The Piney Gir Country Roadshow "Great Divide" video clip now available

The video I made with John for the Piney Gir Country Roadshow's single "Great Divide" is now available.

Grab The Nearest Book

I want to jump on a bandwagon and I read about this on beyondrivalry:


1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig around for that 'cool' or 'intellectual' book on your shelves. (I know you were thinking about it.) Just pick up whatever is closest.

Her excerpt was from from Three Junes, by Julia Glass.

Mine is from "The Enemy Within - The Secret War Against The Miners":

'I always wonder in enquiries of this sort whether the establishment gets to these people,' Heathfield mused in the final stages of the 1990 campaign. As time wore on, he became less philosophical about the matter. 'I have nothing but contempt for Gavin Lightman,' he said later. 'That man preferred the evidence of faceless people, who we can't yet identify, rather than the hundredweight of documentary evidence that we compiled.'

Normal shot and in the can

Good news - I got the soundtrack finished off this morning after staying up 'til three last night recording and tinkering. Managed to stick all the bits in the right places today and it sounds pretty good, so fingers crossed!

The main things I learned were:

- planning: getting the shotlist sorted ahead of time gave us a headstart over last year (main learning from Tytn last year!). If we pay more attention to equipment, costume, etc. next time, we'll need to plan enough time for them.
- communication: need to be clear about what I want and positive about what I'm getting!
- concentration: need to focus on the task at hand - I lost control slightly in the "scaring" shot because I was worrying about having enough light when we got back to shoot the final scene indoors.
- preparation: always seems to take longer - must sort the props in advance, not at the last minute!! Anything that can be sorted early, should be (this is unfortunately not a strength of mine). Perhaps I could have done the soundtrack sooner too, although I was still rewriting up to about midnight last night.
- goal setting: having a fixed date to do this really focused us on getting the idea sorted, as well as getting the preparations done. I suggest next time - when there may not be a competition to create that tension - we set a date to film and work to that. May, anyone?
- I've been thinking it might help if I could draw a bit better! Storyboarding really helped me develop the story, but I'm not sure the pictures were any use when trying to communicate what I was imagining to anyone else.

Sea Minerals

My girlfriend bought some Cussons Imperial Leather shower gel and I was surprised to see the bottle proclaim that it contained "Sea Minerals". What's a sea mineral? Maybe they mean salt? I will have to check.

I'd love to get the person who thought of that alone in a room.

Audience Applauds Silence

On Friday, I went to a concert at an art gallery in Cambridge, where a string quartet performed music by Lou Harrison and John Cage.

The music included Cage's notorious 4' 33". The group's cellist walked on, sat at the piano and started a stopwatch. He and the audience then sat still and silent for four minutes and thirty three seconds as we listened to the sounds in the room and those coming in from outside. At the end he stood, bowed and everyone applauded.

I thought about that and wondered: who were we applauding? Not the cellist - he didn't play anything and his ability to operate a stopwatch was hardly worth clapping for. The architect or the builder of the gallery for creating the acoustics? I'm just guessing, but I don't think either of them were there.

I was reminded of Karl Pilkington's views on modern art and wondered if I've listened to too many Ricky Gervais shows.