Matt Kinsman

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Blackwater - My latest short film

Hi guys! 2015 is coming to a close and I thought I would squeeze one last small project in before the year was over. I present to you Blackwater.

"When a hitman is found out by his protege, only one of them can leave alive. A short test film by Matt kinsman, featuring Troy Angove, its another test film as I prepare for 2016 feature film project. This one was to try out nunchaku and nunchaku fights with martial arts action, a bit time constrained but I liked what we came up with :) feel free to leave comments or suggestions for other shorts :) Some stills below;





 Video embedded below for your enjoyment; :)


 notes;
I wish we had longer to film this as we had great chemistry and we had fun making this short. But those who have worked with me know we usually shoot for three hours and that's it, and 2/3 of us were running late as it was ;)

We got to the location and it was empty (much to my relief, gambling on my part). We started shooting and then realised the tide was coming in so each shot we were slowly making our way up the hill, which keen observers will notice :)

I was running late as I had to buy black shoes and black pants on the way and couldnt find my size, or the pants with the right material as I needed to be able to kick. The first pair I fit no problem but fit so close I couldnt kick so had to stop at another store on the way over haha.

I wrote the script the night before as was still wrestling with different ideas of things I'd like to try. I want to try something with blood and a knife fight. (you can see a knife here but was going to be extended originally). So no blood again in this one as was pressed for time but my first project next year will have some fake blood in it. I need to master it!! This short film experimented with weapons which was nice. However adding sound fx in post was time consuming, wow, way too many nunchaku twirls!

When I do a proper film though will have these safety ones painted to look either like gunmetal or hardwood. Used this as both had work in following days, and last thing we need is a nunchaku marked across our faces! Any other weapons you'd like to see?

Anyway, Hoped you enjoy the short film and I wish you and your family a happy holidays and happy new year! 2016 should bring me my first feature film and a couple of good quality fan films, so see you in the new year and hope to entertain you further!!!! :)


Thursday, August 20, 2015

The Bulletlist - Finished and Uploaded!!!

Hi! Happy to announce to everyone that the 'webisodes' are up online now on my Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/themattkinsman) for my project, THE BULLETLIST. :)

Check it out below! :) I really hope you enjoy it. I learnt alot (emphasize ALOT) on this journey and now turn my attention to shooting a feature film. Thanks again for your patience, juggling real life with my dream has been a 'challenge' but I'm happy there is something to show for it, enjoy :)







Also, a special thanks to those that made this possible - First and foremost, Steve! You rocked playing Gabriel and helped out heaps with most of the fightscenes, your attitude to work was inspiring especially since you were juggling this with your job as well and thanks for sticking through with it until the end. Hope this looks good on the resume ;)

 Kat, thanks so much, ever the professional, you impressed us and inspired us to step up our acting game plus had fun on set, I hope you enjoyed your time creating with us. 

Tui, Kamy, Toutai, Walter and Amber, thanks for taking part in our project with your various roles, hope your happy with the result :) 

and last but not least, LJ, thanks for helping us film the last episode and for your cameo in ep5, I'm looking forward to making some more magic on camera :) 

and to YOU - Thank you all for your support and I hope you'll be here for the next project/s :)

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Day 11 and 12 of The BulletList - Finished!! and 48hrs 'Why won't you love me? Uploaded!

Day 11 and 12 of The BulletList - The final shoots.

Locations. I was running out of locations. My house was shot to bits as well as local parks and such...When I wrote the script for this webseries I envisioned an apartment or hotel room where the main character would have been staying. Since this was a 'no budget' shoot and our character was supposed to be on the downlow- I ended up hiring a motel room. Seedy I know, but cost effective, private and spacey -surprisingly it turned out well. We shot on Friday night and Sunday night as we were all working during the day.

Day 11 was shooting all the remaining scenes between Suzy and Gabriel and Day 12 was shooting the action scene. I wont share any screenshots from that so it doesn't spoil anything for the story. But It was one of my more interesting shoots in a while, first for everything they say.

Anyway here are a couple non-spoilery screenshots in the meantime;





48hour Short film - Why won't she Love me - Now online!

I have uploaded the short film to my youtube channel now we got the ADR done for the first line of the film. It's about a first date not going the way the main character was hoping. Shooting this was a great experience and we learnt alot from it. Having backup actors/actresses, PLAN B's, Post Edit time management etc... 

