Bank Holiday Monday

Okay. I guess I should start with the biggest news I found out today. Disney have bought Marvel. Now at first reading that scared the hell out of me. What were Disney going to do with Marvel and the comics they publish? Then I actually read through the press releases and the news websites and it appears to be nothing to really be concerned about. They appear to be throwing their money and weight into allowing Marvel to do what they already do. Disney knows that Marvel knows what it is doing, and they are going to let them keep doing it, much the same way as the Pixar take over occurred.

I also read a very interesting news article about how screwed we are in the event of a zombie outbreak. Some Canadian mathematicians who normally work out the spread of highly infectious diseases have turned their methods to plotting the spread of a zombie plague. Apparently part of the biggest problem is that normally, with infectious diseases, people die and then they are out of the system, they are no longer carriers, can no longer spread the disease themselves, but with a zombie outbreak, if you die, you just come back as a zombie and spread the disease further. According to these scientists there is no chance of co-existing with the zombies, either we die out or we kill all of them. Good to know that someone is working on the important things. Now I just need to finalise my zombie outbreak plans with this new information, and everything will be good.

So today is the August Bank Holiday so a lot of people have the day off. Such as my parents (my mother being a teacher has about 6 weeks off around this time of year anyway, but that is besides the point) so today, they visited me in Cambridge and we went for a meal at Wagamama which was very nice and then we went shopping in Cambridge.

Tomorrow, I will be filming with a couple of friends the fight sequence for the end of the Animus short I am currently working on, which I really need to get around to naming. I have decided that seeing as the short I am working is designed to be the first episode of a series I will write a story arc for a 5-10 episodes run and then maybe write certain scripts. I am also thinking about writing and making the finale episode of the run, which at present has a working title of “Two Little Birds”.

Podcast? Vlog?

I have been pondering on making a change to this format for the last couple of days, and I am still not sure about the best way to make send this information onto the Internet, but this seemed to be the fastest way to get it done for the moment.

I have been watching a lot of work by the talented people over at LoadingReadyRun for the past couple of weeks having been introduced to their work by the Escapist series that some of their crew work on called Unskippable. While watching some of the behind the scenes videos I started to wonder why I had never got round to making those for the project I do. Mostly my friends and I talk about it at the start of the project and at various stages throughout the work, but we never actually get anything filmed and always say we will do something next time. This seems to be because we exhaust ourselves actually making the in front of the scenes videos and don’t really have the time to make the behind the scenes stuff.

The other morning I was a little bored and skipping around several After Effects tutorial sites for a little inspiration and came across a tutorial at AeTuts.com to make a JibJab-style animated head, and the first seeds of a video podcast came into my head. I could use this to animate a photo of my own head and keep people up to date about what I am doing and ramble on at them for a while and upload it to the Internet using Flash video. Then a day or so passed and I thought about it more and decided it was: a. too much work to produce b. a little bit too close to South Park and the idea hit the back burner. In it’s place, and having watched several more making of videos at LoadingReadyRun I thought to myself "Wait a minute, my laptop has a camera on it"

And surely it would be easier to actually film myself that way and just post that to the internet.

I have been working recently on an Animus-based short, which would be an episode of a television program, or if Animus was a television program like Heroes is, a storyline that would be intercut between several episodes. I currently have 7 minutes of it filmed and hope to have it nearly finished by the end of this week assuming all the actors are available. The next glamorous piece of film-related work I have to do, go out and buy a cheap chess set for the sinister chess players to play their little games upon.

London Film and Comic Con

Allow me to open this blog post with a well known fact about myself. I am a big geek. There I said it. It is the computer age, geeks are in... right? Well, anyway, I don’t care because I am one regardless of the fashionable status. So today, I went to the London Film and Comic Con at the Earl’s Court exhibition hall, and had a really good time.

I arranged to meet my old University friend, and house mate, Carl Mitchell at Earl’s Court train station at 10:30 am-ish this morning and went into the convention hall as soon as the ticket price lowered at 11 am. We spent the first hour looking around two or three of the rows of merchandising before we descended on the free screening of the excellent Lord of the Rings fan film, The Hunt for Gollum.

Very impressive piece of work that was thrown together over the course of two years for the very affordable price of £2000 and a large amount of love for the source material. But don’t just take my word for it, head on over to their site and take a look for yourself. After the Q+A session Carl and I noticed that the head of CGI for the film looked quite familiar, and it turned out that he had been at University on the same course as we had been. There was brief discussion between the three of us and an exchange of e-mail addresses, and hopefully we will get in touch with each other soon and collaborate on something.

