I've been listening to James Brown all day and you can't stop me

So it seems that by the time the new issue of CapitalMag was uploaded, my article was deemed too old to put up? My lil' review of Hot Fuzz can be found, at least, but I won't deny that's a little annoying. So for the hell of it, I've copied and pasted the article (final edit) at the end of this post. I've been told that in the future they will upload these kinds of event articles within a week of the event, instead of holding on until the next full issue, and that they hope I'll do more articles for them as this one was really well written - so I'm not giving up on them yet. Besides, I still appreciate the added impetus to get out in the world by wanting to write about it.

-------

ShortWave’s Brick Lane Broadcast

By Oliver Brackenbury

On the 11^th of this month a south of the river film collective, Shortwave, held what has been a bi-monthly exhibition of short films and bands from the London scene. The venue was 93 Feet East, one of several examples of gentrified bohemia to be found in Shoreditch along Brick Lane. The selection of short films, music videos and one documentary was admirable if only for its egalitarian approach to selection

Top fare included Spool Films' Blind Mans Alley, which brought a macabre element to the evening by revealing only enough details to make the audience desperately curious about a dehumanizing game of automotive Russian roulette. Rosie Escott’s You Are Here had a touch of glamour with a soundtrack provided by Ninjatunes own Fourtet. At the high end of the budgetary spectrum, this London IndieMedia offering tackled the revisionist approach we so often take to our memories of past relationships with a mixture of live action and animation. Other shorts showed comedy, art house impressionism and CGI wizardry.

The only real irritation of the evening came from a series of technical problems which delayed the film viewings by 45 minutes, rendered the sound on some shorts disjointed at moments and led to a very unfortunate failure to completely play North Of Ping-Pong’s excellent video for their new single, “What Goes Up”. Luckily the group performed live later in the evening and I was able to hear it in its entirety! It’s very tempting to compare N.O.P.P. to The Streets for their sense of humour, storytelling and subject matter, but these lads seem to be aware of that inevitable comparison and are making a strong effort to stand out on their own merits. Of the musical portion of the evening, they certainly left a more memorable impression in my mind than Imbeciles & The Poison Umbrella, Unit or Crack Village.

Despite the technical mishaps I shall be coming to the next Shortwave evening on April 8^th and I’d recommend you do the same. Several hours of entertainment, an insight into those who may be the big names of tomorrow and the rare treat of not knowing just what you’re going to get: not bad for a pound at the door.

Lil' update...

...is in no way related to Lil'Abner.

Meanwhile, I'm daring to be optimistic and have put an almost equally "Lil'" update over at Bronze Age Sky God - an idea I can see myself returning to soon enough.

The dreaded MySpaceUK experiment is proceeding apace, with some interesting film making characters cropping up amongst the infinity of fanpeople. I won't bother going into detail unless something much less ethereal comes about - but one thing I will mention is how more than one person has, upon seeing the ol' trailer, told me that they have found it refreshing to be approached by a writer who has gone out and done something.

For the rest of today I'll be spelling "Vindicated" O-L-I-V-E-R

My second watercolour painting (and the first I feel I can show!)

The webcomic style attempts came - but have yet to evolve into anything worth showing, yet. More on that as it develops.

But I did finish my painting of this photograph and with that I am most pleased. Now my apartment walls are moderately less spartan. I'm not sure precisely which photo I'll try painting next, but something which uses more colours than black, white, blue and a tiny amount of red & yellow....I've got plenty of paint tubes just sitting in the box, plump with potential and maybe just a bit of self-satisfaction at never having had their caps removed. Suggestions?

This Saturday I'll basically be making love to the internet, but without using a computer! Earlier in the day I'll be checking out the abominably named UK Webcomix Thing, partially to get a better idea of what the UK in general is producing (as I'm pretty much only up on the popular North American webcomics) but mostly to briefly meet John Allison of Scarygoround. I really admire the way he manages to deftly avoid the "gag-a-day" feel while producing interesting stories with humour and individual pages which stand up quite nicely all on their own-some. I stayed thrifty this past weekend so as to afford a book or two of his but also to have cash for the second part of my internet-without-a-computer day - the upcoming London SA Goon Meet.

For those of you who don't know what that is, no I am not going to meet up with a bunch of underlings that are regularly beaten up by superheroes and bad-ass cops with a heart of gold. The forums for Something Awful are rather epic in size as well as high in quality and organization. It has thousands of members from all over the world and so, sometimes, if only to get people away from their computers and out under the sun, someone will organize a meeting of various members for the express purpose of fun*. For reasons lost to the sands of time, their members are known as goons. I am one such goon, though not nearly as active as some. I reckon I'll go check this thing out - some of the members are heading to Fabric later, which I'd like to check out as I see flyers for their events all over the show.

