Lincoln

Almost failed at making some American style pancakes this morning, first bunch I did were borderline burnt before it dawned on me that I was on too high a heat to cook on. Second batch looked a little something like this:

Admittedly, they didn't look THAT god, but they were blooming tasty, filled my stomach up a plenty before going out to see Lincoln.

Typically I invest a lot of confidence in Steven Spielberg to make a brilliant and entertaining movie, like Jaws or Jurassic Park. While Lincoln was technically brilliant with some great acting and cinematography, it sure as hell wasn't very entertaining. The first half was pretty dull since I have little to no knowledge of American history so a lot of the dialogue went right over my head. But towards the second half the film picked up a lot of momentum and managed to sway me into enjoying it a bit more. For a more in-depth review tune into our podcast in the next few days as it's our film of the week to review! 

Midway through a dull week

Taught cineclub and made pasta for dinner, these were the honest highlights of my day. While nothing special I have just enjoyed some more 'me time' while watching Life on Mars. Did some scripting for our new sketch as well this evening, tried to put in as many funny lines as possible and its got a premise that'll surely make you giggle.

Final interview today!

Busy day of interviews. Once again, Mum and I went on down to Bournemouth for my final interview for TV production. This was my first choice uni and course so I made the whole day count. We were formally interviewed, given a filming practical task (in which I was the director) and a film critique, overall I feel that I did exceptionally well in all the categories and hope to hear good things. Whole thing took about 4 hours, not including travel times so yes, I am a bit knackered but I can have a nice day off tomorrow to watch more Life on Mars! 

Way of the Warrior

Mark and myself gathered some ideas together for scripting and we have got 2 devilishly funny films in the making now, more info on that when we finish the next stage of writing. A few weeks back we uncovered 'The Raven Interactive DVD game' at a boot sale, since we were all such ironic fans of the show when we were younger we snatched up the game for zero pennies (it was free since the disc was so scratched.) The game worked fine in our DVD player though and we were howling with laughter over the low quality of the game and decided to write up the rules for a drinking game for it. That will be a lot of fun the next opportunity we get!

Guest Star at our laser party

Work was a little calmer today, but I really chose the wrong time to get off my break, had I been 10 seconds later I could have avoided cleaning up some child's vomit from the cafe's carpet area. Despite that slight unpleasantry we were graced with the presence of a local celebrity. We hosted his nephew's Birthday party and he shares the same name as me: Theo Walcott! It was very exciting for us behind the scenes as some of the people I worked with were desperate for his autograph (and ended up getting it, he was very pleased to give them out.) Some of us even got a photo with him since he just felt like being a bit of a legend. Morale and productivity had never been as high as it was tonight. 

Sketch surplus

Back to work after a 2 week gap thanks to the snow. Kinda felt like I was thrown into the deep end a bit since it was so busy and I was constantly on my toes. We coped really well however, despite the literal mountain of washing up we had to go through. Mark and myself have come up with a small handful of sketch ideas recently, these are the kind of films that will be quick, easy and fun to make so stay tuned for details about them within the next week!

Filmcast Season Two

'They're magically disgusting!'

Lucky Charms are pretty naff. My girlfriend bought two boxes of the stuff for £10 since it needs to be imported from the states and it is certainly one of the worst breakfast cereals I've had. The actual cereal part is just about bearable if you like Golden Nuggets, but its the nasty bits of marshmallow that really are the deal breaker here. Phoebe seemed to like it though so I won't stop her, then again, I probably couldn't stop her, she had munched through half a box before the end of the morning!

I got sick of the stagnant smell of thick air in my room so I went all out and bought myself an air freshener, the fancy battery operated kind that release puffs of mildly sweet smelling fumes every once in a while. Problem is, I am not used to hearing these loud sprays. Just as I was writing this blob I have managed to nearly poo myself and jump from my seat in pure terror from a wee puff of fragrance. It's getting turned off tonight, else I will get some night horrors or something equally nasty.

