The Lookout
Feb/100
View On Black
Taken at Crich Stand in Derbyshire. This was a day filled with cold – we drove up to Crich Stand admiring the scenery and the cliff face only to discover once we stepped out of the car the wind was trying to freeze our faces off. We didn’t stay long there, although it was such a bright and clear day the wind clearly wanted us dead. We later walked over some Derbyshire fields that were slightly less cold and then had a “milkshake” in a Belper cafe. I say “Milkshake” because a milkshake should not just be your thick hot chocolate drink served cold – even though I quite enjoyed it – but Lizabeth (that’s the lass in the photo) being a Canadian and coming from a land where they know how to make proper milkshakes had other opinions.
Image of actual said Crich Stand:
If anyone from the fine “This Derbyshire Life” magazine publication sees this and would like to publish it I think it would look rather splendid within your pages.
Last in Set
Feb/100
View On Black
View On Black
Last couple of images of Lizabeth on Edinburgh’s portobello beach.
Summer
Jan/100
I’m usually rather down on British films (both shorts and features) I see very little imagination and storytelling coming out of this country and instead see a lot of films that would be considered culturally/socially important rather than just a great story, well told, well acted and well shot.
Of course, not all British films fall into my watery well of dislike. One such film is Summer directed by Kenneth Glenaan and starring Robert Carlyle. Summer is also one of the reason why Carlyle buggered off out of the country to work in American TV, basically saying he puts his all into films like this and no one goes to see them.
Now’s your chance to right what once went wrong, you can watch the film on the BBC iPlayer until Wednesday 3rd of Feb and I highly recommend you go and do it:
Ghost in the Curtains
Jan/100
And now for something completely different…
This photo was taken while this photo was being taken.
I thought it was about time I tried photographing something a little different from my usual subjects and actually try photographing people for a change. I want to find interesting and artistic ways of a telling a story/a feeling/an emotion with just a still of a person, with the hope that the skill will jump ship and embed itself in the way I chose to photograph actors in films.
Any volunteers for want to “model” for me would be greatly appreciated!
I’m also getting the taste for natural diffused light, this may have something to do with one of the film projects I’m working on as natural light is something I want to use in the visual texture of the film, in contrast to shadow.
More on that another time.
In other news I’m sick of hearing about Avatar…
Doug Credits
Jan/100
Matt Clark just sent me this, he’s currently finalising the credits for the slight re-edit of The Curious Incident of Doug in the Night-Time short film. He possibly has the biggest iMac screen I’ve ever seen with my eyes and I thought this was a rather cool image.
The new edit will hopefully be online by the weekend and if we like it enough we’re going to see if we can hit some film festivals with it.
Skhizein
Jan/100
I saw this short film last year at the Encounters film festival in Bristol and I loved it. You should love it to:
Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.
Currently sitting in a very warm edit suite, with my laptop getting warmer and warmer, re-grading an improved cut of The Curious Incident of Doug in the Night-Time which will be online and hopefully at festivals very soon.
My Year In Lists: 2009 in Music
Jan/100
My stats for 2009 from Last.fm.
Of course my stats are always slightly skewed because sometimes my iphone just plainly refuses to scrobble, so the numbers would actually be a lot higher, especially in the case of Future of the Left, who should actually be in 2nd. Other than that it’s a good representation of the year. Strange how Mindless Self Indulgence managed to stay so high, I got that album at the beginning of the year and must have hammered it because I spent the rest of the year not listening to it. I’m going to gloss over Cardiacs being at the top yet again, despite them still being one of my favourite bands I didn’t buy any new (to me) material this year until I got my hands on the Garage Concert part 1 a few months back and a got a little addicted to it.
Best gigs:
Future of the Left – Dot to Dot Nottingham
Dananananaykroyd – The Venue and the Royal Derby.
Books/work/books/work/bed/death
Jan/100
I finished reading Brandon Graham’s King City today (I gots it for xmas) but where’s volume 2!! I want more! Great science fiction setting, wonderful art, intriguing story, why aren’t people throwing money at this guy to get more volumes out there.
Here’s a little of what it looks like:
While in Norwich before New Years I brought a copy of Oliver Sacks’ book The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. If any of you listen to Radiolab you’ll know Sacks as the English neurologist who is very regularly called upon. This book is a fascinating series of tales of patients “lost in the apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders.” I’ve so far read two accounts of a patient being unable to perceive faces and another being trapped 30 years in the past by his memory being damaged.
I’ve kicked off the New Year by basically plowing into work like a bull at the helm of tractor. Today I’ve been plotting out a redraft of a feature script by plotting out the whole film on plain wallpaper lining paper so I can see the whole film at a glance. I currently have two six foot sheets hanging off a nearby wall and a shed loads of notes scribbled in my film math book on how to rework this bloody thing, it’s going well, very well, so well I’m retiring for the night before my eyes dry up and have to be submerged in green tea. I was going to watch Muppets Treasure Island on iPlayer before sleep as an brain antidote, but maybe tomorrow, if I’m lucky.
Listening to Kieron Gillien’s tracks of year on Spotify, check it out then sod off and doing something about that thing you’ve meant to have been doing.
Birdhouse in your Snow
Jan/100
It has snowed nearly all day today here.
Birdhouse in your Snow from James Sharpe on Vimeo.