blogs
March 9th 2003 -
Weblog update
Well, Dave’s weblog is fine, ’cause he has a backup on blogger. Mine – well, I’ve lost a week’s worth of weblogs. I can’t even remember what I said, though I recall writing something most days. I think it was all depressed/ing gumf. Anyhoo.
Pub
Richard A. was made redundent from SecureNet so I went to his farewell on Friday. Much fun, and more alcohol was consumed than I’ve done in a long time. Rich can hopefully get working on the “Mike the Headless Chicken” script now, following my amazing success at doing useful things in my time-off-work. I also had a fair bit of a chat with Ryan “Funky Baron” W. who was in a terrible accident a couple of days before Christmas in Rio, which, to cut a long story short, resulted in a fractured collarbone, a broken rib, and a ruptured spleen which had to be removed. He showed us the scar. All together now: ewwww!
On the bright side, it won’t have a hell of a lot of impact on his lifespan, as long as he avoids catching a short list of diseases (incuding, for example, malaria) which would now kill him.
Filming
The mob who are filming on the last two weekends of March – let’s call them the “Sixth Commandment” crowd, ’cause that’s the name of the short film – had their first big production meeting today, and I went along. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to do the second weekend, but I’ve signed up to a very ambitious first weekend.
They need to film at the same pace that we filmed “Once Upon A Time”, but they have more than one location *and* outdoor locations *and* they’re hoping to get some decent lighting out of me, *and* they want to do some tricky camera moves, like dolly shots… could be tricky. They’re very dedicated though; it ain’t 10:00am to 10:00pm days, it’s 8:00am to however long that can stay up, for the whole weekend.
If I’ve made them sound a bit amateurish, I should note that it just ain’t so – the cameraman seems to have a lot of experience, and extremely good equipment; the producer has done casting calls and got aspiring actors (not just mates) in all the roles; and they’re planning it out hastily but quite efficiently – they already have photos of all the locations, and they’re checking them out properly over the next two weeks to do a kind of video storyboard of the whole thing, in advance. Everyone seems pretty friendly and enthused. I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen so far, though I do think they’re completely gibberingly insane.
Jon & Kate
…are back! They were away for a couple of weeks to go to the Gallifrey convention and visit Jon’s relatives. I dropped in on them on the way back from the film meeting, and we had a chat and I watched them gently swaying from side to side with jet-lag and excused myself. Jon showed off footage from the Gallifrey convention of a whole gathering of fan-Doctors – that is, the actors who had played Dr Who in fan videos. It was quite a collection, and the footage was rather amusing though with appalling sound. Entire thing will have to be looped.
I chatted with them a bit about “Lotus” as well, feeling quite the aspiring author, and got some good tips for the first three chapters, which I haven’t done very much work on this weekend. Hmm. It will have to happen soon, or I’ll ban computer games. Jon has written a script for a feature film, which apparently has just a couple of days filming to go before it’s finished. Rather exciting. And his novella “Falled Gods” has been accepted for a Dr Who novella line, who’s small hard-cover books look extremely stylish indeed. Kate gave me a copy of “Blue Box”. I started reading it and of course got immediately jealous again. Lots to go before I reach that standard, and I may never get there… not that I mind.