If you haven't seen it yet, now's your chance! Hope you enjoy it :)



So now what?

As I mentioned in earlier blogs I've returned to Karate training (after how many years? 4?) and it's been a great blessing, my technique is getting much sharper again, It's a great time out from the routine of work/home and I am going to work towards getting that Black belt one day.

I entered the Sanda tournament this past weekend for the NZ nationals but was heart broken when I was all geared up for the 7th and final fight, sitting on the opponent chair with my team, waiting for an opponent who would never appear ( he got injured during one of the first fights they tell me and no one wanted to fight me, I was 71k and everyone was bigger or had already fought or was from my club) 

It was one of the biggest disappointments in my life. I had been training the last month and a half at home/in my garage and had already fixed my mindset, as well as taken a leave day off work. The next invitational is in September. I might be out of town then but would love to try again. I feel I have unfinished business in the Sanda ring. My record is 1-1 and I still want to rectify that first loss as I've been working on my low kick/wrestling game since then and have improved I feel. I've got to do this again - Proving to myself I have what it takes...Standing there, frustrated. Watching the others get medals I unwrapped my hands with a heavy heart and swore next time I get on those mats, I'm going all out...


Now that I've finished the Bulletlist Shoots I'm going to finish the editing and upload the series onto my Youtube channel by mid August (in a couple of weeks). I plan to start finishing the screenplay to my indy feature I am working on and try and begin preproduction/fundraising on that. I also hope to do a couple of short films in order to increase traffic to my channel, shooting fan films of things that I'm a fan of and network with some more actors/crew in order to build my next project.

I've watched alot of great TV shows and movies recently and feel I've learnt alot of storytelling techniques and ways to build up character I hadn't been aware of previously. Already with The Bulletlist if I could do it over from scratch it would be vastly different, but I am happy with how it turned out for what it was, just a couple of people running around with a camera making up a story as they went along for practice and to lead to bigger things...

Work's sort of busy at the moment but Being an action actor/filmmaker has always been the main goal and I need to make things happen. Look at all the things Bruce Lee achieved by the time he was 32? I haven't even done a single film to my name. That's got to change if I've got any hope of nailing my goal. I've got to be the change I want to see ;)

Thanks for your support :)

Friday, June 26, 2015

Day 10 of The BulletList -Screenshots from Sunday's Gabriel vs Killer Scene

As an actor/Director the most frustrating feeling you can have is the feeling that you can't be in two places at once. I love to direct and see the action happen on the lens realtime, but I also love to do the acting out. It's as vain as Kayne saying the worst feeling for him is he'll never get to see Kayne live haha. Anyway, I reached out to LJ if she was going to be free to shoot something with us on Sunday and she replied she was keen :) Which is Fantastic cos that meant we wouldnt have to suit our fight the run and tripod way (see My house; or any of my early fight films with Sam)

So with my Sunday off work (finally) LJ was kind enough to donate some time to help us out with shooting the finale episode's fight scene between myself and Steve, who was nice enough to be free on Sunday also :)

I had originally envisioned it to be the best stuff I have ever done, however due to time constraints and budget issues again I had to lower the bar on my ambitions (blood, powder/ breakables) and save it for another day, but what we came up with was pretty awesome in my biased, enjoyed the hell out of our time, opinion. Best stuff I've ever done on film anyway. Got to break something and at least it wasn't the window (almost) LJ (electrical lamp cord, long story) the lampshade (a little) or any bones ;)

The stuff we captured looks great onscreen even though we were playing with shadows most of the time as we were shooting indoors/low light and had no extra lighting.

LJ's camera has much better lens option and quality res than my own 'should be ok' camera I have used for the rest of the series. Only a couple more days of shooting now and a day on ADR....can't wait to have this thing in the bag :)

Below are some screen shots straight from Premiere, as much as I can without spoilers :)





Ending here we come! :)

Monday, June 1, 2015

Day 9 of The Bulletlist (Ep 4 Vinnie) - and some Mastercard Ad screen shots

Friday. I was dreading it as it was forecasted to rain a week earlier, but the sun was shining so thank god it didn't :)

Today we shot the fight scene for episode four. I'm happy I'm doing this project, I've learnt alot of things that I will do next time around (locations, casting, writing etc), first I have to finish it but it's been eye opening anyway and I look forward to sharing with you all what we came up with.

