Oliver Brackenbury : Allusion Incarnate?

O.....o.....okay!

Hello, a portion of www.qwantz.com's readership for today?! I am a friend of Ryan North! We went to school together - twice! And I was there on that ancient day when he was still thinking about doing the comic with astronauts and uh...wow. I thought I was just going to post a couple more pictures of London and do a little blurb before bed but...

Please watch this film trailer I made in the summer and then throw money/film connections? Also, I'd be honoured if any of you stay on as readers of my lil' blog in which I generally talk about London and my creative projects, all under the umbrella of trying to "make it" in "motion pictures". I generally try to make it entertaining and informative while leaving out details such as which toothpaste's packaging really gets my goat (THERE ARE FEW).

Well! I guess...I guess I'll just continue with the entry I had planned - I promise I won't be all stuttery and whatnot in the future, this was just a real big surprise for me!

So, erm, I just got back from meeting a guy who wants me to write a short (15-20 minutes) script based on a couple of ideas of his which revolve around some interesting themes to do with the encroachment of technology on personal freedoms - also there will be a wicked Parkour chase scene. Having just gotten a taste for both chase scenes and action in general while working on the last leg of my Archbrook treatment, I'm happy to sink my teeth into more. It's still early days yet, but I got a good vibe off this fellow and I can at least vouch for his not being a sasquatch rapist (probably).

Anyways, we met in a pub near Liverpool Street Station. As I'm making even more of an effort to carry my camera with me in anticipation of my webcomic (WHICH AIN'T READY YET, PLEASE DO NOT JUDGE THE CRUDE DRAWINGS OF A FEW POSTS BELOW - DINO COMICS FANS!), I expect we'll see an upswing in the amount of nifty London photographs that I post here. We'll start with a picture of the ceiling of the station itself.

And then we have a few pictures I took outside, facing Sun Street Passage. This was definitely one of those little areas of London which conveys both a sense of big-city grandeur and also an oddly intimate feeling that you would normally associate with small villages. I think the fact that the vast majority of (even wealthier, more central) buildings don't go higher than a handful of stories can account for this. Though it has it's share, London certainly doesn't have a love affair with skyscrapers like New York or Tokyo.
That's all for now, inter-net! I'm going to try to de-boggle my mind with a few hours of REM sleep...

No Brand Quality Goods

So I was fiddling with Statcounter and I figured out how see what cities people are logging in from. Sometimes you get more details - I'm on to you Kate, you were using a work computer for leisure purposes. HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHTS?Hello to my German reader! You were the most unexpected of all.
Work was a dream today as I got to head down to Euston, instead of the usual Barking, for a bit of additional training. This only took up half the day, so I had a potter around Oxford Circus and Soho Square etc, camera in tow. Aside from more pictures to be used in the Clive webcomic project, I got a few which tickled me - maybe they will tickle you? Obsoive.Some nice mural action from Tottenham Court Road.
I know that, technically, this is ugly - but I like it. Heck, it probably plays some role in my being able to access the internet. Praise be to the ugly BT monolith!This is a little side street area behind the tall shopping facades of Oxford Circus. Here I found a little bit of street art which I thought I would take a picture of before the dudes from Boston came to defuse it. Also, several record shops with really old stuff! True story.
Back on Tottenham Court Road I discovered a really neat company whose shop I'm definitely returning to. It's called Muji and they sell a wide assortment of daily living goods from stationary to furniture. I really admire the minimalism, prices and environmental undertones to their stuff. Not to mention that they have some very intelligently designed items, like a cd player/stereo that works like a lamp and biodegradable speakers.

Meanwhile I'm meeting with someone tonight for a mutual sniffing of behinds before, potentially, embarking upon some script work. Wish me luck?

3/4 Fandangle

Well, I think I've managed some drawings that induce mild titters rather than bellowing guffaws - so here's where I am thus far. I have decided to pursue something with Clive from my two lil' stories over in Bronze Age Sky God. I've spent more time on notes than art and I guess it shows - it's hard not to give into the temptation to do that which comes easier, you know? The first was more to do with layout and achieving a kind of "tracking shot effect" than actual well drawn characters while the others are more determined efforts. I really want to try and get my drawing of people up to a higher standard if I'm going to experiment with photographs for backgrounds.I think I've reached a reasonable compromise with hands, but I'm also going to have to broker a treaty with the peoples of 3/4 Angle Land before I can feel confident enough to start doing the comic proper. Meanwhile, I've started learning about layers and other such new fangled graphic trickery so that I can try an experiment - the results of which I'll try to have up some time this weekend.