*Drinking, dancing, nerdery and whatever else may come.

Yeah yeah, LINKS

Lately I've been finding that I feel just fine when I eat a bit less than the portions which fueled by pubescent rise to 6'2, 195 lbs and it's gotten my mind on food. Instead of rambling on about my diet, fascinating as that may be, I think I'll instead link to something genuinely interesting and tangentially related. This is a blog where an American fellow who actually wanted to get some idea of what it felt like to be poor, spent a month with a total food budget of only $30. I went into reading it a bit cynical, as tends to my way, but by the end I felt like I'd actually read an interesting and empathic exercise - not trite voyeurism. Topically enough, when related to my recent post, the same guy also tried to do a webcomic every day for a month - with less stellar results.

Oh for the love of...

When it comes to debating with one Oliver T.C. Brackenbury, Rob basically has magic powers. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, lest I dare to take personal responsibility for slaying the curmudgeon.

Meanwhile, today has been an artsy day, good times.

That'll learn me to be cynical

I've often exasperated people who find downtown Ottawa hard to get around by mocking them mercilessly. Why do I mock them? Because Ottawa, like most North American cities, is built on a grid system and because of that most navigational errors can be undone quite easily. If you can think in an overhead, Pacman-esque manner then you are basically set. Meanwhile, I have also been known to describe the planning of London's roads in a scenario where someone throws a heap of spaghetti at a wall just before pronouncing "There, that is what we shall go with". Maybe it's really just the end result of a much older city which has grown more organically (re: messily) over the past couple of millenia or so. Maybe.
I'm only just about managing to look the correct way when I cross the street, 100% of the time, now. But my inner sense of navigation still works on the grid system and thanks to that I got lost like all hell in the Leicester square area last night - failing to find my way to the LFA Actors Tower until fifteen minutes into the speech. Even so, I didn't get in! There was but one door, tucked away somewhat, which had a little sign labelled "Theater Door" beside it. I tried the door...but it was locked? I checked the address of the places around it and through the process of elimination, I had to be at the right place and yet...
Well shucks howdy, I took a picture or two but in the end I just explored a bit before heading home. Disappointing? You bet!

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about ways to market myself (market, not whore. Sorry ladies!) and as is the way of the world - the Internet has come to mind. But man, there sure is a lot of stupid jargon floating about these days which suggests that something as simple as a website would not be enough. It would not be Web 2.0, a term which seems destined to eventually sit in the same over-sized, dirty blue plastic bin at the back of a Wal-Mart as Cyberspace or Information Superhighway.

But things like Myspace and Facebook induce an at least partially illogical vomit reflex on my part. They really do. I've tried to look at the former in an objective manner and I do gather how it has helped raise some musical acts profiles. But there is some kind of metaphorical curmudgeon nestled deep inside me which just can't help but find them facile and obnoxious. Maybe I'll swallow a spider to bite the curmudgeon at some point, hopefully not setting off a whole ecosystem in my stomach which may or may not lead to my death, but until then...

Strangely, even though I know the sucessful are greatly outweighed by the obscure and unrewarded, I find my mind keeps wandering back to webcomics. Thanks to somebody*, I've been a regular addict of the medium for about four years now. That sound like two marbles being put down a long chute was Ryan rolling his eyes, by and by. Twice in the past few years he has suggested that I pen my own webcomic and he's not the only one. It isn't terribly hard to translate filmic thinking to comics and I already have 15 mb of webspace from BT to play with.

Back in September, I'd even considered doing a little webcomic, instead of this blog, to chronical my doings over in England. It was going to be a bit of a shamless stylistic rip-off of a pretty popular comic called Overcompensating, in that I'd draw in a fairly similar cartoony style using photos for backgrounds. To be fair, I was going to put my cards on the table and call it "Olivercompensating" while never making any effort to profit from it. Other times I've thought about translating my full script for "Tonight We Fall In Love" into a serialized story. I've even thought about how there are more than few webcomics devoted to taking the piss out of films, but none so far on the film making process (of which I'm aware, anyways).

So the moral of the story is, I've hemmed and hawed about it for a long time without ever seriously pursuing it? NO. The moral is that thanks to a muck-up** at work, I have wound up in possession of several blank sheets of paper I could use to investigate if I have it in me to to cover the artistic side. I have some old "Olivercompensating" sketches to use as a jump-off point and we'll see where it goes from there. By Monday I'd like to have a simple style for drawing people that I could use. This will be the big challenge really, compared to writing, ideas or even the web design side of things. Let's see what comes of it!