Mark, Dan and myself finally got around to recording the first episode of our new podcast season, that should be posted sometime tomorrow! We also tried to branch out with some episodes of a 'Lets Play.' Essentially we would play a video game together and record our various witticisms, they are really popular at the moment on Youtube so we thought we would give it a try. After recording an hour of footage however, it turned out that the levels on our microphone were set all wrong and everything we said was totally inaudible. Big shame this, but at least we had a blast playing the game!   

Second Interview

Second interview today and it went so much better than Tuesday's. Tried to make myself as calm as possible so I begun by chatting with the other people there who were really awesome guys, they knew about loads of films and were genuinely interesting to talk to. From there on in, it was a group interview consisting of ice-breaking general knowledge questions. After that we were given a narrative scenario which we had to resolve as we liked, the one given went a little something like this:

'There is a man (or woman) in the middle of the road on a boiling hot day. What happens next?'

Being myself, with the hugely creative mind, I suggested the following:

'There is a woman struggling to walk along the highway, she looks like she has been walking for hours, she's walking towards the camera and we eventually see from her point of view which reveals she is walking towards an ice-cream truck. Said truck is being driven by her ex-husband who has a sick idea of revenge after the death of their child.'

Grim I know, but I think it set me apart.

 

First Univeristy interview

First of my interviews today and it was a doozy. I was the only person there for the morning interview which is unusual because it was going to be a group interview, but hey-ho that might have been in my favor anyway. The very first thing I do after shaking the two interviewer's hands is put on my showreel, which they were not a big fan of because I put background music to my clips as opposed to the original sound. This technique was suggested by Mark in very good faith as it got him into his dream university but here it sadly just made me very embarrassed. I did manage to show them a small portion of As Time Goes By as well but got a stern word from them for the use of copyrighted music in my video; here was about where I started feeling rather faint. I felt stupid, embarrassed and out of my depth then and only just recovered from it thanks to my decent portfolio which may or may not have saved me, I'll let you know when I hear back from them.   

The whole thing felt more like an interrogation than an interview and I just felt like a small fish in a big pond while walking around the campus so I was a little down on the car ride home, I just kept telling myself that it was a good learning experience for the interviews to come. Next on is on Thursday.

Perfect Portfolio

A lot of effort went into finalizing my uni portfolio, got it all looking awesome and lovely. Hooked out all the old stuff with Mark for additional content and somehow wet on a very pleasant trip down memory lane of all the old Cafe (and Dough boy) studios stuff. From the A3 mind maps to the dusty storyboard books it was just swell having a look back when your just about to head forward.

Interview prep

Spent most of my day preparing for my first university interview, preparing answers to questions and practicing mannerisms in the bathroom mirror. Starting to feel quite confident actually, just finishing off my showreel tomorrow along with the final touches to my portfolio. In case you haven't noticed, Mark and myself also prepared a weekly topical media quiz for school which is featured on this blog as well. You can try your hand at answering some of our questions here if you want a simple time killer and think you have paid attention to the news this week, can't give out prizes mind, but you will feel a genuine sense of satisfaction if you do well!

Winter Wonderland

Please enjoy possibly our latest video which is sure to raise some eyebrows. Mark came over yesterday after nearly crashing his car on the icy roads. To justify his dangerous trip he wanted to make the most of the snow, sadly it wasn't rolling as effectively as we wanted so we couldn't make an igloo, but we DID want to make a short video. So the idea you have hopefully just watched came to light. It only truly came into its own after we begun editing it though as we just tried to make it as creepy as possible; you will never look at a snowman in the same way again.

Also for anyone who wanted to know, the snowman's eyes are digestive biscuits with blobs of marmite on the for pupils.

As a group we also got to see Django Unchained which was absolutely awesome in short, look out for a future podcast episode for a more in-depth review and discussion!

Crusing through Limbo til tomorrow

Faintly productive day, as in I cleaned up my room a fair bit and learned how to cook some pretty awesome meatballs, surely one for my University days. Tucked here in my room mostly waiting for tomorrow to come around for one of several reasons. Most foremost is the chance that it might snow, and y'all know I love me some snow. The second being that we have book tickets to see Django Unchained for its commercial UK debut; can't wait to go see it! 

