The soundtrack to script writing...

This was originally a reply to one of Danny's comments on a previous blog post of mine, but I wrote so much I decided to make it into its own thing.

There's not really much music that gets me going on this script, but there are certain tracks that fit certain scenes.

Such as "You Look So Fine" by Garbage, or on a script I wrote in 2006 I listened to certain tracks by M83 that would fit certain scenes to inspire me in writing them. There was also "Adagio for Strings" (from "Platoon"), that inspired me in that script from last year (a practice script really) in which there was a paint balling sequence.

Also on that script from 2006 I found that "Can't Even Tell" by Soul Asylum (end credits of "Clerks") inspired me, which also does a little on this script...but not much.

I just generally listen to my music in general to get a vibe going. What helps me most of all is getting into a routine, because it keeps me plugging away at it, but it also gets me into the necessary mindset.

Recently when fiddling around with "IAZM3" prep, I was listening to the "Day of the Dead" soundtrack to get me going...and with that there were certain tracks that fitted certain scenes. The "Rocky" best-of soundtrack was also a big inspiration for writing "IAZM3"...so I guess that script had more in the way of a soundtrack-to-the-writing, certainly more-so than this current feature script I'm doing.

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As an aside, I've just had the shittiest wake-up call ever - massive indigestion/heart burn. Seriously, I felt like John Hurt in "Alien" just before he explodes all over the dinner table...absolute agony would be a good description. But after a good half hour of sitting/standing up (whilst wincing an awful lot), sipping milk and then taking a chewable Gaviscon I'm sitting pretty again.

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I should have the Richard Hammond book finished today, it's been a bloody good read, just a mere 60 pages left. Also, "The A-Team" is still awesome as I progress into Season 4 with gusto, and "PGR4" is proper good fun.

Merry December the 27th people...

Hope you lot had a groovy Christmas, mine was a good one, got a good haul and have been taking pictures like there's no tomorrow with my new digital photo camera. I've also been getting stuck into some A-Team: Season 4 as well as Richard Hammonds book "On The Edge", which is absolutely bloody brilliant and I'm steaming my way through it. A superb read, especially for "Top Gear" fans such as myself.

Anyway, I'm taking a well deserved rest from the comedy feature script at the moment being that it's Xmas and all, but I'll soon be back to it to fine tune the second act before heading onto the third act - after which, one of two horror scripts I have in mind.

I've also done the dialogue recording/editing for "IAZM3", although I might want to re-record one character's lines again.

Anyway, just stopping by to throw some blog in your faces, boshty.

The new (now old) flesh...

Admittedly there has been a nigh-on two week lull since I said I had recaptured the muse (regarding my feature comedy script)...although that time has been filled with a couple of filming/editing gigs as well as various bits of IAZM3 prep so it's not all bad. However to celebrate my return to said script, and now onto the second act no less (I'd previously found myself going over the first act again and again to get the tone and vibe right intentionally for the benefit of the rest of the script), I will regail you all with a tale from my formative years regarding VHS culture...something dear to my heart.

Now as great as DVD is - admittedly my ambivalence/anger towards the format after its release was really towards the people who were ditching VHS in a heartbeat and dissing it in the process (this leaded to a short film I made called "VHS") - VHS just has something extra, that I feel has been lost in the oft-promoted clarity of Digital Versatile Discs.

From a very young age I was using a VCR to record films (which I obsessively watched repeatedly with a spell-bound fascination), and so VHS tapes were part of my life from very early on. Around about the time I was crossing into the teenage threshold I had started to purchase official VHS tapes (my first was "Critters 2", closely followed by my then New Year's Resolution (to acquire) "Terminator 2").

At this time I was also heavily getting into the horror genre, something which grasped my imagination and never let go - the genre that has ultimately brought me to the chosen career path of filmmaking. This time was also important because the British Board of Film Classification changed leadership in 1999, which resulted in a sequel of sorts to the 1980s 'Video Nasties' era. Previously banned horror movies and other 'nasties' came pouring into the UK, many completely uncut (others which were not, now are).

This meant that these films were new to the video rental shop in town, and at this time I was a keen VHS renter (well, technically it was my parents). Either first-hand through the video rental shop, or via the second generation dubs from school friends (which I then made my third generation copies for further viewing), I was gradually experiencing the horrors & violence of two decades of cinema all within a couple of years. A baptism of fire if you will.

