and then I was interested in the arts, directing specifically. In grade 11 I had visited Johannesburg and I saw him on set and I was just intrigued by this one guy who kept walking up and down with a script. Where is he disappearing to, where is he coming from, whats going on with him?

 So I fell in love with that and  then I studied film and production in Boston and I got my diploma. 

Q : When was that ? 

A : Uuuhhmm....tilts head to the side......mhmmm...... 2005/2006 around there, I will have to check. 

(Hilarious)

Immediately after that I served as an intern at Isidingo but during my studying time I was Tumisho’s PA just so that I can get cash. So I would intern at Isidingo and help out during my time as a PA while I was studying. When I completed my studies someone resigned at Isidingo as a directors assistant. They offered me the job and I took it. From there they trained me to be floor manager which is what we call assistant director and from there they trained me to be director, which is what I am currently.  

Q : Your nominations - how many times were you nominated and how many of those did you bring home?

A : I don't have an award just yet. I was nominated along with the other directors of Isidingo, then I got a singular SAFTA (South African Film and Television Awards) nomination last year for Scandal (Best Director of a TV Soap) and a Royalty Soapie Awards nomination this year for Outstanding Directing Team - Scandal again.

Q : "abanthu abanconywa up until they get their accolade/s".... *clears throat* ...you said this after I SUCCESSFULLY (if I may say so myself) mixed a scene on one of your episodes on Gauteng Maboneng, for the first time. So what do these nominations mean to you.

A :Its always great to win an award but for me the nominations did so much that I started getting work which is what is happening right now. I don't search for work anymore I get called. Its kinda put me in a good place because I feel like even people that hire me now, they hire me because they are confident that they need a certain kind of director and this is the guy they want, so that they get the best story out there. Like I said it would be nice to win but the nominations did enough to put me in a good place amongst the great directors that are out there in South Africa.

Q : How would you describe your directing style? 

A : I obviously look up to someone who directs as well. I look up to Michael Bay director of Transformers, Bad Boys, The Rock, Pain & Gain. He’s a dope director as far as I’m  concerned.

(Actually you guys both started out in the industry in a very similar way)

Exactly! He’s my kinda guy. But if I had to describe my directing, for instance right now I'm predominately in soapie. I do a drama here and there, and a sitcom if opportunities come up. I'm more single cam but I'm in multi cam.....if that makes any sense.

(Please elaborate) ........* students take note*

Obviously you know in a soapie and sitcoms we have 3 cameras and you are boxed into a set. So what I tend to do is even when I'm in that world I will break the rules so that I can shoot single cam. For instance I will make a hole in a bin so that I can get a through the bin shot, as someone is throwing away something that is important. Instead of shooting a reaction of someone and then shooting the drop in of the bin. Just to be different.

One of the things I have a gripe about with soapie directors,which I hate and that I don't do, I can proudly say. Is the tick tock, sitting down and having a conversation, standing up and having a conversation. I mostly make it what we do on a daily daily basis. If it’s a morning scene, people are preparing to go to work, which means you are going to the kitchen, making a sandwich, going to your room, get your bag as you are talking, up to the point where you leave the house. Instead of sitting down and we gonna discus this and then I'm gonna get up and get my bag and then I'm gonna go, that's boring.

Q : Sitcoms and Soaps only? Is that like your thing or you are eventually gonna move onto other genres, have you ever done a music video?

A : I tried a music video but a music video is not for me. I did it for a friend of mine and the one thing I realized about music videos was I'm story driven. I've got  to read something for me to feel like I like this, I've got to tell it this way. I tried a music video, they are about pretty pictures and about girls dancing. I'm not that guy I guess.

Q : Why don't you bring the story into the video?

A : See the thing about that is it’s mostly dependent on the artist, so the director doesn't have much of a say. Even in sitcoms and soaps there are executive producers and whatever. In a music video aspect of things I feel like the artist has more of what to say and how it needs to look,  you can just help out technically more than create the whole thing. 

Q : I noticed most of South African soaps and sitcoms are written by the same writers. Lets take Gauteng Maboneng and My Perfect Family for example, those are 2 sitcoms you directed. What do you do to keep it fresh and original?