* Seriously, Ryan, are you aware of this? Perhaps you should investigate in the hopes of, potentially underage or underattractive, smooches?
**Honestly, not theft. The story is just dull, that' s all.

A little follow up from yesterday

I'll tell you, waiting around for inspiration to strike is the route of the sucker and the do-nothing. I forced myself to write out that less than satisfactory bridge and, simply by re-inserting myself into the story, I found myself charting out the rest of the film with greater depth, colour and vigour. Later still, I thought of a way to re-write that lame bridge so that it played nicely into a new scene I'd thought to have and even came up with a great epilogue. If I'd just remained in the state I've been the past little while, floating around the story and patiently waiting for good ideas to just appear....well, I think I'd get about as far as someone sitting around and waiting to get physically fit.

Meanwhile I'm checking out a Film Directors talk at the London Film Academy tonight, which will be followed by films made through both Panico and the LFA. This can't come out without sounding a bit horrid, but I'm looking forward to seeing who I might want to try contacting to work with and who I might want to be thankful I'm more talented than...

Yeah I guess I went there*, along with everybody else who does or plans to do this for a living. What's that you say? An ugly side to the world of film?

*There: A magical land where insecure creative types (that's all of them) can simultaneously appreciate and disparage the work of their peers - taking equal parts of encouragment and inspiration from either activity.

Scriptin’ Fancy Like : Dangers!

It’s a simple enough problem. I know what scene 3:1 is and I know what scene 3:2 is. But the only way I can see to get the characters from one to the other feels a tad implausible. I’ve got the broad strokes of the entire rest of the treatment for Archbrook done and I know I’d whip through them, but instead I’ve let myself get hung up on this one part at the start of the third act and as a result the script has stalled. Today I’ve resolved to just sort of say “To hell with it” and write out that less than satisfactory scene bridge so as to let myself progress with the rest. It’s the first draft for heaven’s sake; I can always come back and change things. That being said, this has put my mind onto the topic of that which can hinder and halt the writing process. I reckon now is as good a time as any for another SFL supplement.

Getting Hung Up On One Stupid Thing
Partially covered in the previous paragraph, this is essentially when you get stuck on writing the story in chronological order and you've reached a point you're having trouble with. The two solutions I've found are to either write a placeholder (if it isn't a terribly important moment) or to just write pieces you want to include later. Having to make those later parts fit into the continuity can often give you ideas for how to settle that part you got stuck on in the first place, now that you have a better idea of what it is leading to.

Fear of Cliché
This can be a big one for me sometimes and I've honestly gottan a tad neurotic once or twice in my desire to have a story (or just story element) which has never graced the minds of mortal men before. Attempting to actually create something 100% original is akin to trying to create a new primary colour or musical note. If you can get yourself to remember that you are working with a sort of "reality palette" and that it is the arrangement of elements which makes a story original, then you can usually deal with this pretty well.

Writers Block
Write something else, anything else. I always think of writers block like a cramped up muscle and if you can just limber it up then things will soon be alright again. Even if it's just nonsenical gibberish that makes you laugh, it will get the pencil moving and get you closer to where you want to be.

Just remember to come back to what you were first writing before you’re not only stuck but you’ve lost interest. If the worst happens and you lose interest, then never, ever delete or throw anything out. Ideas can lay fallow for a long time before something will happen in your life that makes them interesting and relevant again.

Unintentional Idea Theft
Trying to come up with a name for the deity which the religion/cult in Archbrook worships, I really tried hard not to be derivative. I didn’t want to just slap some consonants together or do something in the vein of Lovecraft or anything that sounded like a guttural Klingon burp. So I experimented with different sounds and their combinations on a page of one of my notebooks. I experimented with syllables and how pleasing or frightening they were – trying to aim for a name which could be either terrifying and enticing, something context-sensitive, which would also easily translate into the term for it’s followers (ex. Christ = Christians). I let myself sleep on it several times and returned to the page again and again over the course of a month until I finally arrived at something I felt satisfied all my criteria.

“Hylia” I thought “That’s pretty damn good”

Too bad it turns out my subconscious fed that one to me from when I was ten years old and playing Zelda on the SNES with Rob after school! I haven’t played a link game since and I would never have thought I’d been a big enough fan at the time to remember such things (the coincidence was pointed out to me by Tom, otherwise I don’t ever think I would have realized). Now I’m not sure what to do, I’ve held onto it for now since I don’t want to further gum up the works by spending time going back over this draft and subbing something else for Hylia, Hylian and Hylians. But will I ever replace it? Should I ever replace it? I can’t say as I’ve answered these questions yet – though I keep thinking about how there is dick all connection between my Hylians and the other kind.