Where does the VHS culture really fit into this memory lane session? Well, as I'd said, I was watching these newly unleashed horrors - such as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (banned for 25 years in the UK) on VHS tapes - more specifically second or third generation dubs. Finally being allowed to see such films (with an edge of taboo-breaking within my household) was a key experience in my formative years. There was something illicit about it all, these taboo films spooling through my VCR...the sound was degraded, the picture was gritty and rough...and it was all encased within this black plastic case - an item rendered so brilliantly sinister in David Cronenberg's "Videodrome" (methinks "DVDrome" just wouldn't work).

The VHS tape became a symbol of my formative years, of my ascension into my teenage years. A symbol of self-discovery (ultimately guiding my career choice). While I am gradually more accepting of DVD discs as a tangible item, VHS tapes just feel like a movie to me. There's something to grab hold of (rather than delicately transfer from disc drawer to disc case).

A film on a VHS tape was just that - the film - the primary, powerful focus of all your attention. There's something mini-monolithic to the appearance of a VHS tape, and a VCR itself. There is an essence of simplistic brutality there, rather than the high-browed, slim-line elegance and diet-thin presence of DVDs. Videotapes had no special features, no commentaries, no menus, no deleted scenes, no unfunny gag reels - and no fucking warning screens you can't skip through.

I feel that with DVD, the film is no longer the prime focus. I mean, yes it's what is selling the package, but - and I myself am one such person now - you find people disappointed, rabidly so, by 'vanilla' DVD releases. You feel cheated, you expect a myriad of information to drown the main feature itself. You expect multiple discs and fancier packaging (although same-artwork cardboard sleeves can fuck right off). DVDs have pitch-perfect audio, they have clean and crisp images that never falter, never warp and degrade or bleed.

Of course, a clean picture that retains its quality is superb, but with that superiority comes a lack of soul. I will point out that one problem with the picture quality of VHS tapes was the abominable Pan & Scan, which zoomed in on images (dreadfully so from 2.35:1 original ratios) and thus degraded the quality (as well as chopped the image maliciously). With videotapes there was a hint of danger, a hint of a transitory mystique - you got a sense that the more you watched this tape, the closer it approached it's final play...perhaps a home-bound version of film prints, one might say.

This image degradation of course, was one of the driving forces of the inherent power of such films as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". It made them scarier, more taboo ... but watching the same film on a digitally remastered DVD with a host of special features that answer every possible question you once had, removes some of the scares...the taboo is gone, it becomes acceptable. There's a soul that videotapes had that DVDs do not possess...a sense of character, a sense that everything didn't have to be perfect and intensely pin-sharp.

My exploration of the horror genre, and the effect it had on me, has just as much to do with the videotape as it does with the films themselves. If I was at the same stage, but 10 years on (by which I mean the present day) and viewing these films on DVD, a large chunk of the power would be lost...the rich texture of the culture which surrounded that time in my life (thanks to the videotape) would be absent.

While I'm a big fan of DVDs (my own collection totals well over 300, including all the films that made such a splash with me during my formative years), the VHS tape will always hold a special place in my heart ... perhaps it's odd to get so deep over a media format, but unless you shared this experience...you just don't get it.

The Great Malvern Christmas Lantern Parade 2007...

Following on from an earlier blog, and with several days in between to reflect more realistically, the sense of post-filming blues vanished by the morning after (as I've already said). That day I uploaded the footage, and save for a few audio problems in the first few minutes (didn't matter as I wasn't using the audio anyway) and a few blown shots (in a swarm of people it's sometimes hard to avoid kid's faces getting in the shot - so said shots have to be ditched) it was actually all good.

Come Sunday, two days after the actually event which was on the Friday, I set about editing the footage into the final 5 minute piece that was required. The actual filming session was a challenge - poor weather, limited different things to film (icons of the evening, if you will) and it being a 'last minute' job that I'd accepted - so it made the editing process tougher than any filmmaker would prefer. However, I was still able to cut together a solid five minutes (obviously, there's things you'd change or would have liked to do better, but that's the power of hindsight...something which doesn't take into account the 'then & there' of the situation).