A :Look, this is one thing I realized about sitcoms, they are fun to do because they take me away from the intense story lines of soaps and drama and all that stuff. I feel a director can do so much but it’s mostly reliant on the actors. If the actors are gelling well together and they bounce off well together, then it’s gonna be dope. Obviously I will still direct, give movements, give action and enhance where the joke is not clear. Tell them this is what it is, you have to say it like this for this to happen. I feel this is my own opinion, 70% of it is mostly on script and the actors.

With a drama you tell the story using different type of shots, it’s more me. I'm not saying the actors and the script mustn't be great, but If the script is bad in a drama or soapie I can change it, I can make it look good. By probably positioning the actors in a certain area, where I position them is gonna enhance what they are doing and also play around with where the scene is taking place, whatever the case may be.

 I feel like in those instances a director has more leeway to make it better. You can make a script better in a soapie but if its not funny in a sitcom then its not funny. You cant make people act stupid to make it funny.

( I love pressure, I'm at my finest moment then.  Nah I don't  crack under pressure I don't buy into it  ) 

Q : Whats your craziest/best scene you've ever directed? better yet take me through it step by step, lets paint a picture for someone whose never seen it.

A : Ok what I consider to be the best thing I've ever done has to be the Thembeka and Quinton wedding on Scandal. It was a four day location shoot and the story line was it’s a wedding but it’s actually not about the wedding. Everything that can go wrong in a wedding, goes wrong in that wedding and ends with the bride killing a man on her supposedly special day.

She had to push the guy and I had a doll to fake the body. It was so dope. So this doll obviously had the pants of this guy, I did it 4/5/6 times because I wanted it. I was like it’s gonna work it’s gonna work. So we held the guy up and he was blocking the shot, all you could see was his legs and she comes into shot waaaaaay up there.  

It was a dope story line first and foremost and it helped that we shot it outside of studio,because I could get more creative and use whatever I had at my disposal to make it look good, which is what I did. 

To pull off something like that you need a dope DOP and it needs a relationship between me and this guy.

soapie directors or studio directors are not used to location which is harder because on location you work with a shot list, and in studio you script a scene, which is two different things. It sounds the same but its two different things.

(check out the clip below for an in depth description of the wedding and the behind the scenes footage. For a good 3 seconds you actually get to see Mr Zulu doing his thing)

Q :While You were working on Gauteng Maboneng you were also working on Scandal, and it was the same thing with My perfect family. How did you manage? I mean you were scripting for that show, scripting for this show, and then some intern “she who must not be named” goes and misplace your scripted script. On the day of the shoot nogals. The nerve!

A : Look it’s time management, it’s tough, it is really tough. If you think about it scripting one episode for a soapie takes about 2 and a half to 3 hours. A sitcom is quicker for me, I don't know about other guys. A sitcom for me takes about 1 hour 30 minutes, that’s the whole script. Simple reason being the stuff we spoke about. Its not primarily a shot driven genre. It’s mostly mid shots, mcu, and tight shots. 

Sitcoms are usually shot in 2 months and they work according to my schedule instead of me working according to their schedule.

Q :Have you ever cracked under pressure?

A :  I love pressure, I'm at my finest moment then. Nah I don't crack under pressure, I don't buy into it. 

What we tend to do and this is like in life and whatever kind of pressure. I feel like People just wanna keep going instead of just chilling for 5 minutes and look at it, what does it require really? I promise you I promise you this thing called pressure it wouldn't be there. I love pressure.

(you thrive under it)

Ja that's my thing and I like proving people wrong, without saying that too. 

I remember when we were shooting the wedding, people were talking like ja this is a big one and Sanele is a studio director. And I was like “dude if you have directed you have directed. You just need to tell the story either or, whether you are in studio or wherever”  

We finished shooting and we told great stories. It’s just that there's too much egos and doubt, when people are not confident in their craft. 

It’s Just a few number of us who are like “Nah write the script and I will do it for you or whatever the case might be” 

(Kwasha!!!) 

Q : What makes a film great for you, Are there certain qualities that make a film better for you and do you direct a film while watching? 

