I just stupidly upgraded Wordpress without backing it up and completely lost all customisation. Not good.
I’ll try and get it back asap. Until then, I’m sorry it looks so bad!
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
I just lost my Wordpress Theme!
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009New blog : Old content
Friday, August 28th, 2009So I’ve just updated my entire portfolio – I’ve completely changed the design (I think this style represents me much better than the previous one), and I’ve added some new projects, and some new imagery for some old projects.
Originally, this blog tracked the progression of my final year at university, and every one of the 28 previous posts is on this subject. Whether it be the writing of my dissertation, or my technical study, or on the development of ‘Work Mates’. I have decided to leave this content in place for anyone who wishes to see how I got my degree, but from now on the topic of conversation will be quite different…
I will try and interest people by talking about current projects, posting up ideas and work in development, but I will also discuss the industry and how I am finding things at the moment – Whether that be problems, eureka moments, or just random things that I find out about or that I am interested in.
As for this first post, I’m afraid that’s it! But I will be back soon with something of significance just as soon as I’ve got a spare minute to talk about it.
Cheers,
Chris
p.s. I’m testing this WP to Twitter plugin too, so fingers crossed that works OK!
Open Web Content
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009Something that I have failed to mention so far in relation to the Work Mates project, is my passion for promoting more open Web content. As a result of my dissertation research, and the conclusions that I arrived at, I have really started to believe that the best route forward is to push for more open access to everything that is published on the Internet. The Web inspires people and breeds creativity, and we should embrace it rather than try to stop people from “infringing copyright”. In many ways it benefits the producer of such material, especially as it allows more people to see/hear/play with it. If people respect the purpose of the original material then I see no reason for everything to be freely available.
I may sound naive in saying this, because obviously there are many other things to consider. However, even though my dissertation is purely focussed on music, many of the arguments can be applied to most of the content on the Internet. It discusses the most significant of these in much detail and rationally puts them to rest. (”The Future of Digital Music: How to Overcome the Copyright Crisis” will be available to download in the near future if anyone is interested).
Anyway, back to my original point… My interest in promoting this whole idea has lead me to add as much content to the Work Mates website as possible and encourage it all to be downloaded, shared, and creatively edited (so long as appropriate recognition is given). The episodes will be downloadable in two both SD and HD, the scripts are available, as are many backstage photos and interviews with the cast and crew.
This is something that i really feel strongly about and will push as much as possible. It will be really interesting if people take my material and make something new with it… push it beyond its original intensions and reach more people than I ever could on my own.
My last hope in finding Asian actors
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009Last week, following my horrendous day of auditioning Asian actors, I had a glimmer of hope when three guys contacted me and said that they were still interested in taking part. Naturally I made out like I was doing them a favour in agreeing to see them, but I was secretly celebrating inside because they could potentially bail me out of a very big problem!
I saw them at 14:00 today and it went pretty well. None of them have any acting experience, so they weren’t great in that department, however a couple of them had good accents and looked like they were very willing to take direction. One of them was a bit of a joker and a bit too much to handle in my opinion. I can’t really do with the stresses of having to watch and control one of my actors on top of producing the whole project, so I think I’ll leave him out.
Overall I am feeling much happier now and then next thing on the list is to confirm my entire cast and distribute the script. There are a hell of a lot more things to sort out though!
More Auditions and Call-backs
Monday, March 9th, 2009Last Thursday I held the auditions for my Indian characters, and the call-backs for the two main parts – Tom and Nathan. I finished the day with very mixed feelings as emotionally I had been through anger, frustration, annoyance, joy, and excitement… Quite a lot in the space of 8 hours!
The morning was a nightmare. Between 10 and 12:30, and then again between 1:30 and 2:30, I was supposed to be auditioning 12 Asian guys in groups of three. There were initially 16 people that showed an interest in taking part so I thought that I would easily be able to find three suitable actors. However, to cut a long story short, someone thought that it would be funny to fill out the sign-up sheet with all their friends’ names, none of whom had any intention of showing up. This resulted in me sitting in a tiny room on my own for almost the entire morning, and part of the afternoon. I couldn’t leave because for one thing there was around £6000 worth of equipment in there, and I didn’t want to miss anyone in case then did actually show up!
One guy came, he was called Mayur and was quite enthusiastic which was good. However he is not the greatest actor to say the least… Within a few takes and a little bit of direction his accent wasn’t too bad (I need a good Indian accent that is slightly flamboyant and a little bit camp), considering his natural accent is 100% English-sounding, but his acting was really quite bad. Top marks for effort and I really appreciate him showing up, however I don’t think I can even consider him for the main role of Elton. I will probably give him one of the other small parts that don’t really require any acting.
I was a little disappointed to say the least when it got to 14:30 and only one person had come, but I was really looking forward to the afternoon because I knew it would be much more of a success.
I was right! The afternoon went brilliantly. Everyone made it and enjoyed themselves, and I think I have pretty much made up my mind about who I would like to play who. I initially got Lucas playing ‘Nathan’, Oliver playing ‘Tom’, Peter playing ‘Pete’, and Ryan playing ‘Sam’. After a few takes and some specific feedback from me, everyone seemed to be fitting into their parts perfectly! Seeing as though we had a bit of time I decided to mix it up a bit and get Peter to play ‘Tom’ for a couple of takes. He was surprisingly good and adapted well to the feedback I was giving the others…just a shame he plays ‘Pete’ so well.
Since Thursday my worries over finding suitable Asian actors have been lifted slightly. I received notification from two of the guys who didn’t show up that they were sorry that they let me down due to several reasons, and that they would like another chance to audition. Great! I’ll see them this week…
The Script
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009Last Saturday (28th Feb) I finally received the entire script for Episode 1 – Telesales. Hoorah!
My original intention for each episode was for them to be around 5 or 6 minutes long. This was to be sure that they could be compressed into an easily emailable files (to help with the viral aspect of my project). However, it turns out that the script has ended up being 20 pages long! – This equates to about 15 minutes worth of footage, which is obviously WAY longer than expected.
I do think this is a good thing though. Firstly, if the whole thing works, and I don’t want to cut much out of it, then it is long enough to chop into two episodes. A sort of pilot double-bill. This will be even better for viral distribution because there will be more than one thing for people to find and hopefully rave about. If, however, after I preview the rough edit to a group of people, some of them come back and tell me that certain things don’t work, or there is no laughter where there is supposed to be, then the length of the episode gives me a lot of room for editing down to something that is really good.
As a whole I am really happy with the script. I think that it is cleverly written and delivers exactly the kind of humour that I envisioned from the start. Hopefully everyone else will find it as funny as I do!