I also considered a small, surreal gag strip where I could relax and make no attempt at beautiful art but instead just vent the kind of ridiculous humour which could find no place in the Clive comic. "Que Pasa Contigo?" is, I believe, Spanish for "What is Wrong with me?" by and by.
In the end, I think you can attribute this to the first internet meme to seize me by the taint in many years. Lo and behold the true face of madness!

Hands, it seems, are difficult to draw

The more I think about it, the more I sketch and the more ideas I jot down...the more doing a webcomic makes piles of sense to me. I've always known that my big film gambit could, potentially, fail. I'm going to do everything I can to achieve, you know, the opposite of that! But it's a sad truth that sometimes in "the industry" you can have all the talent, enthusiasm and work ethic in the world yet still go unrewarded.

It's partly my knowledge of this unpleasant fact that made me hang in and finish my degree instead of chucking my books over my shoulder and diving in right away (as I was often tempted, especially in third year). So I reckon that I'd like to work towards a rewarding day job which, if I ever gave up on film, would also be something I could do and be creative. I shouldn't talk like making money off a webcomic is a sure thing, it isn't. But one thing I can say about it is that the top quality stuff has a way of rising to the top thanks to word of mouth and the complete absence of meddling authority figures (like editors to the print-based counterparts in the papers).

The art side is easily the most challenging for me (pics soon?) but it's a challenge I am enjoying taking on. Plus I take inspiration in the fact that strong writing can help compensate for all sorts of mediocrity - keeping things afloat until the art skills start to catch up.

A great example of this is a comic called "Questionable Content". Though it has had one or two short periods where my loyalty wavered, it's one of my dailies and there is no denying the impressive progression of the art. If you want an interesting sight, use the following links to see how Jeph Jaques art improved every 100 or so comics (I suggest laying them all along a series of tabs for maximum effect).

QC#1
QC#100
QC#200
QC#300
QC#400
QC#500
QC#600
QC#700
QC#800
QC#841 (Todays)

On the ideas front, I've whittled down from two ideas to one and have started filling a notebook with notes on the main cast as well as strip ideas. Plus I have come across a layout for the strip which I think will really stand out. I'm downloading The Gimp and Inkscape tonight to begin playing with some photo's I took on Saturday for the strip.

Meanwhile, I certainly haven't forgotten about film! If I seem quiet on that front, it is only because I do not want to waste time putting up notice of every slight whif that I catch. I think both reader and writer would quickly grow tired of...

Tuesday xx, x, 200x
"Today I got talking with a dude who seems serious about making a short film out of one of my scripts"

Thursday xx, x, 200x
"Dude turned out to be a flake (or idiot, unlikable fool, unrealistic fool, opportunist, sasquatch rapist)"

REPEAT.

Bullets not meant to be taken internally

I was just reading this article on the environmental impact of how Britains major supermarket operations run and I got to a part where they say how people are generally skeptical of when any big business makes claims to taking steps towards environmental responsibility...

"The reputation of CSR was not helped, for example, when weapons manufacturer BAE Systems launched a range of "environmentally friendly" munitions as part of its corporate responsibility initiative with these immortal words: "Lead used in ammunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to people."

Cider? But I hardly even KNOW her! - SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

So the Goon Meet was fun. I was a tad concerned that hardly anyone would show but at its height there were over fourty people, internet people, flooding Printworks and completely displacing the surprisingly sparse St. Paddy's day celebrators. A time was had!

Earlier in the day I popped out of the tube at Stepney Green and was amused to see that I wasn't too far from the Gherkin. But first I was off to the UK Webcomix Thing, primarily to hunt down John Allison and make him sell me a couple of his books for money.