A : Hahahaha yeah sometimes but It’s not to say she or he was wrong, it’s more of a taste thing at the end of the day. For instance the reason I like Michael Bay movies, everything he does there for me is spot on, I can never fault him. I know other people probably don't like him which is cool we have our differences. Michael Bay always has comedy, action and intense moments. I feel like nobody shoots action scenes like that guy.

(and he always wants to blow up everything)

But its nice and believable. Its not like eeehhh that was a little wack. If you look at bad boys 2 the highway scene in the Ferrari that was sick, and transformers I mean they speak for themselves.  

(except for the last one)

I liked the last one, the last one was even playing last night with Mark Whalberg.

(Ok yes I like Mark Whalberg in the movie but bleeeh I wasn't impressed with the last one)

Are you serious???? Ok look obviously it wont be as effective as the other ones but he’s still keeping on the same style which has humor, intense moments, there’s drama and there’s action.

Another favourite would be Quentin Tarantino, I mean who doesn't love that guy? His different.

(he’s crazy)

That’s what it is and you need a little bit of craziness in you to pull off the things he does.And this is what is the problem with me and soaps and my boss. I don't have a problem with her personally, as such as it is a difference in viewing things. We are young and coming into a medium which has old people who have beeeen around. I mean yeah we also studied the stuff, yeah we know you can’t do this, you can’t do that but half of me sometimes feel like shit I wanna break that rule. I wanna see what happens if I break that rule, actually it's quiet nice I like it I’m gonna keep it. And then your boss tells you, you can’t keep it, but why? It’s just in the rules, that’s not how you do it. 

This is why I feel we are also just so backwards, because we are not breaking rules,our bosses are telling us no and it just becomes boring.

( My biggest fear in this industry, I don't ever wanna get too comfortable to the point that I don't prepare )

Q : So am I gonna see a feature film in the future?

A :Most definitely, so what’s happening right now, I’m doing a course in writing. I don't want anyone telling me how to shoot my movie, so ja I'm in the process of developing the script. To write, shoot and direct my own flick man. That’s  the dream. 

Q :What do you think of the South African TV/film industry right now, how are we doing and what can we do to improve?

A :Look I think it’s dope man, looking at the movies that came out in the past two years, we are definitely headed in the right direction.

(buuuuut)

I feel like we do little things and our heads get bigger than the little things that we’ve done and then we lose the bigger picture of this whole thing. Then you go work with people elsewhere in the little jobs that they have, which is a soapie or a drama. When you have done a big movie, which is just one movie really and its not that big, it’s big in South Africa, know what I'm saying. I feel like we should just calm down and remember why we are here. If we just sit down and stop thinking like we are bigger than the industry or whatever  it is that we are doing, we are gonna do more great stuff. 

We are on the verge of......for instance if you look at the hip hop industry here, they've broken out of that thing which was binding them, they are doing great stuff. I feel like we also probably like on a thin line right now, just to cross it so that everybody starts producing great stuff and shooting great stuff. But we  are busy concentrating on egos and things that are useless really.

Q : Ok last question - Batman or Superman?

A : Look man I've always been a Superman fan but I feel...... and this is probably script and story line, it has nothing to do with the superhero. The Batman movies are much more nicer now than the Superman movies and they are shot well. I watched Man Of Steel, it was cool but....

Q : OK so in the new Batman and Superman film, if we didn't already know how the movie ends, who do you think would get his ass kicked between the two?

I loved the director’s statement about the film.

“Ayanda is a story about women, made by women. The film is set in a vibrant and diverse Johannesburg and gives audiences a colourful and vivid view of South Africa right now," - Sara Blecher

*The film had a  successful screening at the Cannes Film Festival in France

*Had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was awarded a "special mention" by the World Fiction Jury when the 2015 festival winners were announced.

*Was the opening film at the 36th Durban International Film Festival this year.

This is director Sara Blecher's follow-up to her critically-acclaimed "Otelo Burning", which was also the opening film at the 32nd Durban International Film Festival in 2011.

Check out the trailer below.