Dirty Dealings has landed!

After a few days of delays due to a handful of re-shoots (which were entirely necessary because some of our original footage looked a bit naff.) We are proud to present our new crime-comedy short film Dirty Dealings! It was an absolute pleasure to work with Tom Metcalf, Tom Norman and Johnny Yates on this collaborative project and I think that it really shines.

Heck if you liked that, then you'll LOVE the outtakes video that had me chuckling away to myself long into the night.

In other mildly unrelated news. Louis bought a Gameboy Advance Micro, a tiny little device from the mid 2000's that is quite the gizmo, at least it gave us an excuse to look back on our tragic list GBA titles, including such hits as: Creatures Advance and Tiger Woods PGA cup 2004! Remember when people still looked up to him? Ahh, the mid 2000's...

Dirty Dealings

That's it! It's out! Watch 'Dirty Dealings' for yourself right here:

Dirty Dealings - RELEASE TONIGHT!

Our new project 'Dirty Dealings' will be released on our YouTube channel at 8PM tonight!

A collaboration with Tom Norman, Tom Metcalf and Johnny Yates - keep your eyes peeled for some bloody bust-ups over a briefcase full of money.

I'm a Browncoat

It's official. I am now a raging fan of Firefly. After finishing the TV series yesterday and having just seen Serenity I can safely say that I am a big 'ol fan of the series. From the pilot I was captivated by the fun an mysterious characters and was eventually drawn into a unique and brilliantly realized world that complimented the series' tone. Every episode made me laugh and think in some way about life's values, something I never expected a TV series to do. The movie was pretty good too, but anyone who has seen the series before hand will enjoy it much more as they get to see many pay-off's that the series never got around to showing. So yes, I am probably going to say that it is my favorite ever TV series that I have seen so far!

The unthinkable

Today the unthinkable happened. Something so daft hat I am ashamed to admit it here and I wil tell you with a sentence I am sure I shall never repeat again in my lifetime.

I cut myself on a piece of pizza.

It just nicked me on the thumb, trying to get a burnt bit of it off a baking tray and it drew blood. Everyone was laughing at me while I just stood under the tap for a few minutes.

To ease the pain however, I am happy to announce that our new film (the one that has been in the oven for a good while now) will be released tomorrow evening! 'Dirty Dealings' should be with you very, very soon.

Cafe meeting 2

Beginning to sound a lot like a broken record here. Editing is taking its time, with a little luck it will be out sometime very soon. In the meantime I had to re-install Steam and all my games which took the better part of today, but mostly I was killing time until the Eddie Catz Cafe meeting this evening at 6pm. It was admittedly anti-climactic when I got there, bear in mind its a near hour journey to and from work on foot, I was a little bit miffed when my meeting was only 15 minutes long with information that could have been emailed to me. I guess it was good to have an organized meeting but felt a little bit like a waste of time.

Live Long, and Prosper

I was taken out for a very nice Pub meal by Phoebe today. Actually, to call it a pub might be an understatement as is was essentially a very cosy restaurant with some awesome food which was a little bit too much for her it seemed, I ended up eating half of her main course! I didn't complain though.

I also sat down to watch the 2009 film Star Trek which was ok. It was a a fun enough action/sci-fi film but the problem lied with me. Basically, if I had seen t before I saw the Avenger, I probably would have liked it a hell o f a lot more, I just felt myself constantly comparing the 2 films and ended up wishing I was watching the Avengers instead.

Cineclub = Little less success

Got around to filming our final FINAL set of pick-ups today so now our film really is all in the right can and we will try to get it out to you by the end of the week. Again we had our Cineclub lesson, this time with a different and larger group, while they shared the same enthusiasm as the first group, this lot were certainly a lot more clumsy, managing to drop a camera after only holding it for half an hour. No permanent damage however which is good but I can see this group of slightly over-excited boys to be a potential issue down the line.

Listen to me! Now I sound like a teacher!

