My Camera Showreel

My Camera Showreel is now finished and up on YouTube. It's also included below:-



And the extended version is here:-

What an eventful month and a half...

Well It's well and truly summer again...

I spent my 6-week placement working for White Lantern Film in Poole, where I had great fun as a Production Assistant and driver and even got a Gaffer credit on the comedy short film Flushed, as well as working on the forthcoming Amateur Gardening Magazine DVD.  The staff and crew there were really fun to work with and I think it was a very successful insight into the work of an upcoming independent production company.  I have also passed on the opportunity of 2 weeks work placement at Leopard Films to James, as he still hadn't secured a placement.

Pretty much straight after this, I packed my bag and headed on to Glastonbury '08 with Ben, his girlfriend, and Sparrow.  It was great fun once again, with scarcely a trace of mud this year!! Whilst the line-up wasn't so packed with bands I wanted to see, we had great fun watching those we made it to, including The Wurzles, Alphabeat, Panic! At The Disco, The Fratellis, Goldfrapp, Kate Nash, Mark Ronson, Lightspeed Champions, Seasick Steve, and those we heard from our camp, like Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, The Raconteurs, John Mayer, Shakin' Stevens and Brian Jonestown Massacre. The biggest disappointment was the Young Knives, because they were pretty generic and kept us waiting for what seemed like an eternity in a VERY packed John Peel stage, ahead of the Ting Tings debut.

Conveniently, this leads me to the highlights of the weekend's music. Best hot tip: Vampire Weekend. Best intra-band banter: The Wombats. Best rock lightshow: The Verve. Best crowd-draw: The Ting Tings. Best set of the weekend: Jay-Z. There, I said it. Sod the controversy, he was pretty f*cking awesome.

Anyway, I'm home again now, and I returned to 700-odd bales of Hay my first day back... Lovely.

Returning from Bournemouth on the M27, with a car full of my stuff from Uni, and travelling at about 85mph in the fast lane, the rear of my car started to wobble, as if affected by a crosswind, although the trees weren't moving. As I slowed down, the snaking became worse and the car started making some very unhealthy noises and began billowing smoke from the outside rear tyre. I managed to safely guide my car across the 3 lanes and the slip road to the relative safety of the hard shoulder, to see my tyre was 'somewhat buggered' as the AA man so eloquently phrased it.  In preference to risking my legs without a big van with flashing lights on it behind me, I rang the AA and joined for the year, and there was a friendly mechanic on scene not more than 15minutes after I hung up. Of course I got Mr Thick at AA telesales who couldn't work out why I wasn't still in the outside lane, why I was by the sliproad to junction 7 or what the meaning of his useless existence was. But there you go. Sorted it out, found a spare hubcap by the hard shoulder (albeit not the one I lost) and bought a new tyre that afternoon.

Majors, ahoy!

I have recently been very busy, working on a few 3rd years' Major projects, including Ian Roe's Bounce and Anna Lucia Sadler's as yet unnamed film.  I've really enjoyed the experiences, as a camera assistant to Ian, and an actor and runner on Anna's project.  I feel that I've learned a lot about the production process, and especially scheduling for my minor and major projects next year.  On Ian's shoot I got the opportunity to experience the HVX200 for the first time, and it was certainly an interesting experience. It's got all sorts of new and exciting features, such as HD capability (via a P2 card or Fire-store device) and slow motion, as well as a feature which allows you to alter the colour temperature whilst you're filming, allowing for on-set grading! I'm sold. It seems that finding a good, well organised producer/1st AD next year will be paramount to a successful and smooth shoot.

BA(Hons) Procrastination Studies

Well, it's not all bad. I've finished my 4000 word Production Analysis (although it actually came in at 3636, but what the hell), but I cannot emphasise enough in words how much I don't want to write my Adaptation essay, it just doesn't appeal. So I thought I'd update my blog instead, so here goes:

I'm bored. I mean BORED.

This has given me an idea. I'm going to waste a lot of good time doing this for your literary pleasure, but I'm going to type 'bored' into my little Google search bar and explore what happens...

'b' - B&Q Online is the home of kitchen, garden and general all-round hardware suppliers B&Q. Interestingly enough, their web address has neither a B or a Q in it. However, the wikipedia page dedicated to the letter b, the next suggestion, does. Google also asks if I want to see results for 'bebo', the retro social-networking site most of us stopped using when we left secondary school.

'o' - Realty Income CP (NYSE) is down 0.06. O2, the mobile phone network is apparently one of the leading mobile phone suppliers. It also suggests the wiki page for Oxygen, and asks if I want to see results for 'bebo'. I'm now convinced it's a conspiracy. Are they jealous of Facebook?