Placeholders
In the spirit of just getting on with the story, it is often tempting to just name something anything or to write a part of a scene that you don’t like but will get you to the next one. These kind of placeholders, particularly when it comes to the title of the film itself, are very useful in getting past the first problem I’ve mentioned here. There are two dangers with placeholders, however. One is that if it is a one use affair, deeply embedded in the story, that you might forget about it. That is also why I've stopped leaving sarcastic notes to myself in my stories! I don't want people who are proofreading my work to come across "Oliver! Get your dick out of your ear and re-write the ending to this scene!".

The other is that if it is something which occurs many times, like a name for a character, then you will be creating a very large chore for yourself in having to go back and change every single instance of that placeholder when you figure out a higher quality replacement. But hey, better that you have to go through a script with a fine-toothed comb then to never have finished a script to...comb....in the first place, right? Right?

I am right.

Your eyes look like two slabs of fudge with a streak of caramel going across. Also, your hands have a darker skin tone than your face.

I have yet to find a way around this problem.

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.

Going to bed no later than 10:30pm defies thermodynamics by being both cool and hot.

So becuase I've racked up a sleep debt from too many late nights, I was a big fat 'tard and got on the wrong branch of the Northern tube line for getting me to the film night on time yesterday. Ryan North is a founding member of the "Going to bed at a responsible time is cool" club and I am normally a proud member...just not this week it seems. But I followed through anyways, just to know the route for tomorrow. It's a pretty nice neighborhood, though further than I thought, in and around the Panico building (which is a refurbished, churchlike, house of decent size). I'll post some "pics" when I get home tonight, along with others I took in recent times. Okay it sucked to miss the night and learn that I'll have to be up at a wee (for Saturday) hour to get to the course on time, but it could have been worse. I could have run into this guy.In positive devlopments, I got an email from the CapitalMag people that basically said "We are looking to host some short films on our site, do you know anywere we could get some short films?". To which I was like "Maybe I know a guy, maybe I know....me". We'll see what comes of that then!

Meanwhile, the debate in the comments section of my 100th post rolls on. Ladies and gents, please toss in your ten cents.

And lo...

...there are two updates at Bronze Age Sky God. You have "Aircraft Carrier Delight" and the far less criminal "Clive versus The Slug People: Round One". I used the same phrase once in each story, ten valueless points to whoever spots what it is.

Good news, CapitalMag liked my article and are interested in more! Meanwhile, I'm heading off to scout out the Panico building tonight and also to attend the free, public talk being given there by a London film maker on "the biz". Then on Saturday I shall take my first class with them. Huzzah.

Little Johnny is on the move again.

100th Post: To show how we've grown here at STA...

...a post on maturity.

I swear, if I don't talk about this while I'm still in that nebulous realm of "young adult" then I'll never be taken seriously. Interpret the following as the cantankerous assault on youth culture of an elderly man, on a bus where all the other passengers quietly wish he'd just get off at the next stop, if you must. But baby darling, it simply ain't.

I am plenty aware that puberty rituals are completely arbitrary contrivences, no matter how deep their roots penetrate our history and culture, the point of origin will always be the same: Some person, some where, just decided that behaviour X marks you as mature or immature. We choose these meanings, they have no bearing in natural law as gravity and weather patterns do. That being said, the meme of immaturity is getting way out of hand in several generations - including my own.

Or is it just a cultural shift?

For the sake of not going on a (longer?) tirade, I'll just use one specific example. When I see a man wearing a business suit, suitcase in hand and walking on his way to work I think "there is an adult". I see the same man pinching his suit jacket up with a backpack and I begin to wonder if the bigger businessmen are going to try and steal his juice box at lunch. But really, does it matter what he brings his important papers (and juice box) to work in? Couldn't it be the tanned and treated skin of camel for all it matters? Well to a point...but infinite subjectivity is a gutless argument and one which if properly applied would render all things meaningless. We've decided that this and that mean such and such, so let's play by the rules we wrote.

Besides, Maturity does not have to be the death of fun or humour and it is a marvelous tool towards greater self-respect and ability to wrestle with whatever beasts the world might throw your way. The perks are all too often forgotten and a good deal of the negative aspects are really just frequently made assumptions instead of genuine side effects. I'll tell you, I'm sick of the youth culture worship in Western society and few things would please me more than to see this trend reversed.

