Dec 30 2011

The Transformers movie trilogy and the wacky adventures of their human companions

When they first announced, those many years ago, that they were going to make a live action Transformers film, I was determined to be one of the first in line to see it. As it happens, I wasn’t just a casual fan cashing in on a bit of nostalgia – I was at the time one of the hardcore “Transfans” (not what you think) and an avid collector. To some extent I am still in that category, although I haven’t bought any of the toys in a very long time (Grimlock from Transformers Animated a few years back), so these days I’ve managed to limit myself to the films, DVD sets of the cartoons and the odd toy that looks good when displayed. The rest of my collection sits in the loft, waiting for me to have enough space to display them again. I need a nice cabinet I think…

So er, yeah. To say I was looking forward to the live action movies was an understatement.

And then I sat through three films of Sam Witwicky going on adventures, covered in dirt and a sheen of sweat, accompanied by so-called “comedy” moments provided by his parents. I’ve said it often in the intervening years, but the title of the film is Transformers, not “bunch of humans and their robotic friends”. The key focus of the story needs to be the robots – apparently the average movie going audience wouldn’t be able to cope with 2 hours of the robots dominating the story. Which is funny really, the majority of the animated shows focus almost primarily on the bots and they’ve always had more than enough personality for me to enjoy the shows.

The first movie acted as a nice introduction to the series, although true to form the robots who weren’t Optimus Prime or Megatron were almost completely neglected (oh yeah, Bumblebee too). I thought the story did the origins thing pretty well, but could have done without the John Turturro character (not necessarily the actor, just the character). Each Transformer didn’t have enough in their individual designs to distinguish them from each other, and the lack of personality didn’t help.

The second film I can forgive, to an extent, due to the writers strike that curtailed work on the script and forced them to lock it for shooting before it had received enough work. What we ended up with was a mess. Again, some really nice action sequences that didn’t really have a story linking them. The Fallen was a waste of time, filling a role that Megatron could easily have taken. It was fun seeing and, more importantly, hearing Soundwave as Frank Welker was finally given chance to demonstrate his voice acting skills (of which there are many). I’m hoping this was in the original script, but Prime’s one-liner of “Give me your FACE!” is genius, fully deserving of the meme that followed and sets this Optimus apart from his cartoon brethren.

The third movie was an improvement, and in essence repeated the story from the second. Kudos to Alan Tudyk for his brief role, and eventually the story that the human characters received as the story kicked in. Less impressive is the Decepticon’s plan to bring Cybertron into Earth orbit. From the trailer alone I was expecting them to try taking over the planet, instead they have the much smaller ambition of locking down ONE city. One. The final third of the film works because of this city invasion, but it’s still a missed opportunity. Throw in a whining Megatron, a character twist that you could see coming 30 pages earlier, and the usual comedy interplay with Sam, his parents and (former) Agent Simmons, and again you have a mixed batch. I do like the characterisation (and paint jobs) given to all of the bots in this one, Autobot and Decepticon, and the aforementioned Frank Welker doing Shockwave in his Dr Claw voice.

When they announced the trilogy I had hoped for a third film involving Unicron – you can’t get much more epic than a Transformer the size of a planet. He’s not been used too excessively either, certainly not as much as the “death of Optimus Prime” trope. Unicron first showed up in the 1986 animated movie as the big bad, then following a few appearances of his head in G1 Season 3, he showed up briefly in Beast Wars Neo (Japan only), then throughout the so-called Unicron trilogy of Transformers Armada, Energon and Cybertron. Add to the fact Unicron has only had a few toys released to date (including the frankly awesome Beast Wars prototype, the Energon repaint, and the frankly odd Cybertron toy), so it would make sense that they’d want to make a bit of money out of him. Saying that, they probably already make a small fortune regardless, so having a toy that looks a “bit” different to the rest of the line likely isn’t too high on their list of priorities.

Not to say that I totally hate the three films we’ve been given to date. the CGI is very impressive and the action sequences are shot well, more so as the films progress. That said, the sequences set on Cybertron (try saying that either very quickly or when you’re drunk) are in my opinion the best parts of all three films, and I would have paid good money instead to see at least one full movie set there. If they’re going to spend that amount of money on CGI robots then surely it can’t cost much more to render their planet? The only problem with that, of course, is there wouldn’t be any humans there. Shock horror. Oh well, I’ll just have to try and form a bond with the robot characters instead. You never know, that might actually give us a film that runs for less than 2 hours and actually has a decent story to it. Stranger things have happened.