'r' - 'R-Project' - Some project for statistical computing. Additionally, it comes up with the 'Comprehensive R-Archive Network' aka, believe it or not, 'CRAN'. How crantastic is that? It also asks if I mean Runescape, the MMORPG. No. I do not.

'e' - e = 2.71828183, according to 'the calculator', about which I could have learned more. I didn't. E! Online, the entertainment news website, ebay and the physical review E sites are suggested. Amazingly enough, this manages to cover everything from Paris Hilton to Quantum Physics. I love Google. Interestingly though, no bebo suggestion this time.

'd' - The Dominion Res New (NYSE) is up 0.35. Otherwise, it's mainly the physical review for the value and use of 'D'. More quantum physics. Another conspiracy? Unlikely, quantum physicists probably just watch a lot of sesame street and like playing with letters.

Wow. I feel I've learned something today. I now no longer need to think about writing an academic essay, I'm all learned-out for today.

3rd Placement!??

Had a meeting at Vertigo Films yesterday and they seem keen to have me as a runner, I just have to arrange dates with them apparently. There are a few complications in terms of their hiring a new member of staff which could negate the need for placement students, and they can't sort my placement out until he's settled and they have returned from Cannes in May. Oh well, fingers crossed!

Unproductivity Inc.

I am *really* fucking bored of Halo 3. There, I said it. Spectating for the last THREE HOURS has put me right off it. And in any case, Call Of Duty 4 is so vastly superior, it's a wonder the cartoony charm of Halo has survived. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing it myself back in the day, but watching two housemates try to complete level upon level on 'Legendary' difficulty is truly soul destroying. Oh well.

And who in their right mind thinks it's acceptable to jump on top of SOMEONE ELSE'S car? Someone they don't know. And a brand new car. And make a HUGE dent in the roof, thoroughly pissing the driver off for the remainder of the afternoon. Rant over. For now.

Got my marks back for our Indie Drama and my Censorship essay, which earned 70% and 74%, respectively. Well at least something good came out of today... Hopefully the TV social tonight will brighten my outlook a little. Tex out.

Damage Control

The year is 2062. China has grown to stand equal to America in terms of military power and the two nations hold an uneasy peace with one another. America’s military resources and political presence have become diminished by their ongoing entrenchment in a war on terror. The Middle East is scorched from US nuclear weapons and global warming has forced some coastal regions to be evacuated due to storms and flooding and inland shantytowns are commonplace across the globe.

Bill Sadler is a young, handsome man in his mid 20s. He lives in Dyess, Arkansas, and lives what is, in these times, a pretty good life as a young farmer. He meets a girl and they fall in love. As war breaks out between the US and Asia, Bill gets drafted, trained and shipped out. As he leaves, he tells her he loves her.

Twelve bloody years of battle later, snippets of which are revealed via flashback throughout the miniseries, Bill finally returns home, to find his homestead in ruins and his fiancé gone. He finds letters, written and stamped, addressed only to ‘William Sadler, Private 1^st Class #482-7943’. The last letter is dated seven-months previously, and is unfinished, un-enveloped and on the ink-stained desk next to a dried-out fountain pen and an upturned chair stained with long-dried blood. Bill is clearly upset and cries for the first time in over a decade.

As he searches the world for his lover, flashbacks to the war reveal an unsanctioned black ops mission two years prior. Two squad members are killed and one captured in a raid on a biological testing centre in Korea. The facility was trying to create enhanced warfighters from genetically modified embryos and DNA from the most successful soldiers, along with mind-control implants for instant satellite communication and, if necessary, remote termination. Bill and another, Marcus Kane were the only two survivors from the raid.

Although Kane is now dead, Bill learns his wife has also disappeared. He tracks down the genetic researchers and rescues his fiancé. They make it as far as his waiting car when her eyes go dead and she falls, limp, to the floor.

Five years later, to the narrated recitation of the poem, Bill is revealed, heavily scarred, sitting in a darkened corner of a dingy bar, with a half-empty whiskey bottle on the table in front of him, a nobody, a ghost of a man haunted by love lost.

*********************************************************************************

This 3-part HBO Sci-Fi miniseries outline, entitled Damage Control, is the result of an heteroglossic, analogical adaptation of William Blake's poem Never Seek To Tell Thy Love. The poem is concerned with a man's regret at lost love and his insistence that one shouldn't express one's love, as it only leads to pain and loss.

How merry.

The adaptation above is based on the poem, adapting its themes and issues raised, more than a direct visual representation of the images conjured by the poem yet, in a way, it fulfills this also.  The emphasis, however, is on the effect of lost love on the main character, and the way in which he regrets admitting his love.  The final sequence in the bar is full of regret and serves as a warning to others; 'do not tell of your love, for it will only bring pain'.