Some real news!

Actual developments this time, not just posts about me playing Grand Theft Auto. Whatever next??


New Project!

Well I sat down for a drink and a (bloody lovely) burger with Mark and Frazer on Monday night, in a really flashy pub (Horniman's) by the riverside in London Bridge.

We talked through a lot of ideas for a short film, some of which I think had major potential to grow into really interesting projects. However, remembering how our last over-ambitious project ended up, we elected to go for the simplest possible. The reasoning being that if we can conquer a small project, we'll be better informed to take on a bigger project in the future and if it doesn't work out, it's no big loss. After all, no-one says we only have one project left in us. Might as well start small. Baby steps! I like Mark and Frazer a lot and I really trust their judgement and ideas. Frazer has written a couple of novels and in his efforts to get published, he recently got a literary agent, exciting times!

We settled on an idea that was set largely in a single location, with one main actor, and - perhaps riskily - an animal performance. We should be able to shoot it over a single weekend. More info to come soon! Mark and Frazer are working on the plot as you read this. It's not the most sweepingly ambitious of our ideas, but it will be the simplest to shoot. I'm really looking forward to storyboarding this idea, it feels like a much more appropriately sized project.

Does anyone else think of What About Bob whenever someone says baby steps?


Smashing Fun

I called into work this morning and arranged to take the day off as holiday, just feeling absolutely annihilated after cycling in to work for the last few weeks. 20 miles a day is a real shock to the system, not to mention the London traffic. Decided to be productive on my day off and picked up the laptop only to immediately drop it and absolutely shatter the screen.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccckkkkkkkkkk. Hopefully it's just the screen, need to plug it into a monitor (probably next week at work, no monitors in the house) and see if the rest survived. I don't know what the next step is. I probably need to stump up for a replacement screen.


Stand Up, Sit Down

Some news so fresh it is still piping hot and not entirely confirmed, but hopefully I'll be taping a stand-up show for new comic Robin Adams in the next couple of weeks. Looking forward to it! I think I'll try at least a two-camera set up, one main one on the man himself and a second one off to the side for coverage, depends on what I can get away with in the venue. Need to think about sound too, will be a good opportunity to get some experience here. Will find out what the venue will let me do! Maybe they won't allow any filming :-|


London

You know... sitting in that flashy pub I mentioned earlier surrounded by expensive suits really made me think of the weird relationship I have with this city. I always feel under-dressed in places like that. Probably due to my scraggy t-shirt and jeans look. I live in a pretty decent corner of the overall grubby/crimey/stabby suburb of Lewisham in Greater London (we had a good presence in the 2011 London riots!) but I work in South Kensington, one of the most affluent areas of the Central London, home of Harrods, the Royal Albert Hall and insanely high house prices. The further I get to the centre of the city, the more I feel like an outsider. I think it's a paradox I'm not alone in feeling, seeing as so many of us working in service positions can't afford to live anywhere near we work. It's a chasm I constantly feel that I'm standing near the edge of. I'm impressed by the city, but simultaneously I know it owes so much to the wealth divide. I love London, but it is a weird fucking place. On the plus side, it's one of the greatest and most tolerant melting pots on the planet. I got to say, I fucking love me some tolerance. We need to pump people full of it, because there is a shortage in this world.


Tag it and Bag it

As always I'll be using tags in these blog posts, so you can filter my posts by the project you're interested in. The new project is currently tagged... well... "new project"! I'll rename the tag once we have a title for the damned thing!


Saints Row The Third (is the word)

Don't even bother trying to contact me tomorrow. I'll be locked up indoors with Saints Row The Third, denying the existence of the outside world.

So Peter Jackson, if you need some fresh eyes for your new Hobbit movie, sorry son but I'm BUSY.

Bye :-)