4Talent | Global Entrepreneurship Week

As part of Channel 4’s Global Entrepreneurship Week, myself with 4Talent in association with Disclosure (my production company don't ya know) and Carve Productions are offering a fantastic opportunity to become part of a production team to pull together a three minute documentary which could be broadcast on TV!

We are looking for: writers, producers, production assistants, editors, directors, camera operators and presenters. If successful you’ll be part of four groups who’ll be working together over six days creating, shaping, building and completing a three minute scripted documentary which will be judged by a panel of professionals with the winner going on to be uploaded to the Channel 4 website.

This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone wanting to get experience in the production journey, especially the area that they want to specialise in. You’ll get a deeper understanding of your role, how it works with other production roles, how what you do affects the entire production process and also how to work together to get a new piece of scripted non fiction from an idea on a page to a film on a screen, all within six days!

We will walk you through the steps of:

Brief and concept of an idea
Drafting the idea
Pre-production
Production
Post-production
The screening of your short documentary

With help from executive producer Aaron Carty of Carve Productions and me (in the capacity of writer and producer), we will take you on the whole production journey from concept to screening of your own scripted documentary short.

This scheme is open to those who want to gain invaluable experience in production and who can see themselves putting their aptitude and potential to the test and lay the foundations of true artistic entrepreneurs.

Riots | The new social consciousness

It’s amazing that as a society we have the potential to actually reduce ourselves to rubble in both the metaphorical sense and the literal one. What’s remarkable though is how much of a fantastic tool Twitter turned out to be as a result of all of the nonsense that went on.

I’ve been a sporadic user of Twitter myself. I went through periods of tweeting my every action to long spells of nothing. One thing I never really did was actually LOOK at the twitter feed for any length of time. Now, I know that sounds like watching paint dry, but after looking long and hard it became clear that this is the closest we have ever gotten to a tangible, realistic social stream of consciousness, bar eventually plugging ourselves into our computers.

As I watched the feed I was alerted to so much violence and disruption happening all around me. I wouldn’t have had any idea unless I’d actually been in the zone, but Twitter provided an ‘on the ground’ perspective from those people actually experiencing the riots.

I could join in with the chorus of damnation coming from everyone discussing how awful it all was, but to be honest we all know that and there isn’t much point spelling it out again. I mean I am a born and bred Londoner. London is and has been my home for the last twenty six (almost twenty seven) years. I have lived in most of the areas which were pulled down by these idiots, however look at something positive that came out of what happened; modern technology was proved to be a social boon.

You can also say that Twitter allowed these people to plan the event but nothing was done on Twitter that couldn’t be achieved via email, Blackberry Messenger, SMS or actual phone calls whereas the stream of news and updates about the riots were much more beneficial.

Of course the main thing that came out of the mess was that fantastic hashtag which really showed what Londoners and the British really represent; #RiotCleanUp

Recess | Rumours of my death are greatly exaggerated

So here we are again. It’s been several months since I posted a blog and it probably seems to the world that I’ve either disappeared, become a recluse or died (perhaps all of the above). Although I guess when you die you become a recluse by default, and then disappear into obscurity. Isn’t that a cheery thought? No? OK, we’ll move on…

So my hiatus hasn’t been for no good reason; I’ve been a busy little bee completing a myriad of production and writing work which had snowballed over the months leading up to my disappearance. I know it’s rude to leave without saying goodbye, and that I did promise that I’d be around a bit more, but hey, what’s a boy to do? I’ll definitely be here from now on, although maybe a little less frequently. Like a lover that’s got

Wiki defines a ‘recess’ as ‘a general term for a period of time in which a group of people is temporarily dismissed from its duties’ which is a damn fine definition of what I did, so I’ll stick with that for the time being. It also seems rather fitting that it’s all occurred during a recession, little things like that tickle me. I don’t know why.

Needless to say I have much to tell everyone about the many things I’m working on (and will be working on) over the rest of the year (which is getting alarmingly short isn’t it!? What the…) and I’ll be posting my thoughts, aspirations, goings on and movements as and when they happen.

So here’s to the rest of 2011… may I be a better man at the end of it!

Three Months II

So, it's been yet another three months since my last entry to this (increasingly dusty) magic macro micro journal (I prefer that to 'blog'). I'm not proud of myself and I feel just terrible for the hordes of readers who have been left having to turn to alternative means of gratification (easy tiger) or worse still, actually go on living their lives forgetting the positive impact this little spot of the internet has on them. Perhaps not.

There's no point crying over spilt milk (even though I didn't spill any) and it's all water under the bridge (where else would it go?) so we begin again, like an old 40's car coughing through the disgrace of age and pushing as hard as it might to begin again. i.e. I'm writing another one now. I've been away for yet more time but it's taken forced rest to allow me to get back on this blog and tap out some more nonsense.

So currently I'm recovering from the tail end of a particularly nasty flu virus which I'm lead to believe (through the occasional paper my flatmate pushes under my cell door) is doing the rounds of Great Britain (not sure about Northern Ireland though). I'm feeling a lot better today and although I'm off work (and have been all week more or less) I'll be fighting fit as of Monday I'm sure. I would say come back to see if I've posted something on Monday about general well being, but we both know you'll be disappointed if I don't so best leave that.

I spent the first half of my viral imprisonment in Sussex with both my Father and my Grandmother who did a grand job of putting up with my winging and falling asleep on every surface I could find. It's a sad, sad day when you wake up with a doily stuck to your face I say.

I must also add here that my father has returned to the UK after over sixteen years in America. I still don't think it's sunk in really and spending a week with him falling in and our of consciousness (me, not him) probably didn't help with the reality check needed, but it was enjoyable as illnesses go and I hope to be seeing him and my brother in a few weeks.

I'm now back in my London pad, not going to work (they can live without me for a few days, I'm sure) and starting to get itchy brain cells and desperately need to exercise them. I have many exciting plans for 2011 and I'm chomping at the bit to get them onto paper and discussed with my team. Of course, as many of these things go, many of my ideas may be discarded and replaced with other better ones however it's a start and we all need to start somewhere.

Three Months

It seems like forever ago that I put finger to key and tapped out my musings on life, the world and everything but in reality it’s been a mere three months. I say that almost as an excuse, which it isn’t of course, but a lot can change in that time, and not surprisingly it has.

Firstly let me explain that although I haven’t been present here on my blog, I have been incredibly busy with some filming of a pilot for a series I’ve penned. It’s an exciting project with some incredible cast and crew and it looks unbelievable given the budget (which I’ve forked out) and time we had to shoot it… I’m very much looking forward to the rough cut which should be ready in about a month from now. Exciting stuff. You can actually see the footage from week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4/5, week 6 and week 7 as well. ENJOY!

In other news, the relationship which was starting to go somewhere towards the last of my previous blogs, has run it’s course and ended (yesterday in fact). It’s still more than a little raw and it didn’t help that almost everyone I would have turned to wasn’t around. I think it might have been one of the most lonely days I’ve had. I’m sure it’ll be etched in my psychology for a while yet and be the focus of many blogs (and scripts) to come, but enough of this moping, it’s not very me at all… I’m fine, everything’s fine, no one died and life moves on as it ever did.

So as you can tell the last three months have born some truly great leaps in my anecdotal doings, and although it’s a balance of good things and bad things, all in all it was a wonderful few months!

So what happens now? Well I have my wrap party on Friday and a whole host of social events I need to attend which I’m looking forward to. It’ll take some time to step back from the break up, but that’s the subject for a whole other blog, which I dare say isn’t too far away…

Oh, and I’ll write this blog more regularly, I promise.