After that we hit the final aisles of merchandise (there was an awful lot) and then hunger got the better of us. I had a decent enough hot dog, although it was slightly lacking in the ketchup department and Carl had an apparently not very nice portion of chips. We then went to investigate the option of the autograph section. After a lengthy wait, we finally managed to secure the autograph of the very pretty and talented Jewel Strait (Kaylee, from Firefly), although to Carl’s annoyance she wrote ‘stay shiny’ on mine and not on his. He also met with Danny John Jules (The Cat, from Red Dwarf), while I visited the armoury stand and purchased a replica of the Master Sword from the Legend of Zelda video game.

I had a really good time, although I am quite disappointed that there weren’t more artists offering commissions, or at least reasonably cheap sketches as I was hoping to get a couple of my Animus characters sketched, but I did get the e-mail address of one of the artists so I will be dropping him a line tomorrow or early in the week about getting a couple of head shots and maybe one full body shot.

New Site online

Firstly I would like to redirect you to the brand new micro-site I have made for the short film I made for the Sci Fi London 48 hour Film Challenge 2009, called Status Update. I have said it before, but I had a lot of fun making the film and look forward to entering again next year.

Still Alive

Just a quick update really, to confirm that I am still alive and active. I have just started a new job, which has been keeping me very busy for the past month. I cannot say much about the job at the moment, but I have moved to Cambridge, which also kept me a little quiet, and I am working a 4pm - 2am shift today which gives me a few hours to tweak this.

Status Update, the short film I entered into the 48 Hour Film Challenge, didn’t make the short list, but I did see it on the big screen, and finished the competition in the time limit and that is what I entered for. They have posted a behind the scene video, and although I don’t get interview or speak at all, I am featured in the background quite often.

I am currently in the planning stages of another video project, I have to approach a couple of people with suggestions about it before I get too much further along, but watch this space.

At the moment the Lord of the Rings: Two Towers Spoof isn’t available on Youtube as we have used music from the sound track, and it is currently being blocked. It can be viewed on our Vimeo channel. We are hoping to sort something out for youtubers shortly.

Status Update: Delivering to target

The film is finished, and now burnt to a DVD ready to be delivered to the West End of London to be judged.

I would like to take a moment here to thank everyone that took part, and helped make this weekend memorable, and so much fun. Drew and Dave, as much as I hoped to have more people helping out, just the three of us turned out to make a really great film, it wouldn’t have been as much fun without you both. Of course, thanks must also go to Ricky Horn and my mum who joined us to make sure that the cameras kept pointing at the action and soldiered on past fears of horses, and dislike of forests in general to assist.

Of course it wouldn’t have been possible without the script written by James Crowther, who has a brilliant grasp of characters and managed to write a 5 minute film script in the time it took me to get back from London on Saturday which really helped us get moving. My Uncle, John Whybrew, jumped in Sunday afternoon and provided the film with an original sound track and I really like it. For a start it is really nice to have a piece of music the complements my editing work, instead of needing to work the other way round for a change. While most of the special effects and titling work was done by yours truly here, there was one piece of the puzzle that I needed to call in external help for. The Eternity Syndicate, as secretive as they are, needed a logo, in my opinion, and for that, I needed a graphic artist to make one. Thankfully I knew just the guy, Carl Mitchell, the second of my ex-housemates to be roped into helping, and he delivered the brilliant logo that accompanies part of the opening monologue.

So, once again, thanks to everyone that took part in this contest alongside me. It was really great fun, and I mean really mean that. Anyway I need to stop being all sentimental now, and get my act in gear, I have a DVD and just over three hours to get from here to the West End of London and hand it in. Keep your eyes on this space for more information about what happens next.

48 hour film challenge - Day 2

Slightly more refreshed now, after a couple of hours sleep, and a dip in the bath, I am now ramping up to get day 2 of the film challenge started. I was up until 3 am last night getting the rough cut of the film together, and the titles and as much of the special effects together as possible. Today we have to do a round of re-shoots, a couple of things that we didn’t mange to pick up yesterday, or stuff that we noticed we needed only once we started editing. It has been a great laugh so far, and hopefully we will have a lot more fun today, and have something back to the Apollo by 13:00 tomorrow afternoon.

We might also be shooting the last scene needed for the Animus trailer this afternoon as well, so that should be finished by the middle of the week. Thankfully it is only a simple effect so it shouldn’t take too long to put together and add to the trailer.