Monday, November 13, 2006

Painting the town red with Mr Brown

How did the ATOM Awards go? Well, we left with one of the sharp little perspex fellas, but we were hoping for 2 or 3. We won Best Multimedia, for the Uluru - Kata Tjuta DVD. We had two of the other four nominations in this category, so that in itself was a pretty good effort.

Mr Brown commenced sinking beers before we even left the office. We reached Melbourne in fair to good condition. (Note, if you can detect a smug tone of detachment here its because I was on water all night on account of flu thing.) On board the plane I copped a brisk elbow to the head from a hostie during the safety mime show. Avoid 10C on the Jetstar Hobart flights.

When we got out of the cab in front of our hotel, Mr Beige looked up and down Fitzroy Street muttering to himself "where can I buy some underpants?" When we assembled at the George Hotel across the road for a few more nerve-settlers, Mr Beige had gone off to apparently "meet a friend". Sharpest dressed was certainly Mr Pink. Mr Brown says he looked up "lounge suit" in Wikipedia but still appeared in jeans.

We whizzed off to the glittering function, Mr Tan leaving the company Amex card behind the bar at the George. Inside the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Federation Square we met up with our Melbourne-based designer Ms Cerise, our former editor Mr Purple, and our receptionist Ms Magenta. We hadn't seen Cerise for ages so we filed past and kissed her on the cheek. I was told I was "slobbery".

We entered the cinema, raked at an alarming angle. The compere, Denise Scott, looked like she was at the bottom of a well. She amused herself making the artsy filmo types uncomfortable with some arse jokes then finally got on with it.

It was too stuffy and a bit boring for me, in my intolerant fluey state. Elf called to tell me Michael had used the word "magnificent" to describe a piece of LEGO armour, so I used that as my pretext to hang around Fed Square for a while, find a bottle of water and enjoy the warm evening. Mr Beige (looking very comfortable downstairs) was doing the same. Eventually we slouched back in again. Just in time to see us miss out on a couple of awards.

Thingo Media, with whom we are collaborating currently, won two awards in a row. Mr Tan seethed. Our smokers left en masse to seethe while smoking. We missed another one. I was busting. Finally came the Best Multimedia, and... fffffffah, we got one. If we'd dudded that one with three of the five nominations there might have been a scene. I thought that was it for our nominations, and rushed out.

Emerging from the stylish ACMI toilets (the only place without lively plasma screens), I met Messrs Brown, Beige, Purple and Tan, muttering and ordering drinks. I had missed our last chance, and so had we. There were only two nominations for Best Website, and we didn't get it.

Ours was Dust On My Shoes, a big budget whopper with ABC, TECC and Australian Film Commission money. It was my entire working output for about nine months, not to mention the masses of work contributed by others at Roar, original music written and recorded, travel undertaken across Europe, the Middle East and Asia... yadda yadda.. Very wide in scope anyway.

The winner was www.purepictures.com.au, by Jasmin Tarasin. Its a lovely site for a film production company, (much like ourselves). She has done very well to beat our site that simply dwarfed her project in scale and funding. We were glum about it last night but there you go.

Crumpler Bags sponsored the awards, and each winner was given a Crumpler with their pointy trophy. I decided we might as well make a statement, so I got the bright red backpack out of its polythene bag and put it (the pack) on over my suit. I wanted to say - "make no mistake, I am a WINNER".

We wobbled out into the night like the lost patrol at about 11 in search of dinner. We were a leaderless rabble by this stage, with Brown and Tan focussing on more drinks and only Beige lending me any real support in getting the tooth into some food. If I recounted the places we went you would not believe it plus it would be boring.

I aggressively charged into a Greek place that looked OK and had no queue. I had decided to cut myself loose from the pack. Everyone ended up sheepishly coming in and having Greek too. Then I caught a cab home. You can only drink so much water, and I was saving some energy for the morrow.

Unsurprisingly, Brown and Tan continued to go in hard, and flew home the next day without bothering with sleep. They were spurred on by Purple (who seems to have friends with "stuff" and "gear" in every club in the country), and accompanied until dawn by Pink. Apparently "sleeping and eating's cheating".

I had my best night's sleep in ages.

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