We shot on the rooftop of a parking building we used first time around before the rewrite. (so familiar to some) .The fight scene between Gabriel (Steve Heke) and Vinnie (Kamy Grewel) featured a little kicking and some dialog and is arguably some of the best stuff we have done, this and the last shoot were quite good. I'm in the middle of writing the choreography for the last episode as it has to be the best! :)

Screen shots from the shoot are below for your viewing.







Some badass screenshots, no?

In other news the Mastercard ad I did some extra work has been released, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, I didn't think I would be seen as way out, but I got a screenshot so have proof lol. Anyway, one day it will be more than just background apperances I can share. Just got to finish bulletlist, release a short film and get my feature up and running so I can show the world what I can do! :)

In white shirt, back right lol - I actually work in this mall for real so funny to see...


Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Day 8 of BulletList - Gabriel vs Wolfe Fight BTS

Good news. I have a week off of work. Bad news. It's supposed to rain all week.

I was determined to get some more of these scenes shot for The Bulletlist so this is the first week I've had to pay for a location (as with others coming up) so let's consider it an investment on my part. And sure enough, with all my history of shooting stuff in public, there was bound to be complications.


We shot at Lagoon stadium, an indoor sports stadium. I knew of this location because I play weekly futsal there and kick ass but that's a different story ;) I needed a gym location for this scene so this was perfect. Upside. It's normally dead weekdays in the am, but we were *not* lucky enough to have some bballers in the background. Which downside, means we will have to do ADR later for a couple of scenes I couldn't edit around. I shot myself playing Bball in the background so hopefully that is enough to establish there are b-ballers there when 'Gabriel' walks into shot but we'll see.

For Episode three Gabriel meets another hitman on The Bulletlist for him to 'cross' out. Amber Vanessa Davenport plays thecharacter of  'Wolf' and the two fight it out. It was our first time working with her and she was professional, easy going, focused and suited the part. She did an amazing job working with Steve to make this awesome fight and I feel we choreographed a nice exchange. 

Anyway, screenshots below from the edit, stay tuned for more news :)








I love filming, I try to enjoy the moments of making the magic come alive on screen and tell an entertaining story, I can't wait until this is my job for real so I'll never have to work again lol -feature film here I come :)

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Filmwork and Day 7 of The Bulletlist

Last week I did a day on the set of The Patriarch, a feature film being shot here by Lee Tamahori (director of The Devil's Double, 007 Die Another Day) which was awesome to see him work in person. Taught me you only need to shoot until you have the shot then move on. Lee of course, shot to fame over his film Once were warriors so this film seems a similar theme of family. Anyway, can't really talk about what happened in scene or what I did on it until it's release but just wanted to share I'm working on things here and there as I upskill and network :)

Day 7 was completed today for The Bulletlist webseries project, shot the missing scenes from Episode two and Episode One today at Highbrook park with Toutai and Steve so both those shoots are wrapped now, yes!! :)

4 more episodes to complete, mainly action scenes featuring Steve and others. Hoping to have this series released week by week late June/Early July. Will keep you up to date for sure. Just wanted to share some screenshots from today with you all :)


Toutai (left) and Steve (right) in character overlooking Mt Wellington in the background. Nice shot huh :)


Thank YOU for your support of this project :)


Stay tuned for more behind the scenes stuff :)

Monday, May 11, 2015

48 hours 2015 - Film Competition - My entry Review


Why Won't she Love me? - The story behind the story...


FRIDAY 1st May

7pm. From the third floor balcony of AUT, LJ and myself stared down at the AV screen on the ground floor of the centre. A huge crowd of people were there, waiting for the start of the 48 hour film festival (www.48hours.co.nz). Teams have 48 hours to make a short film that's no longer than seven minutes, includes a prop, character and character trait, line of dialog and camera technique all supplied by the competition leaders, to be included in the finished film. Nobody is paid, if you have A list actors, they must be volunteers to stay in the spirit of the game.

Professionals, semi professionals, amateurs and first timers all enter. And it's normally quite fun/stressful :)

When I arrived there, LJ already had our case of V energy drinks (one of the sponsors) and the number 4 in black marker across it. When the genre's are announced, we are assigned whatever 4 equals. We watched the intro, the line we had to use 'Oh really", the character 'Harper' -thoughtless, the technique -Match cut/ match dissolve and then the genre list...

