Posted on May 19, 2003
Most of last week, I was in and around Wolverhampton on Matt and Nick’s documentary and didn’t really finish until yesterday.
I’d been at the Digital Shorts induction day on the Monday but in the evening Matt came round with some footage that needed to be edited for use on the following day’s shoot… we didn’t get it finished till about two in the morning. On Tuesday, I spent the day perfecting my camera assistant skills, which means that I was pushing Daryl, (the cameraman), along tracks all day. Wednesday, we met up with Shaw Taylor and shot all his stuff. I didn’t have to push Daryl about that day which meant that I had time to take some production stills with my camera. Thursday, I’ve blogged below, and Friday I dressed up as a Native American spirit medium and walked, danced and chanted all over the Black Country!
We transfered the DigiBeta footage onto VHS on Saturday and then I rounded off a fairly surreal, (and knackering), week, by standing in front of a power station in Rugely, yesterday and having my picture taken as I raised my arms in salute to a steaming cooling tower.
Honestly, it really is a documentary.
Posted on May 15, 2003
But the best thing that can be said about any set of rules is that they’re there to be broken.
Posted on May 15, 2003
I woke up this morning knowing that I had the day off from filming today, so naturally my thoughts turned to Bollywood actresses. Actually I’m not really a sad old lech I just happen to have a copy of Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book “Bollywood – The Indian Cinema Story”. I won’t be reviewing it, so relax but will recommend it if you’re at all interested in Indian Cinema.
I mention it because I was reading it this morning, well actually I was trying to read it but my thoughts kept drifting away towards this infernal weblogging business. Am I becoming obsessive? … not really because I abide by some rules …. (ahem!).
The first rule; don’t blog more than once per day.
Which I think is enough unless you’re a blogging anorak like instapundit, who remains as frightening as he is compelling, (like looking straight into the headlights of the American juggernaut), which brings me to,
the second rule; don’t fish for traffic
which is something that I have done in the past but am trying to avoid now. It’s just too ‘needy’ and speaks of a desire for validation. Instapundit is often credited for causing huge increases of traffic to people’s blogs, indeed the term ‘instapundited’ is used to describe exactly this as a mention on his website has that effect. So this means no leaving links back to my own blog when I leave comments on other’s … (yeeees! something I have been doing a lot of lately). Now these are my rules and I have a motive – I’m trying to get REAL!
I left a comment in the guestbook of fudgeit thanking her for visiting but then rather patronisingly adding that I thought her excellent weblog was ‘refreshingly real’, (who died and made me blog god!). The fact is that it is real and in comparision, some of my posts seem like pale imitations of assorted warblogs and daily journals and all the other good stuff I’ve read out there. Thus,
the third rule; blog with your head pulled out of your arse
which brings me straight to,
the fourth rule; that there is no fifth rule
(gimme a break! I’ve only just started all of this), so, trying to put a name to this developing manifesto I thought of some variation along the DOGME 95 lines.
(This is a set of rules that a couple of Danish film makers came up with as an antidote to the Hollywood method of making movies. Which I list here,
Shooting on location (no imported props or sets)
Sound and image produced together
A handheld camera
Natural light
No optical work or filters
No superficial action (murders, weapons)
No temporal or geographic alienation
No genre films
No signature
courtesy of an article in Bright Lights Film Journal.)
To be honest, this all stemmed from reading Salam Pax’s return to blogging, finally, last night. Here is a REAL blogger and I noticed that he listed fudgeit and moorish girl via blogrolling. Now, they’re both REAL and they’re also both weblogs where I’ve left comments recently, which were genuine enough but break the second and third rules.
At least I’m good at the first rule.
Posted on May 14, 2003
If I were to mention the name Shaw Taylor to people over the age of 30, who grew up in the Midlands or the South East regions, they’d tend to smile and say, “Oh yeahhh!… I wonder what happened to him?… Is he dead?”
Well he’s not! and I can categorically confirm that since I’ve spent most of the day in Wolverhampton on a documentary shoot with him.
(For those who don’t know – he is a TV Presenter who was most famous for presenting ‘Police 5′, a precursor of CrimeWatch, that ran for years. It’s hey days was probably the 70’s and the 80’s. He was also famous for presenting public information films asking people to wear seat belts or avoid flying kites near electricity pylons… you get the picture)
After that little broadcasting biography of the man I think it becomes obvious why he was the natural choice for Matt and Nick’s documentary, “Things to Do in Wolverhampton when you’re Dead”.
He’s an Old Pro! – that’s what I’ve got to say about this fine Gentlemen. He’s over 70 years old and he now lives with his wife, in retirement on the Isle of Wight but can obviously be presuaded to come out of retirement for the odd day or two. And they don’t get much odder than today!
At one point I witnessed our ‘pro-am’ TV crew explaining to a couple of uniformed police officers why Shaw Taylor was riding pillion to an eccentric Glaswegian ordained minister on a motorbike with a side car hearse which contained a seven foot coffin and a wreath with the name ‘SHAW’ spelled out in lovely white flowers. (Phew!)
When not actually on camera, Shaw served up a huge banquet of choice anectdotes from his 50 years of broadcasting, for us whippersnappers… one of which was that during the Second World War, He served as a frontline RAF Radar operator in Imphal, India (only a few miles away from Sylhet, Bangladesh!).
Of course, today wasn’t entirely about Shaw Taylor, there was the Kite Guy, the Cortina and the Chopper… Oh forget it! you’re not going to believe me anyway.
Posted on May 10, 2003
Was I on drugs yesterday? ….
Just fired up the laptop to check my mail and my Yahoo splash page yielded the following news links:
Iraqi Shiite leader calls for Islamic rule
WHO: Beijing’s SARS data seriously flawed
Bomb blast kills at least 13 in Philippines
Halliburton admits to $2.4M Nigerian bribe
I mean you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that the New American Centurians are fiddling away while the planet hurtles towards some sort of apocalyptic doom. (Another Hat tip to Soliloquist)
As if the Iraqi’s will be allowed to democratically elect an Islamic Republic, as for SARS – what can I say, it’s alarming to be sure. And despite the presence of over 1500 marines in Sulu island (and countless more on an offshore carrier battle group), Abu Sayaf is still killing and maiming, so wrongly, in the name of Islam. As for Halliburton – HAH! they’re so brazen… and it’s a measure of how invincible Cheney and his Neo-Cronies must feel at the moment.
That last news report rather neatly ties in with something I read via the ever excellent Robot Wisdom entitled U.S. Military “Footprint” Extends to Africa . It’s about American manuvourings along the West African Coast, now what on earth could possibly interest them there, hey?
How can anyone say that it isn’t all about Oil?