Dec 18 2011

A Journey Through Time – Part 4 – The Village Episode 4

I was originally going to put this one out next Friday, but I had the urge to write something and needed to do something other than a Trent Samuels script – it’s all I’ve been working on all weekend, with more to continue shortly after I’ve written this entry. So, moving on to the final chapter of The Village (until I go back and watch them again).

This is the last of the Village episodes we recorded and the DVD release of this episode saw the closure of the project, wrapping just over 9 years after the initial idea for the series and four years after the previous episode was completed! The original plan was to release 6 episodes in total, but due to time constraints and the urge to move on to something new we finished with this one. Most of the material for this episode had been shot in 2003-2004, the majority of which was just me and Dan. As it happens, most of the originally planned episode was finished in 2003. Quite a productive year all round, inspired I think by the Village website that was receiving regular updates at that time. 2003 also saw the last contributions from Pete to the project – on a related note I’d just like to take time and say that I loved Pete’s writing and it’s a shame he hasn’t stayed in contact. Pete had (and probably still has – he’s not dead) an interesting view of the world that led to some inspired material. Given the chance I’d gladly write more material with him at some point, whether sketch show material or otherwise.

From what I can recall we only had one filming day in 2004, but at that time we were mixing up The Village with planning a film called Normality – incidentally we did shoot about 95% of the script but again it’s not suitable for public release. I’m working on a new story at the moment that should simplify the plot and look a lot more professional than that initial effort – it was made during the “point camera, press record” era, so it’s quite basic. I’ll no doubt do a blog about that soon enough, plenty for me to discuss there. The filming in 2004 saw us shoot another B-Movie sketch (The Man With One Head), which thanks to the power of PC non-linear editing ended up being above and beyond our original expectations. That day we also shot “It’s A River” (Ronseal sketch) and an attempt at scrolling credits using an actual roll of paper run in front of the camera, before panning up and seeing the four of us (Dan, Adam, Tez and myself) all running away like escaped mental patients.

By 2005 I’d bought a new PC for video editing. This was a complete waste of time as it crashed any time you looked at funny. It could cope with a bit of editing but you had to be quick on the save button after any change as it could switch off and emit a high pitched alarm and shut down at any time. We managed to start work on converting The Village to DVD but ultimately because of the inherent instability of the PC, as well as an issue with the episode audio gradually going out of sync with the video (happened on every DVD disc we made, I still have no idea what the cause was), that was essentially put on hold until 2006 when we were finally able to start handing out copies of the DVD sets to the cast.

This episode also saw more location shooting than we’d ever contemplated before. The new David Attenborough sketch was shot in Aberystwyth on a group holiday down there, for which we built a very poor human dummy, made of party balloons, to throw off the cliff. It must have looked pretty realistic from a distance (if you were a child) as on the raw footage you can clearly hear a kid say “They’re throwing him off!” to their mostly unconcerned parent. It was also quite hilarious seeing the “body” hit the floor, so much so it was very difficult to keep the camera level as Adam popped up from out of shot to do his opening spiel. As Village sketches go, and despite my technical incompetency when editing the sketch on the PC (I could make it look 10 times better now), it was a triumph. Tez even braved the crowds to shoot Camp Saturday Night Fever on the sea front as no-doubt bemused locals and students looked on. Then again as it’s a university town they’re probably used to that sort of thing…

Moving onto 2006, Dan, Rich and myself popped down to Arrow Valley Park (where else?) to film a couple more sketches, but we didn’t hit our filming targets due to a persistent level of rain and general damp. The next filming date came in 2007, whilst we were wrapping up the project, where we filmed the Alpen sketch (the story of rock and roll, essentially, as performed by a box of Alpen). I even recorded a song, for want of a better term, to dub over the footage. Combining my basic guitar skills with a drum loop, the sketch was completed pretty quickly and came together quite nicely in the edit. Then by October 2007 I returned to the place where the series had started – Winyates Hill (or did people call it Winyates Mountain?!) overlooking Safeway/Morrisons, where I played the Man Who Runs Down Hill. It would have been nice getting Pete for this as it would have rounded the series off even better, but you can’t have it all.

