Well, the software’s here…

…but the Mac still hasn’t shipped – with any luck that should be winging its way out of the Apple factory tomorrow.

If there’s one thing I love about Apple (apart from making the best computers on the planet), it’s their packaging. The boxes for Shake and FCP Studio are gorgeous, sitting here taking up most of my desk (the box for FCP Studio is huuuuge).

I actually got round to writing a few more pages of the new screenplay over the weekend. I’d dried up a little, what with Alligator and Mac excitement, so I figured that if I was at least to have the first act done by Christmas I’d better get a shift on…

It was reeeeeaaaallly hard work. But I felt good for it. I was going through some doubts about the whole thing, but then I took out about four lines, and wrote another scene and felt infinitely better about the whole thing.

Two more sequences and I’ve got me a first act (of sorts).

I spent most of Saturday night until the wee small hours hacking away at that cafe scene in Alligator. It’s getting there, but it’s still not quite on the money yet. I need to let is rest for a few days, show Ken, then have one more go at it I think.

I also managed to add a few lines of dialogue I thought we’d had to lose. They were only recorded over one shot (two takes) and both takes, the frame is perfectly in focus (see graphic below), except for Ken – I guess there was a blade of grass or something in front of the camera, as David and Denis were about twenty metres away on the other side of the canal for this shot.

I didn’t think there were enough cutaways left to cover the shot (it was quite long – almost a minute) but I managed to find some other footage that matched rather nicely, which I’m rather pleased about.

If you haven’t checked at fellow screenblogger David C. Daniel’s blog lately, he seems to be having a rather good time of it. Nice one David!