- the thank you emails that went out to our guests, and asked them to upload photos to a file share that MrFodder set up, so we would have all of the photos in once place. A lot of them were very generic, and we plan to send out proper thank yous once we get back from our honeymoon (as that is also when we'll get the official photos from the wedding photographer, but some of them were customised.
- this one is pretty sad. I found out that my cousin's grandmother isn't doing so well. We spent some time with her as kids, as she lives near a beach, and we'd often go to visit her in the Summer. I also stayed with her for a week before starting Year 12, and even though she's not directly related to us anymore (her son divorced my aunt - though her grandchild is my cousin), she has always treated us like family. She sent us a nice lace heart thing for the wedding, so I wanted to write her a snail mail letter to thank her, and send her some of the photos from the wedding.
- super giant semi-personal project that I've committed to. One of the senior developers on my team is leaving. He's the one who basically made me the coder that I am today (I don't know if that's something he's proud of, since he might think I'm a rubbish developer, so I've never told him). He also shares my love of crappy B-grade movies, and James Bond movies, so I want to do a Threat Level Midnight-style James Bond parody featuring the people in our team as the cast members.
I had actually thought of the parody idea a while ago, but I figured I would have plenty of time to write the script and film it, since he seemed like he was going to stick around for a long time. Unfortunately, an email was sent out today saying that his last day will be in a few weeks.
So I went around trying to recruit various people for my movie. Most of them were happy to take part, though I had to reassure some that their part would be fairly minor. But the whole point of it is to be really low-budget with crappy acting, so I'm not expecting any Judi Denches or anything like that. Plus, given that a high proportion of my team is male, I don't even have a proper Bond girl. But hopefully, that'll just add to the charm.
I want to make it slightly Java focused, because we are Java developers, but I also want to keep it not too techy, as less than a quarter of the team are developers, so I don't want to alienate most of the audience. A few of the scene ideas I've had so far:
- opens with James Bond (character name TBD) and his current female love interest trying to break into some sort of secret building. They get caught, and James Bond has a choice, he can either try to finish the mission, or rescue his girl. He chooses the mission, and the girl is killed. As she is dying, she says, "Don't worry about me, I'll be garbage collected soon." (Java joke, as unused objects get cleared up by the garbage collector. I'd like to do a callback to this scene later in the movie, as James is breaking in again, and you see his love interest still on the floor. He runs to her and asks how she's still alive. And she replies that garbage collection hasn't run yet. (Another Java joke, the objects sit there waiting to be cleared up, but the JVM isn't guaranteed to run garbage collection at any specific point in time, so the objects might hang around for a bit.)
- as a parody of Oddjob, I want to have a character who also throws things, but instead of throwing his hat, he throws..... Exceptions! (Java joke: your code can throw things called exceptions as a way of saying, "Ooops, something you didn't expect happened.")
- we can't afford an Aston Martin, so I'm just going to try and make a fake Aston Martin hood ornament and stick it on my Hyundai. Jeremy also suggested overlaying fake Aston Martin engine sounds as a background sound - for all the car geeks who would notice those things.
- as I mentioned earlier, we don't have a Bond girl, so Intern Daniel is going to be our Bond girl. I'd really like to get one of those t-shirts with a picture of a body of a woman wearing a bikini on it, and film him walking out of the water at the beach, but given how cold it is, I don't know if that's going to be a health hazard. But I'm keeping my eye out for the bikini shirt.
- Geoff suggested having a golden keyboard (parody of the golden gun), which has the power to hack into any computer. As a super cheesy ending, Intern Daniel suggested that the golden keyboard be destroyed by the big bad guy, and James Bond realises that he was the one with the power all along, not the keyboard. I think that's too cheesy though. Fits in for a kid's movie, but not James Bond style.
- I have someone who is going to play Q, and so I'm going to get him to give James Bond some seemingly crappy gadgets that will come in handy at some point during the movie. I'd really love to get my hands on a Nokia 3310, I wonder if my dad still has his.
- explosions, and lots of them. Not sure how I will achieve this on my zero-budget, but I will try. Grad Daniel wants a scene where he goes to lock his car and it explodes, but exploding cars aren't really on my budget either. I guess I'll have to get creative.
- I'm thinking there has to be a dramatic card game at some point, but I don't know if we have enough cast members for that. Also, doesn't quite fit the plot at the moment. But baccarat seems to be a staple of Bond movies. Of course, we could have a crappy unrealistic poker scene. Although I really want to parody the scene from Austin Powers (as quoted from the TV tropes page): "In the first Austin Powers, Number Two hits on a 17 while playing blackjack in a Las Vegas casino, despite being advised to stand. Sure enough, his next card is a 4, making 21. He has X-Ray Vision from his Eyepatch of Power, and could at least see the card. Austin then subverts the trope by trying to upstage Number Two's risky playstyle. He holds on 5, and loses."
To be honest, I'm a bit torn at the moment. While I feel committed to this movie, as I've already told so many people at work about it, I kinda want to go and visit my cousin's grandmother, in case she doesn't make it until we return from our honeymoon.
Either way, I feel like there's a lot of writing in my immediate future, and a few posts will probably consist of draft scripts, so I understand if you don't find this interesting and want to tune out for a bit. Fodder will return shortly in..... Tales from Europe.
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I want to add that it probably seems like I don't do all that much work at work, since I seem to have all these crazy ideas, like the boss mug (I can't remember if I explained that, but it was when I made my boss some "World's Best Boss" mugs, with a picture of him on it, and printed a copy for every developer on the team. Then I organised a meeting with all of the developers, who would drink out of that mug in front of him, and I also presented him with his own boss mug at the end.
I do actually do work at work, and these extra-curricular activities are in my own time.
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