Oh me oh my

I know it's been a while since the last one and I do apologize, but without further ado....here is the much improved redo of episode 4, with a soundtrack by Joe!

Gibbidy Goobida

I've been reading some things that put me first in the mind for murderin', then for pious yellin' but in the end I setteled on something a good deal more constructive and palatable.

Sweat

&

And this is what you get

Then I checked my in box and found some things that restored a little of my faith in rational thought. Thanks Shawn!

Update on the future home of my coke-addled, capitalist corpulence

Yes, so some of you may recall the picture I took and posted right near the end of last year. During one of my weekend ramblings I came across it from a different angle and, camera in hand, discovered to my shock that it is abandoned! This is a beaufitful building right by the Thames at the absolute heart of one of the worlds most famous cities AND YET LOOK AT THIS.
It's boarded up! All the windows were like this too. I don't get it. My wanton dreams of avarice have been dashed against the craggy rocks of incongruity. Oh well! More pictures...
Soho...
Chinatown, where I saw some asiatic individuals who might not have been from China. I was confused, but remained convinced of my own occidental superiority.Olivers Fantasy of Avarice #48b: Getting a custom tailred suit from this particular guild.
And now a bunch of purdy pictures with no particular caption.

Chubbidy Chobbida

I wholeheartedly suggest the reading of Posterchild’s update for today, in particular his remarks in the personal news section, which are about climate change and iconography. Neat stuff!

Also if you like the letter “P”, then you’re in for a never ending thrill ride.

Meanwhile, good gravy have I got to focus. The end result of my getting seriously stuck in the damn near done treatment of Archbrook (damn near done = 90% , if you like numbers) is that all the creativity and energy I was pouring into that is now cascading willy-nilly, getting on the carpet and all over my cereal. I just did a list of personal projects and the shit came to eleven items – each item being a script idea I’m developing, website, painting, series of animated serials… and I mean, let’s not forget that I also devote time/energy to the day to day absurdities. It’s strange how easy it is to let misdirected personal drive lead one into being a jack-off of all trades – something not much more use than those who don’t try to do anything much at all.

Could be worse though, I might have a decision-making tree like this.

Rob, THIS one is for YOU

Rob did a little number the other day which reminded me of an exercise that occurred to me while I was waiting during the intermission between films and bands at that event I covered for CapitalMag in Shoreditch.

Judging by a page in my notebook, I apparently decided that I was currently in a scene (filmic and fashion sense) that I would quite probably use as a setting in some future script. Not wanting to annoy the room by taking a pile of pictures, I set about a list which I titled “ “Indie” filmscreening tropes ”. Well, I can’t say as I saw any of that obnoxiously named “Blave” stuff which has Rob pondering obsolescence but here is what I jotted down…

-Fedoras, thick rimmed glasses
-Underlit bars, DJ pit in the sky
-Girls with short hair, wide hairbands, tights (often striped), cords, skirts
-Suit jackets w/ t-shirts, jeans, white sneakers (clean)
-Small amount of trash on floor, plastic
-30 year olds dressed like 20 year olds & 20 year olds dressed like teenagers. Teens in their place.
-Some tired observations on love, drugs, drink and gender
-Strange blend of inclusiveness & exclusiveness
-Fliers on a small table at the door. Lowlit main area, well lit washrooms w/ piss trays for men
- Girls with berets, “fuck me” boots
-Middle aged bird at the door, hip?
-Male, skinny, shaved head, scarf and grey jacket
-glue & paper from old posters left on walls

Huh, looks like I really held tightly onto the role of the objective observer eh? Also if anyone feels like explaining to me the entymology of the phrase "fuck me boots" then I'd love to hear. I mean, I get the idea but how did it come to be?

Right then, the Script to Screen course.

