of hailey, films and vegemite

Hailey, doing her iPhone filmmaking thing.

You might remember that on my very first day in Australia, Maile and I had the honour of meeting photography and filmmaking team Hailey & Andrew Bartholomew, who also happen to be partners in real life.  I've admired their work for such a long time -- Hailey's photographs capture light in beautiful ways; but even more impressive are her joy-filled videos.

"I wish I could make films like you do, Hailey," I said, within minutes of meeting her.  "Filmmaking is something I'd really love to learn."

"It's not that difficult," she said.  "I can teach you."

"Seriously?"

"Well, I mean, of course it takes practice.  You know what you should do?  Do you have an iPhone?"

"Yes ... but it's old. The camera on my iPad is better."

"You should practice with that.  Those i-devices are amazing.  We've done movies with our iPhones before.  In fact, you know the video with the heart rocks?  That entire thing was completely done with the iPhone.  Just practice with that, and then once it starts to feel comfortable, you can move on to your big camera."

Hailey gave me a ton more tips -- on how to hold the camera, how to storyboard, that sort of thing (all of which, by the way, is beautifully encapsulated in her online tutorial, Making Films on your iPhone or iPad -- if you're interested in learning how to do it, you should totally check it out).  She encouraged me to pull out my iPad everywhere we went in Australia to film as much as possible, and then, when I returned to Houston, put it all together in a video.

Unfortunately, I thoroughly failed in this mission.  Although I did get quite a bit of video footage, I didn't get video of some of the most important things we saw (for example, neither the Sydney Opera House or kangaroos are anywhere to be found).  Then, when I did upload everything to my computer, I became overwhelmed by everything I did have.  I'll probably try soon to make some sense of it all, but clearly I need lots of practice.

That said, there is one clip that needs to be shared.  And I wasn't the one who filmed it.

One of the things I wanted to try when I visited Australia was vegemite, which, according to Wikipedia, is "a dark brown Australian food paste made from leftover brewer's yeast extract with various vegetable and spice additives."  (It's like they're not even trying to make it sound appetizing.)  I had been told frequently that vegemite is similar to Marmite, the British version of the stuff, which is something I actually have tried before.  All due respect to my English brothers and sisters, but the only way I can describe the taste of Marmite is "evil."  Seriously, it is horrifying.  So I will admit that I was not holding out much hope for vegemite, but I figured hey, I'm here in Brisbane, Australia for heaven's sake, and really, what better place to try vegemite than in a fancy breakfast lounge in a nice hotel?

So I handed Maile my iPad, and dove right in.  With apologies to Australians everywhere for my appalling behaviour, click here or the image below to see what happened:

So, yeah.  Not me at my best, there.

(For the record, I truly do think Australia is a magical place, every other typically-Australian meal I had there was fantastic, and I'm already plotting how to get back.  I just won't be having the vegemite again when I do.)