This year we were assigned ROM COM. Wow. This will be fun? I hadn't entered a team in this competition since 2011, and I've eatched the odd rom com but they are always quite tacky, the last interesting one I watched was About Time which was quite smart...LJ was just as excited, ieas were running rampant but we were cautious too -we had seen some big crews at the opening event and it would basically be Her and I running ours.

 It's a short film. It has to have a great start, middle and end, have a stong finish, not necessarily a twist but something memorable to walk out with. And each line has to have a purpose. And it has to be a rom-com. Fish out of water then fishes together or couples that should be together already but something always comes up. what to do? Humor doesn't come from the lines but from the characters playing it straight. Hmm.

On the drive home from the event, A nice 20 minute cruise, I came up with an idea....The story should be of a young man, Dillon, who shows up to pick up a date he's never seen but exchanged messages heaps online, but somehow they don't really gel in real life, the fun and games from this result in a bad mix (the laughs) and a resolution (the twist/finish)

That night I stayed up and banged out a script as best I could.

FIRST CHALLENGE
I txted my actress I had organized a week before as she had said she wanted to be a part of the festival and looking for a team. She didn't txt back. I realised then that the first challenge of the weekend was at hand. I had organized a second actress Kat (who was already part of another team) to play a minor role if she could but that would depend on her team, I txted her to found out they were shooting at a beach miles away so a Saturday shoot was out of the question for her but she was super keen so I mentally penned in a Sunday am shoot. But that still left the main part, I frantically facebooked and txted past actresses for a replacement, everyone had either been too old for the part, busy with another team, our team was below their standards, not interested. Luckily, LJ said as a last resort she was happy to act so for our film it was to be the directors acting as well as editing and writing....frustrating as it was, I was comforted by the fact that it wasn't my first time taking part in this circus. 

I txted my actors, and ended up calling them, they wanted a meeting time but without an actress was hard to come up with one on the spot, decided to tell them beach 11am so done with it and could finish on Saturday as normal rule for me is friday write, saturday shoot/cut. Sunday edit/render/hand in.

The original actress did end up messaging me back, she wasn't in Auckland this weekend and didn't understand it was this weekend. Again, something for me to work on. Next year, I was telling LJ, we should have like 20 actresses/actors on call. And some crew. Cos this year this also meant the wife would have to do camerawork for us. Which luckily for me, she didn't mind..too much.



SATURDAY

Saturday came around, bright and early 6am I was on the computer checking messages having gone to bed 1am, trying for last minute actresses. I txted everyone that we would meet at cockle bay at11am and start shooting, the first scene involved a small action bit as my guy tried to impress the girl with his heroics, only fr it to end pearshaped. Check out the location :)

Been here maybe 3 months before, rainchecked it for a future shoot lol The actors got caught in traffic and not having a GPS found it quite hard to find so ended up getting here at 2pm, during the meantime we shot the beach walk scene and then just waited, trying to plan what else we could do.




After finishing the scene at around 4.30, we went to Maccas for lunch/dinner then went home as lighting was gone and deciding I would edit everything we had tonight. Tomorrow we would then film the montage scene as well as the final scene when Kat arrives. Went to sleep at like 2am, but happy that half the editing would be done. Tried to sleep, was wide awake/worrying/planning/imagining this going downhill fast.. we only had 2 and a half minutes of edited footage... On time so far...


SUNDAY

Lj and Kat met us at out place 8am and we got to it, shooting the interior scenes, then outside scenes on the street.


Apart from dealing with the odd kids in the background or lawnmowers and aeroplanes it went well, especially bread throwing scene. I was a bit concerned with set ups but that's filming isn't it, everything takes twice as long as you think in your head. If it wasn't for this stupid deadline of 7p tonight then it would be OK, but it's the whole point and time was running out. The ducks were happy though, fed them alot of bread haha.



After we finished we raced around a couple of parks and places I had in mind for the final scenes (making sure we got the match cut shot of shell turning to bread - you'll see) then back to my place at 3pm to start editing what we had shot today. It seemed impossible but the very word means 'I'M POSSIBLE' . So I went to work the normal way, importing the raw files into Premiere and reviewing the footage, cutting out the takes, choosing the best ones and trying to make the cuts smooth. LJ sourced some soundtracks and eventually we cut together the short film. We found out that the mornigns shots before we went outside had no sound. It appears the mic app was loose, practically kicked myself for not checking as meant first bit had to be soundless as no time to reshot. LJ and I revoiced our bits but Kat was long gone so will have to get here to resound her bits before I upload here to youtube for you all..Heats version is on the 48hour website.  frantically tried to add some fight sfx, missed a couple but got the main ones in there I think.