Though I was taken back a bit by what felt like a pretty steep entry fee (four pounds), I had to remind myself that the University where this was being held was probably charging an unrealistic sum to ask of individuals trying to cobble together a forum/market for a bunch of self-employed artists and writers. Having grown up with a pair of the former and having been close to their own troubles and travails, I can say with a modest amount of authority that a lot of renters seem to think that because creative types are usually not schooled in business, that they should be gouged at every opportunity because (as the theory goes) they will not know they are being gouged - or even if they do, they'll be too timid to do anything but make polite mumblings long after the fact.I was pleased to meet John Allison for a few minutes as he kindly doodled some signatures in my purchases (the third and fourth SGR collections). I think he was in a nautical mood as the accompanying thumbnail sketches were of Ernest Cromerty & Desmond the Fish-man. Plus, when I asked to take a picture he chose to look out upon the sea.
Afterwards I had a thorough browse around all the tables. I wound up being, rather unexpectedly, a bit stuffed by the end of my tour as more than half the webcomic tables had free snacks laid out to draw people in. There was a wide range of talent and some of the art blew my tiny little mind. Aside from biscuits and cupcakes, I also picked up a bunch of fliers and free comics to investigate later. One thing that I was pleased not to find, were any comics which seemed like near-clones of either of the two ideas I've narrowed my own webcomic notions down to. Heck, I didn't even see one comic which used drawn characters over photographed backgrounds - which gives me hope that that style hasn't been sucked dry of all novelty and flavor.

Some, of course, were horrible - but that's par for the course. I had very little sympathy for a quite elderly lady, who seemed like she would have been better suited to being an amusing comedic foil in a sitcom than an actual person in real life, that was selling her comics which all circulated around the evils of "music" and "a shame-free life". There were also the usual cluster of folk who thought that drawing a penis with a felt-tip marker and including references to Jeffrey Dahmer made them avant-garde.

Oh well! After I left I enjoyed a long and rambling journey towards the Gherkin (which didn't seem to be open to the public that day, sadly) and then across The City to the Goon Meet in Farringdon...
Here we see The Monument, which is explained fairly well in the second picture I took of it.

Sorry, frat boys and girls....

...but all your stolen street signs, adorning corona-soaked $8 balsa-wood dorm doors everywhere, are nothing compared to this one.

Flailing your arms around wildly won't pay the rent or earn you recognition

Though I do acknowledge there are exceptions to the rule...

Right now I've hammered my list of projects down to...

1. ArchBrook Treatment/Script
2. Well Chewed Gum revision (A short script which could be considered a creative offshoot of "Tonight..."), finding some decent folk to make it with.
3. Webcomic development.

Everything else has to be shuffled into the "Whenever you need a break from the first three" bin. The webcomic, the most recent addition, may seem like a bit of an odd thing to throw into the mix when I am trying to focus, but here is the deal. Aside from a number of other reasons (I swear, I should just make pie charts to explain why I do everything, short of going to the bathroom or sleeping), it is the pressure to maintain regular updates that has pulled me back to the notion. I crave the structure and the deadlines for the steady rhythm and focus they would lend. Right now I am very pleased with myself in that I am writing on a daily basis but the reasons (personal enjoyment, fear of wasting my life) aren't good enough to sustain this level of output past a certain point. Without more visceral consequences, I know that one day (be it a month, a year or more from now) I will wake up and not have it in me to push out another story.

Because, let's face it, I could just lay down my writing etc any time at all and I'd still be able to feed myself, have friends, fall in love, travel the world blah blah blah blah. I actually would like consequences to my lulls in productive creativity. With a webcomic there would be the matter of maintaining readership and if things went really well, I could even wind up supporting myself off it in a modest fashion. Having to make rent etc. from the sweat off my brow may not sound appealing to most, but it is certainly more appealing to me than sleepwalking through my days at uninspiring jobs and then driving myself, half out of desperation, to maximise my every minute of spare time outside of that job.

So let's see what comes of this, then. As far as the progress on the concept and art, amongst the possabilities I've been sketching I seem to be getting pulled in towards something that resembles Max Fleischer cartoons - or at least the hazy vision of them which I've culled from memories of what I would get up at 6am to watch on television when I was quite little. Some drawings I've worked on yesterday and today are approaching palatability - if you cross your legs and wish real hard I may just post pictures of them later today.

Man! I gotta get a scanner!

A potential status quo buster

I gotta say, I really respect this. Check out the $100 Laptop project when you have a minute. There is both a website and a handy lil' video. Like a naked celebrity (pick your favorite), I'm in favor of this thing from every possible angle. Even if you're not "into computers", check it out - this is not a part of the Western culture of technofetishism.

Dudes in Seattle will not read about this in Wired Magazine, furiously masturbating with one hand and using the other to write a program in Perl that will help organize their WB Girl backgrounds in order of nipple length - desperately praying throughout the whole ordeal that they may one day figure out which DVD to buy that will give their lives meaning.

I...I'm not fond of those people.
I......I gotta go to bed!

The beginnings of a serial?

Clive pops up again, over at Bronze Age Sky God.

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.