I mean hey, I get the allure - I've given in to it too. Retreating into youth fools you into feeling further from death, further from the problems and responsibilities you're wrestling with today. Teenagers often try to act older because they want to be able to drive, to drink, to be at a point where their bodies don't make them feel awkward and they have more developed social skills. But I've seen all too many people in their early to late twenties who are are wearing and doing the exact same shit they did in their teens but with the addition of legally purchased alcohol and the ability to enter venues which sell it. This worries me, it really does! Not because of some offense to my delicate sensibilites but because the major ingredient of immaturity is stagnation.

Can we please push things forward?

Maybe I am simply a big party pooper? I guess I'm giving in to some ill-defined evil which makes me want to have the more traditional trappings of adulthood? Perhaps, but if the possability of my being wrong is to be considered then it is only fair to consider the possability of my being right or at least on the right track. I'd love to hear what anybody has to say in the comments section of this post becuase it's an issue I've been coming back to for a couple of years now and I do not feel my thoughts on the matter are nearly as solid as they are on, say, climate change*. Anyways, that "whoomph" noise you just heard was me dismounting a rather tall horse - I suppose. But seriously, your thoughts are invited - I feel quite inarticulate with this post because half the time I've tried to rattle off a sub-topic I find myself getting part way through, then just deleting it.

Is there some broad method of approaching this or is it a highly specific, case-by-case issue?


*I don't like it, no sir. It makes me sad and sometimes I bake a little cake to feel better. The cake will have raisins more often than not.

Now look what he's done...

Check-it-0oooot

Artists get to have sketchbook sites, I get to have this.

WHY CAN I NOT SLEEP?

One of my favorite pictures of one of my favorite places......more pictures along with sweet n' sour context later!

This sort of thing makes me laugh until I cry

Bill Cosby knows what he's on about

About a year ago Vice Magazine put out an issue on Babyboomers which was...less than positive towards that particular generation. In the interest of fairness they had one article where they listed eight baby boomers they were partial to and on that list was Bill Cosby. The reason was not to do with his years as an entertainer but for the fact that he had the courage to stand up and suggest that maybe, just maybe, the African-American community needed better modern rolemodels then barely literate rappers and sports players. That yes Whitey has done his share of keeping them down, but that it was also the responsibilty of black people to pull themselves up. That the family unit needed to be repaired and education needed to be put out as a virtue, not "acting white".

I have to say, my own respect for the man swelled tenfold upon learning this. It's not easy to take on "your" demographic and not be tarred with any number of quick and conveniant negative labels. It's not easy to preach self reliance and improvement when so many people would rather get their backs up then take responsibility for their actions or, you know, make an effort.

This is the speech to which they were referring and it makes compelling reading, no matter who you are. Surprise surprise, Bill caught some flack for what he said and he gives a response to it here, on the implausibly named Tavis Smiley show. Black civil rights in America have been pushed way out of the spotlight by the big developments of our young millenium but, with Barack Obama having announced his presidential candidacy, it's bound to come back in the next couple of years. Given that Barack was present when Cosby gave this speech, and openly applauded not only at the end but several times throughout, I think it's worth reading what Cosby had to say if only to get a better understanding of some of the views held by this up and coming "JKF-in-the-making".

We need more...

...movie posters like this one. Man but this has class and a combination of expressions which really draws you in. Certainly, it's what led to my renting it.

Maybe I'd still like the space station

Oh me

Oh my

Oh wonder

Meanwhile, I'm defintely getting more jaded. When I read this my first thought was "I saw this episode when it was about Nike". I'm thinking that there is a downside to having been exposed to countless pleas for help by the third world for as long as I can remember.

In the interest of this not turning into a mere warehouse of links and embedded video, I thought I might babble on a bit about some stuff.

Can you dig it?

I have decided that I am going to do my best to take a stand against the killing of time.

Since about 18 months ago I've noticed that my perception of the passage of time has ratcheted up a rather noticable notch. It's not the first time, certainly, and I look back with increasing fondness on a memory of me at a single digit age being told by my mum that the Carp Fair wouldn't be on for a month. What awe I felt at that stretch of time.

But now I find that a month is comperable to how I used to see a week, a week is more akin to a day and a day is more akin to three hours or so.

Like a lot of things, it's alarming but what can one do against time? Nothing much, but what can you do about your perception of its passing? Bore yourself to tears and it will slow. Snort cocaine off of Scarlett Johannson's left buttock while listening to a duet between Thom York, Bjork and a panda being played live in the auditorium of your personal space station and it will most likely speed up a bit.

Most likely.

But nobody wants to live a stretched out bit of boredom and I think it would be just an exercise in meaningless distraction to fill my time with as much entertainment as possible so as to send myself (perceptually) hurtling towards my emerald studded space coffin (complete with space servants to join me in the afterlife). Okay, fair enough, this leads to a more rewarding and tantalizing path then picking a spot on the spectrum of hedonism. Being productive in a personally rewarding fashion. Writing always "steadies time" for me and this is certainly one of the reasons I love it. But until I'm self supporting, I need to work a day job.