Cineclub = success!

Today marks possibly the latest time I have ever gotten out of bed: 11am. It really threw my dietary body clock out the window. I was eating breakfast for lunch which knocked me hard when it came to dinnertime but I didn't start getting hungry until halfway through our CineClub lesson. Mark and I prepared a short film which our groups needed to replicate and add their own ending to. The groups themselves showed some real promise, you didn't see any of the typical 'domineering to-be director' children rather we got a bunch who were just happy to go out and film things, the best kind of film-makers.

I hear the second group we will teach tomorrow will not be so easy to teach...

Editing takes time

FOr the past 2 nights we have been down to Chris' house for editing. First Day me and Dan did a very basic trimming job of all the clips so they had the perfect degree of comedic timing while tonight Chris and Mark did a lot more advanced tweaking of the more fiddly bits. It's coming along fine, although we will have to probably get another set of pick ups due to some dodgy camera angles so we are looking at a release later this week.

Mark and I are back at school tomorrow to help out and partially run our school's Cineclub, essentially we are teaching a new generation of students about how to make successful short films and maybe find some spiritual successors! 

Firefly

Steady day at work although I had little to no energy through-out most of the day. I blme this mostly on my late night play session of Resident Evil Revelations and the fact I overslept and couldn't make porridge for myself in the morning, turns out I needed that extra energy that only creamy oats can provide.

I did manage to track down a reasonable US television series, by reasonable I mean, didn't go on for 23 seasons with diminishing quality, this one only has 14 episodes. Firefly (directed by Joss Whedon, the man behind The Avengers) had an excellent pilot episode that introduced all the main characters effectively and set the stage perfectly for more episodes that I will certainly be watching.    

Now if you will excuse me, I have some more Resident Evil to play.

Pick-Up artists

While we didn't get up quite so early today, a fair chuck of our day was spent filming all the bits we missed out doing yesterday. It's all in the can now and Mark turned to me this evening and said with a big grin that it should all be done by Monday, and it should look awesome. Busted out the VHS player again for Film Friday as Jenny was quite insistent on watching the Muppets Treasure Island but she only had a copy on videotape. Frankly it was a delight using the old format simply to see just how we have progressed in technology again and the old Disney trailers before the video were great fun, especially since none of us had heard of 'Oliver and Company' or knew there was a sequel to Homeward Bound.'

90% of the new film is done

Full steam ahead with filming our new short film. We were going from 9am until 4pm with the effort which as usual, took longer than expected so we are doing some additional pick-ups tomorrow just to finish it off. But the stuff we got today looked absolutely incredible and there was some real energy and comradery on set as we all got on really well with each-other.

Just to give you a quick taster as to what our film is all about, I will say the following:

1. Louis looks very dapper
2. Guns are turned on characters
3. A suitcase full of money threatens friendships
4. A trio very successful hide from a highly awkward situation

Rearing for a new film

Well, today was spent being very productive. We prepared all of our props, character placements and choreographed the fight scene for our next short film. We are really, really excited to film this one as we will be working with close friends and other respected film-makers from our old school to bring you a collaborative effort that is sure to make us all feel proud. However, more on that tomorrow, I gotta get off to bed now as filming starts for us at 8 in the morning! In the meantime however, here are some recent photographs.

Our 'Briefcase full of cash' prop featuring Johnny Yates' face to substitute the queen

 

The previously mentioned gmae of drinking chess we played on New Years Eve, with a different beverage for each piece, looks pretty.

Happy New Year 2013

Happy New Year everyone, hope you all had a good evening yesterday getting up to various board games and activities with friends and family. We got into a very long game of drinking chess and the classic trivial pursuit variant we have which went down very well with all of the guests. And for those of you who weren't working today I hope you all had a nice lie-in or day off, I used this day productively to begin watching Breaking Bad which has started off very well indeed.

With a slightly sadder turn of events however, between my girlfriend of 6 months and I we decided that we have had our run but are not right for each-other, which is a polite way of saying that we parted ways and split-up. Hopefully for the better of both of us though.