Whoever said that filmmaking was a glamourous industry, obviously hadn’t met the 48Hours filmmaking competition.

Last month I helped some friends to make a seven-minute film in a weekend. The whole thing had to be written, filmed and edited between Friday and Sunday evening. To keep things interesting, 48Hours teams find out their genre and a set of required elements on Friday night. This year’s elements were the character Sidney Manson, a fabricator; a broken toy; the line of dialogue “when you look at it that way”, and a dolly zoom shot. To keep things really we threw in a few elements of our own: So So Modern at Lower Hutt’s New Dowse Gallery (the opening of John Lake’s ‘Crude Futures’) and Beastwars at Mighty Mighty, and a leading man who had never acted before.

The Mammal Group drew the film-snob’s most dreaded genre: romantic comedy. The writers stayed up late on Friday night, plotting the perfect montage sequence, and the camera started rolling 9am Saturday morning – as did the comedy stunt fruit. Y’know, making a plastic bag burst on cue is a lot harder than it looks. We got through the weekend with a finished film, and with sanity and flatmate relations intact (though we might still owe Brian a pack of salt). Baly did almost drive half the crew the wrong way up Willis Street, but that’s another story.

I’m immensely proud of our team’s film: Baly and Lucy’s performances, Daniel’s hazy watercolour cinematography and pro editing, and the kick-ass, A Low Hum-powered soundtrack from So So Modern, Disasteradio, Signer and the brilliant Psychic Powers. All absolutely beautiful. Might have even got a bit dewy-eyed seeing the final edit on the big screen.

Watch (and listen) to The Mammal Group’s ‘The Wake Up’ below:

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of NZ Music Month. Even the NZ Music Commission’s own figures show that music sales and radio quotas spike each May then drop back to shit-all at the start of June, so you’ll excuse me for writing the whole thing off as a month-long ad campaign for Hallensteins t-shirts.

But the music biz has always been about more than money..it’s about all the awesome free stuff you can blag. And this May there’s a sackload of local music free for the downloading. Get into it, and if you like it – buy it, or get to a show.

Real Groove’s Awesome Feelings comp takes its fourth annual snapshot of the local underground. This year’s selection is all over the place, veering from shimmering pure pop to sludgy swamp-rock, speed metal, squeaky teen-punk and stoner rap. Selected highlights: ‘The Miseducation of Diana Rozz’, Piece War’s Nuggets-y ‘Call On Me’, and Tommy Ill making a grumpy-old-man interjection into Bandicoot’s bratty ‘Pretention Blast Gold’.

Auckland independent label Arch Hill Recordings celebrates its tenth birthday with a downloadable goodie-bag: 18 tracks spanning the label’s first decade, from Flying Nun exiles Dave Mulcahy, Lankey (JPS Experience’s Jim Laing) and David Kilgour, through to Family Cactus and Street Chant. Selected highlights: young Mt Roskill-ites Surf City’s dead-on rendition of the classic ‘Dunedin Sound’, and The Bats’ ‘Steppin Out’.

Of course, you’ve heard by now that Roger Shepherd has bought back Flying Nun. The first signing of Flying Nun Mk II, Grayson Gilmour’s No Constellation was released this weekend. See photos from the release show here, then go grab a free download of the single ‘I Am A Light‘.

A Low Hum have taken a different route, as always. Red Steers’ The Fever Fold EP is available for free download, with optional hand-printed artwork for only $10NZ.

My favourite local band of the moment, No Aloha have some beautiful demos available for free download on Bandcamp. It’s a wonderful mess of jangle, fuzz and soaring, chaotic pop. Grab it now.

Are you going to turn your lights off for Earth Hour tonight? Why? I know the ads are everywhere and Taika Waititi says you might as well. But what good will it really do?

The problem with Earth Hour is that it rewards people for making a tiny symbolic gesture, without encouraging them to make sustainable changes that will have a positive effect. An average 60w-equivalent ecobulb uses 16w/hour. So turning off five bulbs for an hour will save about 80w. That’s less than it takes to make a cup of tea and some toast. The planet would be better off if you kept the lights on but had cornflakes for breakfast tomorrow. You’ll save around 300w if you’re still using the old-fashioned tungsten bulbs, but you could achieve the same by replacing one of those bulbs with an ecobulb for less than a week. Earth Hour might make you feel good, but if the goal is to encourage people to change their behaviour for the good of the environment, then it just doesn’t make sense.

So if you really want to change the world, how about some small, sustainable changes that will actually make a difference? I don’t mean putting an egg-timer in the shower or unplugging the kettle at the wall. If it’s a pain in the arse, it won’t last a week.

Watch TV online instead. A half-hour episode of Shortland Street is only about 24 minutes without the ads – so Friday’s cliffhanger is effectively carbon neutral.

How about taking some friends out to watch some local bands at a bar or house party? The more people sharing the lights, PA and beer fridge, the more efficient it is.

Buy beer in swappa crates. Recycling glass is hugely energy-intensive, compared to washing and refilling swappa quart bottles. Better yet, hoard a few empty crates and brew your own.

Switch off the guitar amp and take up something acoustic. The ukulele doesn’t have to sound kitch and awful – check out Uni & her Ukulele and Dent May & his Magnificent Ukulele. Or get a drumkit and become the most popular guy/gal in town (trust me, your local scene needs more drummers).

I won’t be watching TV in the dark tonight. I’ll be enjoying earth hour with the lights on, the guitar out, and a pre-party pint of home-brewed Cooper’s Stout.