Anyway, afterwards I decided to punch up the visuals a bit, so I turned to the trusty Magic Bullet - a superb software plug-in you simply must have if you're an editor. Notice in the credits of shows/documentaries where it says "colourist" - that's where Magic Bullet (or similar softwares) come in...a prime example of it's use would be a personal favourite of mine - "Top Gear".

So yes, I used one of my own presets that I'd created, and now all the colours were stronger. The blacks were deeper and the array of multicoloured lights on display now all kicked out a nice shimmer of white diffusion. While DVX100B footage looks great, if you add Magic Bullet to the mix, it looks even better.

Magic Bullet - once you use if, you wonder how on earth you managed without it! If only they made glasses so you could see the world through the eyes of Magic Bullet...ahhhh...one day maybe.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip...

There's a mere couple of episodes left to run on the series here in the UK, but I couldn't resist the gripping lure of the K&R storyline and had to see the final episodes before they aired here, and might I say they were bloody brilliant. It's a real shame that the show was cancelled, a genuine shame. By the sounds of it one of the main problems with the show's original airing in America was the schedule - gaps that lasted weeks, changing times and so on - something which often means death to a show, and obviously dwindling numbers as nobody knows when it's on or if it's on. I still maintain that the Americans are absolute idiots when it comes to scheduling their shows - take season 3 of "Lost" for instance. They rush it out before Christmas and show a mere 6 episodes, at which grippingly exciting point they piss off for a break - a THREE MONTH LONG break. It destroys continuity, it pisses the audience off, and it's just not cricket...to put it in a very English way. But seriously, it's just idiotic and it appears that "Studio 60" suffered typically American scheduling cock ups where 'a week off here, two weeks there, a month over there' is perfectly fine - shock/horror, it fucking isn't whoever you dimwits are that decide such schedules! Apparently "Studio 60" was highly rated for 'record for later' audiences (and if it's getting shown late on a work night, of course people are going to record it for a more convenient time, another shock/horror but the audience are not slaves to a network's every whim and ultimately wield the most power when it comes down to it - the power to switch off, the power to record and watch later. And of course the power to fast foward through adverts, turn the sound off during them, switch to another channel during them, or heaven's forbid use the time constructively by taking a piss or getting more munchies. To be honest, 'sponsored by' advertising works a lot better in this day and age where the public mass and increasingly seeking to do their viewing how they want...but still, even sponsoring a show doesn't guarantee somebody will drink your booze or drive your car. Back to "Studio 60" and while it sagged a bit mid-season (but then again, many shows do, such as "Lost" which routinely does so), the first and last thirds of the season were intriguing, entertaining, enjoyable and in the latter third's case, absolutely gripping - genuinely quality television. The acting is top notch, the dialogue and the scripts are top notch - and yet it was still cancelled. An absolute travesty when the likes of "Nip/Tuck" - arguably one of the weakest of the current spate of 'quality dramas' (a show which I've watched since the beginning) doesn't even have half the tension, intelligence, quality or interest that "Studio 60" had. "Nip/Tuck", while a nice enough distraction, is generally as shallow as it's profession-of-focus, lunging from one lecherous plot line to another. The protagonists make one stupid decision after another - the fifth season's meth-head storyline makes barely any sense and is nestled in as subtly as a rabid badger in a flopsy-the-bunny sanctuary. Seriously, the characterisation feels blunt and unwieldy - tabloid-like, or soap-opera-like - meanwhile the absolutely excellent "Dexter" (thankfully renewed for a third season recently) has deep and troubled characters. You can at one point hate someone and then 40 thoughtful minutes later you pity/like/love them instead...such as LaGuerta in season one. So with "Nip/Tuck" being generally 'meh', why on earth was the intelligence and genuine wit of "Studio 60" cancelled after merely one season?! Was the routine attack at back-stage corporate TV politics too close-to-the-bone? Was it too smart? Or were those in charge of the big red "yes" and "no" buttons just too stupid to get the show. Then again in a world where "Futurama" was cancelled, then anything superb can be cancelled...but then again, at the very least "Futurama" has finally made a return with the first-of-four DVD movies recently. It's an absolute shame that "Studio 60" was shit-canned. For another solid reason for it's greatness, Matthew Perry had found a character who wasn't Chandler. He had successfully moved on with a new persona who was complex and intriguing. The entire show was filled with such protagonists. May a thousand angry red-arsed baboons descend on those who made the decision to shaft such a quality slice of television.