Movie trailers are the reason I have trust issues. Where you'd find that the trailer is waaaaay better than the actual movie itself :(

When I first heard of the Batman and Superman movie I was like why why why whhhhhhy?.......Why can't these Hollywood people just let a good thing be? Why do they wanna erase my good childhood memories of these two super cool, super heroes in their own right. 

Why do they want Bruce Wayne to be KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN by Superman,why?.........Haykaloku bafethu lest we forget uSuperman lo une(lazer eyes) kaloku, ninjani na nina?

For most of his existence, Superman's famous arsenal of powers has included flight, super-strength, invulnerability to non-magical attacks, super-speed, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, vision powers (including x-ray, heat-emitting, telescopic, infra-red, and microscopic vision), super-hearing, super-intelligence, and super-breath, which enables him to blow out air at freezing temperatures, as well as exert the propulsive force of high-speed winds. And only has one physical weakness, Kryptonite. 

And what powers does Bruce Wayne AKA Batman possess?.............Sighhh

Unlike most superheroes, Batman does not possess any superpowers; he makes use of his genius intellect, martial arts skills, physical prowess, detective skills, science and technology, wealth, provocation of fear and intimidation.

Not only was I not impressed with where this was going, but later on I learned that Christian Bale was not going to be playing my dark knight in shining amour anymore. Hayke mxim that was it for me! I dismissed the movie and carried on with life as usual.

Until the trailer came out.....OMG

No I’m not exaggerating check it out for your self.

I wasn't so sure of Ben Affleck playing Batman, I mean even he said that “Daredevil had inoculated myself from ever playing another superhero”  

But now that I've seen some visuals I think he pulled it off. Hes no Christian Bale but he pulled it off.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice will be partially shot in IMAX, Initial filming commenced on October 19, 2013 and the movie is coming out March 25, 2016.

Ok so here’s what I don't understand or lets just put it this way, here’s what my mind refuses to understand.

When you google this movie and go to Wikipedia. it says  “ CHAPPiE is a 2015 AMERICAN science fiction film directed by Neill Blomkamp.

Let me repeat.......  AMERICAN science fiction film.

DA FUQ!!!

1. Ok so by now you've already picked up that the movie was directed by Neill Blomkamp, director of District 9 and Elysium. Who by the way is SOUTH AFRICAN. He was born in Johannesburg and left the country when he was 18 years old.

2.  He wrote the screenplay along with his wife Terri Tatchell.

3. The movie is based on Blomkamp's 2004 short film Tetra Vaal......... (By the way I have to say, this mans fixation with aliens gives me the creeeeeeeeps)

4. The movie takes place in a dystopian Johannesburg. Filming began at the end of October 2013 in Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA and wrapped in February 2014.

5. The film’s main character Chappie, is played by SOUTH AFRICAN actor Sharlto Copley, who was born in Pretoria, and now resides alternately in Cape Town and Los Angeles. My all time favourite character of his, has to be when he played Howling Mad Murdock in the 2010 adaptation of The A-Team.

6. The bad-ass drug and arms dealer Hippo (secondary antagonist ), is played by SOUTH AFRICAN actor Brandon Auret. He’s come a long way from playing Isidingo's Leon du Plessis.

7. Then you have  Watkin Tudor Jones (Ninja) and Yolandi Visser of the SOUTH AFRICAN zef rap-rave group Die Antwoord, at the center of the story.

Mmhhhhhhhh ok lets just take a second and let this sink in.

Wat dink jy?

I don't know maybe I'm being too patriotic, but check out the brief extracts below, from a interview  the director did with Variety.com

“Because Die Antwoord is native to South Africa, I felt the film had to be set there,” Blomkamp says. “However, I started to feel that I was treading too close to ‘District 9,’ so I moved the second draft to America. But moving the story to America felt like it created a fish-out-of-water feeling for Die Antwoord, so I set it back in Joburg, but with South Africa as the backdrop but not the star.”

“I love shooting there. South Africa not only was the perfect setting for the film, it just happens to also be very cost-effective and have world-class film crews.” -  http://variety.com/2015/film/global/neill-blomkamp-puts-johannesburg-in-the-spotlight-with-chappie-1201445717/

Alright so back to what makes this movie American kahle kahle???........ No its fine I’ll wait. 