 Enough is enough, we're out of time and we started rendering at 6pm, I still hadn't time to watch the final edit, Just checked the cuts and hoped for the best as this laptop isn't super powerful so can't watch things in realtime. I'd find out what it turned out like later that night.

SO with laptop rendering and an estimated finish time of an hour (remember deadline at 7pm so cutting it close) we got in the car amazing race styles and headed to the city centre to hand in what we hoped was a just in time finish. Took as ages to find a park, meanwhile the wife has the laptop open telling me how long its taking when I ask, we find a park about 10 minutes away and jog down the street, holding the laptop, praying it would go faster. When we get to the hand in event there are hundreds of people, we find a table and watch the rendering time. 3 minutes on the clock. 4 minutes left to render. We're done, this year is over...

It finished, I put it on the USB and LJ handed in our finished copy 5 minutes after the deadline, exhausted, proud, relived and battleweary - but this at least means we can see it on the big screen at the heats. Hope people at least laugh...


 THURSDAY (heat night)
It was raining, but Melody and I arrived at Academy cinemas excited/nervous to see it our finished short film in a room full of strangers. During the heats when our short went on screen (5th of 12 shorts to show) I remember sinking into my seat, I want to be an actor but seeing myself up there is still a bit wow - did I do that? Some of the sound was off (again, I never saw the final edit before handing it in) so hard to hear the whisper bits, and missed the kick sfx.




I was happy 'Why won't she love me?" told a story and was simple enough for people to follow and get with. People laughed at most of the scenes that we aimed for laughs so that was good as our genre was a rom com and my biggest concern was getting laughs, I'm an action man, laughing's for villians ;). Competition was tough that night, it seemed everyone in auckland knows how to shoot a film lol but our stuff was just as good so relieved.... 

Anyway, left the cinema with the team who seemed happy with the result on screen, so happy for the team, they worked there ass off and it shows up there, really proud of it and our weekend from hell, now back to The Bulletlist webseries and getting that marathon done and completed :)



REVIEWS BELOW

Below are the reviews. Critics critique so cest la vie, We're happy with what we got all things considered...

'Why she won't love me.' by Dark Pictures


Team name: 
Dark Pictures
Film name: 
Why she won't love me.
Genre: 
Rom Com
Heat: 
5
City: 
Average rating: 
2.1625
Your rating: None Average: 2.2 (4 votes)
3.01
This fell into the awkward romcom category for me. There was some amusing stuff in there but wasn't really tight enough to pull it off completely.
Next year they could improve their film with more attention to sound, it was hard to hear some of the dialogue, but this is what this competition is all about.
3.01
I think the actual title for this one was 'Why Won't She Love Me', but never mind.
I think this film was hindered a lot by it's technical issues - mostly the badly captured / mixed audio. There were quite a few lines that were just inaudible.
The thing that stuck out most to me though was the story, or more specifically the ending. I felt like it really hurt the film when the guy ran away from the girl he'd just accidentally taken on a date. They were just warming to one another and it seemed like such a weird decision for him to make. It made the audience think less of him as a character and bad for the girl he left behind who we'd spent the whole film getting to know.
2.03
Technical woes aside, I wasn't really into the story on offer. The two never "clicked" on the date - she was downright repulsed by his dwebishness - making me want them to break it off rather than root for their happiness together. When the ending tried to sell you on a potential bond, I just couldn't buy it.
I enjoyed the robbery scene, however, That was well done.
4.06
A little shakey on technical and story, however I still liked that they tried to push for us to see a different side of the traditional "romantic comedy" genre, I was sure if the cringe moments were intentional or accidental but I liked the risk.

2.03
Decent concept, but it wasn't really sold by the actors or script, I didn't quite buy why the 'wrong' girl would go with him in the first place, why she would change her mind quickly at the end, or why the guy went after the 'right' girl anyway. The robbery scene was done quite well and the actors there were amusing. Sound quality definitely let it down, making some lines very hard to understand. Not a bad effort, but clear directions to work on next time.

 ________________________

Thanks for reading the blog and hoped you could take something from it, I will post the link to the video in the next blog :)

Matt.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Tauranga Road Trip 2015 - 3 day Vacay!