Now we're really heading into first world problem territory. Brace yourselves.

I...I want my day job to be something I want to do and which contributes more to my life than a paycheque. I want to stop pressing the mental fast forward button on stretches of time in my day which do not include physical pain or recovery from illness. I want to stop feeling like I'm mortgaging about 2/3 of my waking life to sustain myself and be able to enjoy the other 1/3. Essentially, I want to lose the prefix.

Just typing that last bit sent a deluge of imagery roaring through my head. Oh but Mr. Brackenbury, there are so many people so much worse off than you. There are those starving people, those diseased people, those abused working people, those people on the wrong end of a state sponsored genocide, those people who are forced at gunpoint to commit incest, those people who come to a website they regularly frequent for something interesting or pleasant and find neither and who could forget those tired, swollen bellied children with the flies crawling all over their eyeballs like octegenarian golfers parading around the 9th green to figure out the angle of their putt - those kids which were just segwayed to by TV's own Dr. Frasier Crane, Kelsey Grammar, while you're just trying to be one of those children who gets to eat cereal and watch cartoons before going to school.

I think this is how generally well meaning people end up hating the poor just as they can wind up resenting a television show or a band - overplay. Is...is this an awful portent of my eventual transformation into a sharp fanged, utterly merciless bastard with no concern for anybody but himself? I certainly hope it's just a phase I'll outgrow by the next clothing or musical style I find myself enjoying.

Right then, to sum up, three new goals to achieve by years end (and preferably before).

• Support myself with a job I enjoy and that is directly related to film.
• Forgive those less fortunate for being so*.
• Find and maintain a satisfactory perception of the passage of time.

Ok, ready SET GO!

(This rambling essay/manifesto was brought to you by the increasingly mind-gumming illness which I am losing the war to).

*This is, of course, worded just a little tongue-in-cheek.

I gotta say, I'm tempted

Okay I'm having a bit of a Top Gear wank...

...but it's fun having them take the piss out of Hummers (sorta!).

Speaking of cultural differences....

You haff to verk for money

Phew! So I’m a little worn out, despite getting home at an oddly reasonable hour last night. I think some sort of virus is having a 12 round bout with my immune system which has yet to see a victory either way. It might just be a virulent meme, since I can’t for the life of me get the base line for “Billie Jean” out of my head.

Nonetheless, I headed down to Brick Street (via Liverpool station) last night, clad in notebooks and armed with no less than two pens and a mechanical pencil to defend myself from getting mugged by the awkwardness one can feel when heading to a “hip bohemian venue” on their own. I did, however, get taken aback momentarily when I spotted Arabic (and only Arabic) street signs on some of the side roads I navigated. This was rendered stranger still as I heard more Polish than anything else (non-English) while walking around.

With a few lines of advice from good old Roberto in the back of my mind, I set to a winning start by sitting with my notebook and pint in the wrong half of the bar! It was a very enjoyable part with plush leather couches and all the rest, which I think I shall definitely return to, but not the right one! 93 Feet East (the venue, not an address) strikes me as a pretty successful place if only by merit of its size. It has a very large courtyard with a dozen picnic tables and a BBQ vendor who, if you ask nicely, will allow you to pay just a bit too much for sausages, chicken breasts and the like. Then there is the area where I first sat, with those couches I mentioned set about low wooden tables with a fine black finish, tall windows that look out on the courtyard and an affordably priced bar with nice staff. On that particular evening the DJ (who was, to my amusement, crammed in the upper right corner of the ceiling like a stuffed toy in some girls room) laid down some really relaxing, technically interested sounds.Now these two parts could fool most people into thinking they’d seen the whole place, I’d like to think, but after 40 minutes of sipping Strongbow and writing letters I asked the bar staff if the event was still on and discovered that yes it was, but in the area next door. So I hurried round to a third area, basically a tall roofed rectangle with a stage on one end (with a drop down screen for the viewing) and a larger DJ/Technical booth jammed up against the ceiling in the back. Lucky for me there had been problems with the AV setup which delayed the beginning until about 30 seconds after I found a seat. I then saw 13 London shorts and a handful of bands, I'd expand upon that but then I shall be doing so in my article for CapitalMag. I'll link to that when it's up, should they find my 350-500 words pristine enough to "print".