It was a hell of a day with much to take in. The strict course content on things like “What is a Sales Agent?” or “The importance of Chain Of Title” were easy enough, that kind of learning is something I’ve had plenty of experience with. But all else that came at me that day really left me in an odd way. Riding the Picadilly tube home, I’d even say I was the closest that I’ve ever been to throwing this whole “film thing” out the window. Not in a tantrum of frustration but what felt like a deadened, rational process of decision making.

Eventually I resolved to sleep on it and, of course, woke up Sunday morning better able to make sense of it all and with a mind to keep at this lengthy, arduous task I’ve set myself. But there’s no ignoring that my head had been seriously rattled – hardly what I’d been expecting.

This came primarily from two angles. The less detailed one being that I’d not put my head in a good position from the previous weeks crap sleep and the foul mistake of eating McDonalds for breakfast, as I’d found my usual home breakfast a bit lacking. The latter may sound like something bordering on superstition but I’ll swear on all the Baby Jesus’ you’ve got in your cupboard that eating a Sausage & Egg McMuffin does have a dramatic, chemically induced effect on the mood of those who do not consume them often. I myself seem to eat them once a year or even further apart, whatever period of time is necessary for me to forget why I was put off the time before. Some of what comes up in Super Size Me supports this, but I reckon I should either read up on it or at least get a post-it note tattoo like the amnesiac in Memento.

At least.

So there’s the physical set-up but the mental one is all the stranger. The teacher was a fellow ten years my senior with precisely that amount of post-education experience in the industry. English in origin but with a primarily North American education and though this was a kind of course of aspiring producers, he’d be primarily described as a writer/director who has had experience producing. He spoke and, more to the point, I took in what he said in much the same way as I have had my own manner of speaking described to me time and again over my whole life.

Fairly quick, lots of anecdotal examples and plenty of digressions which all intertwined in ellipses along the line of one primary narrative. There was a vast variety of tone and…I guess we’ll call them morals, rather than points. What made all these tales and sub-tales particularly hard for me to unravel on the spot was not only their density and volume but the broad spectrum of positive and negative elements. Mix this all with the somewhat surreal notion that I was looking at someone I could quite possibly become in ten years and by the end of the day my head felt packed with dozens of lengths of knotted up twine that needed sorting. Is this what some people feel like when I’m able to get away with rabbiting on for a good length of time?

In other details the hard information was very useful and I do feel that I have a better understanding of the process from writing to distribution. There were lots of handy details which I appreciated, particularly the copyright law for scripts in England which dictate that once the ink dries it is the sole property of the author – as opposed to the North American approach which requires that the script be registered with one governing body or the other. All in all the only thing I would have asked was that their might have been an outline for the students to help follow along and that some of the “No seriously, getting into this industry is a hell of a gamble and you may suffer Dissapointment” remarks had been left out. I’ve heard enough of those from all sorts of corners and if I’d been in a stronger state I think I’d have interrupted to specifically say “Yes thank you, now can we please move on”. But then, dwelling too long on one point is another of my traits I saw mirrored in this guy, so I shouldn’t be too hard.

At one point he described England as somewhere one can generally find a middling success, as opposed to abject failure or making X millions on the latest Harry Potter, and given that he later mentioned his investing in a new night club…I think that “middling” success would be fine by me, though I will still take aim at the highest point I can see.

As an aside, the teacher asked me if I was Australian. This is something my dad gets asked from time to time and I wonder if the Australian accent really can be considered the end result of blending Canadian and English accents. I don’t have any definitive conclusions on this number; I just thought I’d mention an oddity.

In the end I am still signing up for the Panico Film Society and writing my balls off (I was pleased to, at one point, be told that a good script is “everything”). More news as this develops.

So many knots to unravel, perhaps the Alexander approach?

Phew! I've just woken up and I feel like I've been out drinking, though I hardly think the pint of Strongbow I had with my lunch yesterday is the cause. The course was good, though not quite what I expected in some ways. I really need to decompress all I took in...

Until then here are some pictures I took around the area (Fulham) during my Thursday night sojourn.