Yes! Bay of Plenty Roadtrip 2015, we had talked about this plan for a little while as we haven't explored this area of home before. I had managed to organize leave from work around Anzac weekend which gave the wife and I some much needed time off to unwind and relax.

Day1
On the first day we got everything ready, beach clothes, toiletries, warm clothes, and even bought the new death cab for cutie album for some nice road trip music (been meaning to get this). The drive to Hahei Beach was beautiful, a little windy as it snaked its way through the hills but very picturesque.


 When we got there, we parked at the car park which led to the pleasant 40 minute walk to cathedral cove, which adorned many a placemat as a popular tourist attraction. To grasp the history of how long it would have taken over the years for the water to make it's way through the cave like that. Some other rocks in the area will have a century or so before toppling over I imagine.

Here are some pics from the walk. Took some for the album, took some for my website, Pleased with the photos. Got a lot of ideas for my feature film, especially since the paths were quite photogenic.











Other than being bullied off the road by a herd of cows ;)


We eventually arrived in Tauranga at our booked Villa, Seascape villa, It was beautiful. The Photos didn't really do it justice, I was saying to Melody, when we finish up, I want a place like this. It was modern, the design was aestheically pleasing and the room was comfortable.

 

 We unpacked then headed for a fantastic dinner at the Neighbourhood Beer garden. Not normally a fan of BBQ pork ribs but wow, tasty, also, if you plan on being refined, this is very much a handheld food lol.

 Day 2
The next morning came and the lord blessed with a gorgeous day!
We had breakfast with our hosts. This was a different experience for us as used to staying in hotels and the like, but they had a very mom and pop feel, they wanted you to feel at home, offered advice when you wanted it, their knowledge on the area was superb and they had led very full lives, both mornings our conversational topics were quite varied. While eating on our selection of cheeses, meats, breads, cereals , jams and drinks - we enjoyed our company lot.


The city was a lot different in the day time, everyone was at the beach no doubt soaking up the sunshine :) We parked the car and headed on up.


The walk itself up the mountain was pretty easy, it wasn't too steep (a little more on the final leg though to be fair) and we enjoyed the walk/trek up the mountain alot. We snapped heaps of photos (which probably didn't help the traveling time) but we relaxed and made the normal rocky/final countdown jokes of all the training montages we liked and enjoyed the journey - The destination of the summit was the icing on the cake. Here are some of our favorite pics from our time there;











 
After this we went shopping at Bayfair which was their biggest mall apparantely


Then explored more of the city before a private hot pools session :)









After this we finished off the night by watching Avengers 2 in 3D :) Wow, I was sort of over it to be honest but halfway through it became exciting again, Iron man is definitely the character that holds them together :) Great film, Ultron was a good baddie too :)




Day 3

The LAST day of our holiday :( but arguably our best :).  We said goodbye to the Villa and went kayaking. Kayaking! I've always wanted to do this but never had the time/opporuntity. Today was the day :) The weather was overcast so perfect for not getting sunburnt and the river not too busy, so Melody and I had a peaceful relaxing time kayaking upriver. There was one cow which must have been quite jealous because it stomped its foot and looked like it was going to come in after us. It's easy to laugh now but I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten away lol. Imagine a swimming cow coming for you like Jaws, I must put that in a future short film :)







That Black cow in the middle. Thats it. I hope it doesn't read my blog lol.




 After kayaking we left Tauranga and headed down to Te puke to see the much talked about kiwifruit and also take the tour which was quite informative. Who knew we were so innovative? Plus kiwifruit jam, soaps, chocolates and the like, so many uses? I was impressed. Great tour, brought back memories of my day as a produce store man.














Driving away from Te Puke we headed to a Live bee display near Tauranga, Did you know that bees only live for 6 weeks? I learnt alot of different things there. That if a Queen bee dies, the next of her eggs the worked bees feed them royal jelly and the strongest of the 3 is the boss. They fight and the others will work with the rest. Amazing.








Last but not least was the L and P bottle statue n Paeora. These monuments look so big in photos you get there and all like unimpressed, then after taking photos you realize how big these things really are. And Yeah, that was us. We headed home on the main highway which was great as it was straight roads for the majority and got to watch the sunset :)







Overall a great trip and tomorrow I'm doing some extra work in a NZ feature film, then it's back to real life work. Looking forward to the next holiday :)