But for one exception....amongst the short stories, music videos and dubious "concept" videos there was a bit of outright propaganda for one of the looniest organizations I've seen in a while. I mean, O.I.L. are not as bad as some folk but I question this misapplication of fervor when there are so many more tangible and pressing issues to wrestle with than some nauseatingly vague mission to "reclaim love". Then again, perhaps I'm being a bit harsh due to how frighteningly unnerving the facial ticks of their leader were to me. I couldn't find any picutres of her, but imagine if you took a woman with a ratty brown ponytail and performed an operation on her brain so that in one small corner of her mind she would always think that a tiger is leaping down on her from a high cliff...you'd have an idea.

The Shortwave-sponsored event is happening again on the 8th of April and I have to say that I do feel inclined to give it another go, particularly a go in which I won't have to frantically try to write down names of people and production companies in a room darkened for viewing. Not to say that I didn't enjoy playing reporter, I'll definitely do it again some time but I do hope that I can busy myself with enough film work (of a more hands on nature) so that I can't.

Enjoy the pictures, I'm off to collapse after shambling through a day at work...

(This was in the post below, but I could not get the sodding formatting to behave!)

With the obvious exception of my "Ode to Rotting Tyres By a Railway Station" picture, I have generally kept to the very picturesque with my pictures thus far. Here I choose to deviate slightly. That being said, I find my own aesthetic delights in a lot of these pictures that may come from either a less biased appreciation of the way the world looks or perhaps the kind of naive fascination with slightly grimier things which can come from growing up a clever country lad.

Maybe both.

Ah but I'm being a bit grandiose, this is hardly ghetto - it can just seem that way compared to the two million pound flats around Trafalgar square or when you read about weaponized dog breeders in the same borough as you. For that I'd need to investigate the East End and select parts south of the river. I'm just in a fiddly mode, knowing I need a good nights rest if I'm to be out for eight odd hours drinking and reporting on the Shortwave festival tomorrow night (with work early the next day). Too tired and antsy to write or draw, I turned myself out with the camera for a bit of fresh air is all.

Go to bed old man, before you really get rambling.

A grand does not, in fact, come without some kind of effort

And the accountants entrails said....

Okay screw it, I'm applying today for the Script To Screen course. The course alone might have been a hard thing to decide on, but that it will give me the ability to register with the Panico Film Society for sixty-five pounds is too sweet an opportunity not to take. The society has events every single Thursday night of the year as well as an in-house job board. That latter benefit really reverbrated through my mind as I read it yesterday during my lunch break from entering the several thousandth track work form that I've entered for Network Rail.
The course is on the 24th, but there is an open to the public event on the 22nd which I'm going to use as a scouting mission to see the place in person. Expect plenty o' news on the matter when it comes to bear.
Meanwhile, here are some pictures I've been meaning to upload. The night time ones are from a month ago when I went out on the towne with my cousin Daniel and the day time ones are general shots around Islington that I took the same day I grabbed pictures of the Banksy piece.

Yeterday we had snow...

...and I swear there are more interesting things going on! But it was awesome, at least five centimeters. In the early morning all the train stops had turned into these classic Canadian ads for multicultural harmony with people of all sizes and shapes having snowball fights (and at my usual station a couple of Chinese fellas had built numerous snow-commuters, placing two on a bench and another was haughtily smoking a pipe that I guess they found).

I've laid down and prayed to The Money and The Money spake unto me: "Oliver, that six week Foundation course would be pretty great but then you'd have a third of the savings you were hoping to have at the end of this contract. You would have a pretty thin financial cushion to catch your ass should you happen to fall on it.".

Which I don't understand because I must have built like twenty craven idols to The Money, but oh well! The Money works in mysterious ways.

For example, I've been stumped on what I could cover (other then the usual ubiquitous movie reviews) for one of the London Film Rags I've contacted. But then I got an email from a film collective south of the river whose mailing list I'd forgotten I'd signed onto. It let me know of an event near Shoreditch which is a free cavalcade of short films from 4pm-7pm then live and upcoming bands (some of whom are sponsored by Giles Peterson). Sounds like one of those "events" which an amateur journalist like myself could cover this Sunday.

Meanwhile I am negotiating with The Money to see if I can't at least take one of the single weekend courses. I'll sacrifice an accountant tonight and see if I can't find guidance from his steaming entrails.

At least a good step towards...

...dispelling one of the most tragic attacks of fantasy upon reality one of the more succesful cults.

UFO's and a Giant Phallus, also decisions!

So it seems that during my fairly peaceful weekend I missed an alien armada in my neighborhod?

Also it turns out that London's most phallic building has a public observation deck at one of it's highest levels. I reckon I'll make an expedition to that sometime soon, expect some classy pictures!