Because while Blomkamp used his regular cinematographer, Canadian Trent Opaloch, and imported other department heads, “Everyone else was SOUTH AfRICAN,” says Steven St. Arnaud, founder of SOUTH AFRICAN service company Uncle Morris. “The special effects, mechanical effects and stunt teams are 100% SOUTH AFRICAN.”

I'm still waiting......

(Trent Opaloch, on set in SOUTH AFRICA using a Red Epic camera )

Opaloch captured all images of Chappie in movement by shooting Copley dressed in a tight, gray motion-tracking suit. Generally there were two passes, one shooting Chappie as he interacted with the environment and other actors, and another to capture background information for the same scene.

Sharlto Copley’s turn as Chappie is surely the most engaging motion-capture performance since Andy Serkis’s.....uhmmm....(rolls eyes) anything motion-capture, that guy is freakin awesome, but I think he might have himself some competion in this meneer here.

But “Chappie” differs from traditional mo-cap films in the way it used animators. Copley’s performance served “strictly as a motion reference, with all animation done by hand,” says vfx supervisor Chris Harvey. “There was no actual data capturing. It was traditional keyframe animation that matched his performance.”

The cinematographer’s biggest challenge was also one of the film’s most impressive assets: shooting a major sequence over three weeks in a giant abandoned factory that doubles as a gangsters’ lair, where Chappie lives with his new parents, played by Yolandi Visser and Ninja. 

Ok hayno I'm tired of this waiting game mna ngoku.

So I'm just gonna assume the movie is considered an american film because the production company Media Rights Capital (MRC) is an AMERICAN based company, and it was distributed by Columbia Pictures which also happens t...you know what, I'm not even gonna explain Columbia Pictures.  

Ohw ya  I almost forgot, silly me. 

Also in the movie was Dev Patel, you'll remember him from Slum Dog Millionaire, Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and Sigourney Weaver (Avatar)

So yesterday marked the 24th anniversary for Spike Lee's fifth feature-length film.  

I was 4 months and 23 days old when this movie was released June 7th 1991. Yeah that's got nothing to do with anything but if you are good at maths you now know when is my birthday, I'll be expecting a gift thank you.

So the movie was written, produced, and directed by Spike Lee. Ohw wait.....he also starred in it as well, he played the role of Cyrus. 

The soundtrack was composed and scored by the legendary Stevie Wonder.

Prior to its release, the film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where Samuel L. Jackson won the Best Supporting Actor award and the film was awarded the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention. 

Coincidentally, at the same festival, it was the only time 3 Black American films were shown – ‘Jungle Fever‘ by Spike Lee, ‘A Rage in Harlem‘ by Bill Duke, and ‘Boyz N The Hood‘ by John Singleton. 

It also won an Human Rights Award and was named the 10th Best Film of the Year.

(Annabella Sciorra, Spike Lee, Wesley Snipes and Samuel L. Jackson on set)

The film was based on interracial relationships at the time. It was inspired by the Tawana Brawley case (an African-American woman from Wappingers Falls, New York, who gained notoriety in 1987–88 for falsely accusing six white men of having raped her), as well as the story of Yusuf Hawkins, a young man killed when it was rumored that he gone into Bensonhurst, New York to date an Italian girl.

The director declared Halle Berry too beautiful to play a drug user, but when she auditioned for the role of Vivian she became something else. Its believed her interpretation of the character is what set the tone for her career.

“It’s always nice to have foreground, it shows that it’s not a set. That life goes on and beyond than just the set” - Sanele Zulu

That time he wasn't even talking to me but like hell I wasn't going to jot that down on my notebook.

Mr Zulu is a multiple award nominee director... having directed Isidingo on SABC 3, Scandal on Etv, My Perfect Family on SABC 1 and Gauteng Maboneng on SABC 2. 

So kahle kahle lo bhuti dominates the four most popular channels emzanzi mos. Great guy to work with futhi, as long as you don't mess with his work. 

That! he takes very seriously and I thank God I'm still alive to say this. I once messed with his work and I almost committed suicide. I preferred death than face him and tell him what I did. That’s how serious he is.

“Own Shit!”...that’s what he said to me.