I'm really torn, at the moment, as to where to go with the Panico courses. The most expensive (in time and money) option that I am looking at is The Foundation course. Looking at the timetable I can see that though I have some experience with a lot of what is mentioned, I could certainly benefit from further instruction. Not to mention that there is a lot of non-digital filming to be done, which is something I have NO experience with. It's £800, with £200 as an upfront deposit. But at the end of it I'd have a short flick under my belt, the option for membership and those beloved fellow young flm maker contacts (presuming my social skills haven't atrophied too much these past weeks!).

However, this would definitely make a big dent in my potential savings and would probably delay my coming to visit Ottawa in June. But someone I was speaking with last night made the very rational point that I didn't go to all the trouble and expense of coming to England just so I could hurry back to visit Canada!

But if I do take the more conservative route, I'd go with a combination of The Advanced Directing Workshop and the From Script To Screen course, in no particular order. As far as I'm concerned, my writing is at a pretty good level right now. It's not that I couldn't learn more, of course, but that I think your standard scriptwriting courses have nothing new to offer me. I think if I did do a writing course, it would have to be something a bit more special than the standard "So you have characters, right? And they gotta have, like, motivation". Meanwhile both directing and knowledge of the business are areas where I suffer a dearth of knowledge and I'd like to remedy that.

What is a lad to do?

Film making, how about it?

Graffiti aside, I've been hunting for film courses and collectives which could help me get out into the London film scene. So far Panico Films looks to be the top contender, if only because they are offering courses as well as a continuing source of rentable equipment and local filmscene events. Though they do offer two writing courses I'd have to say that I think I'm already capable of all the things they promise to teach in the first one. The other writing course looks interesting since it takes more of a Director/Producer angle. I'm familiar with some of what it promises to teach, but most of it would be fresh and for all I know there could be some important differences between how, say, agents work in England as opposed to Canada.

There are a couple of other courses that look interesting too...I gotta say, it's getting me pretty excited since the costs are all within my budget. I've just got to decide where to start! A big, added bonus is that this will not only lead to a trifecta of improved skills, contacts and equipment access but it will also help me keep momentum! The past month, though calmer and more comfortable than the previous three, has threatened to turn into a tedious routine which might have left me mired in a whole lot of nothing much.

As fun as my TheMovies shorts are, a dude hungers for more!

Citizen Zero
Uploaded by Geigerdog

Banksy!

I know at least some of you are already aware of this guy, but since I found some of his work near my place I thought I'd bring him up.
Banksy is arguably the most notorious street artist going, which is saying something given how many there are and how many are focused entirely on gaining widespread recognition. I always admire how he not only manages incredibly daring pieces, like those he did on that wall the Israeli's built so as to destroy any sympathy I might have had left for them and their troubles, but the fact that he shows a great deal of genuine artistic talent and thought in his subversive images.
Though you can find it in his book, I thought I'd post a couple of my own photos of a piece that I discovered just across the street from Archway Station, about five minutes walk from my apartment. I wouldn't say this is his best work, but I do enjoy it.

THIS...

...basically sums it all up!

Difficulty? WHAT?

Scriptin' Fancy-Like: Update!
Well I thought I'd have my treatment finished by now, but it isn't (though not for lack of trying). True, I've had such epic distractions as building a desk and China continuing to rediscover the problems of the Industrial Revolution on a grander scale...but I'd say I've spent a fair bit of time hacking away at this over the past while.

But anyways, I reached the end of the second act and I had to decide not if someone would die but by whose hand. This fork in the road would determine an awful lot about the arrangement of the third act, which was largely already written but in a grouping of pieces which have some room to be shuffled depending on which road I took.

I think part of the reason that I breezed throught he first act and took a somewhat leisurely stroll through the second was that I had no and then less continuity stacked behind me to worry about. Now entering the third act (though, really, it's more like the fourth act given how the story plays out) I have to not only make sure that there is a believable causality at play but it has to fit into the previous two acts. Also, I am trying to make sure that all this is built out of strong and engaging ideas?

It feels kind of like I am trying to arrange a long series of glass lenses, where each lense has a pattern painted across so as to paritally block light from going through. If I can just rotate all the lenses correctly to allow an unbroken length of light to enter at one end and exit at the other, then I'll have succeded and be able to move on to the script proper.

Meanwhile I've been taking refuge from wrestling with Content and fiddled about with Structure, specifically character descriptions to help me better visualize things and an experiment of mine. I've set aside a page in one notebook and titled it "...ends up...". Then I'll slap a characters name at the start of that sentence as well as their fate on the other end, repeating it as many times with one character as I feel inspired to do. It's helping and it isn't, since it does help me narrow down where the story can go but it also makes me feel like I'm building another kaleidoscope to align.

WELL