Looking at the sketch list for the episode it’s clear that we’d pulled material in from a variety of filming sessions, and also from the sheer number of them I would say either our writing had improved (40 sketches into a 30 minute show) or we had loads of ideas for quick “sting” sketches and hadn’t got round to filming the longer, somewhat more complex ideas. Either way, I actually think the episode holds up quite well with the sole exception of the “Political Leaders Trapped In A Dark Room” sketch. It is essentially a radio sketch (nothing on screen, just black) as Dan and me do bad impersonations of William Hague, Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown – already out of date when we recorded it. Hardly our finest hour and given the choice I’d re-release the episode without that stuck in the middle. Other than that, I’m happy with it.

One more thing of note with this episode was the return of some of our favourite characters from previous episodes – most notably Cockchurch was back with a new set, the Lancastrian Poet from Episode 1 came back for another amalgamated poem; Don’t Touch My Pen…icillin; and the lacklustre return of Adolf Schmirrnoff. Again, some of the material is a bit hit and miss but then they say that about all sketch shows. You never know, the next sketch show I make might end up being filled with strong material that everyone likes, but somehow I doubt it…

The DVD set we put together was another comprehensive set – absolutely everything we recorded after completing Episode 3. In a change from previous releases there wasn’t an original episode to remaster, so there’s only the one version of Episode 4 available, again with commentary from me and Dan. Discs 2-4 are all of the raw footage from the various filming days, with Disc 5 covering the “official” Behind The Scenes footage and Discs 6-7 covering everything else we were doing in and around those years. The final disc saw us do something a bit different again – a “Best Of” The Village episode, compiling our favourite sketches into a 31 minute compilation. The final extra feature has me and Dan, once again, talking at camera in a run through of everything we have previously done and going through our many folders of leaflets, scripts and related memorabilia. Using a two camera approach for the first time ever, it’s a nice stroll down memory lane, as is the rest of the set.

It feels a bit strange that we finished these DVDs over 4 years ago now, it certainly doesn’t feel as though that much time has passed. Saying that, I didn’t do any video editing or indeed any writing of any description (as far as I can remember) between finishing these DVDs and mid-2009 when I got back into it all again. A couple of projects reared up in those years but it was nothing really substantial. I still have plans for another sketch show that have been fermenting for a few years, and a load of pages of material ready to be recorded. I’m even tempted to go back and revisit the very best material from The Village and get that out to the masses – the originals aren’t really suitable for public consumption but I think recording some of the better material again would still be worthwhile. That’s one to decide further down the line, probably once I’ve finished writing all of Trent Samuels. And on that note, I think I’ll go off and carry on with it…

Dec 16 2011

A Journey Through Time – Part 3 – The Village Episode 3

It took quite some time for our third sketch show episode to come around – after finishing Episodes 1 and 2 in 2000 and early 2001 it wasn’t until around summer 2003 that Episode 3 was completed. A lot of this I can put down to the move up to 6th form education and the gradual fragmentation of our social group as people went off to university (or not) in 2002. Between completing episode 2 and starting work on episode 3 my trusty video camera died a death and so I bought a replacement 8mm camcorder. I don’t have the exact model specs to hand but I do know it was a Samsung, and the picture quality was less than stellar – everything we recorded had this sort of dirty sheen to it, no video effects required. As such, from a video quality perspective, it’s my least favourite episode of the set.

I think what ultimately resurrected the project was a number of meetings that myself and Dan had, pretty much every Friday for months. A lot of the time was spent discussing sketches, shooting behind the scenes footage and playing on the Gamecube, in particular Cel Damage and Mario Kart Double Dash. I think what ultimately resurrected the whole thing was setting up the original Village website (I still have the archive of it on my computer). Initially set up on Geocities, I later registered the blinge.com domain name and that is where the site lived until some random American chap wanted to buy it and offered a tidy sum of money – that’s a different story, however.

In December 2002 (following a successful staff meeting at which everyone turned up) Dan, Adam and myself got together to shoot a few sketches, and somehow we managed to get 8 completed. Admittedly we were still using the “point camera, press record, muck about” technique, but still pretty prolific even for us. The next batch of filming days took place on location – a Village first – whilst both Dan and myself went to Aberystwyth for a week to visit Adam and a few other school mates who had flocked en masse, not dissimilar to migrating birds, to the small Welsh university town. Subsequent filming days occurred across most of June 2003 with one more day in July 2003 to wrap the episode.

Given the rush we were in on those filming days it’s little surprise that we went and re-shot 6 sketches for the DVD set in June 2007. This included two of the “Milk” sketches that were directly inspired by the Bob Geldof 80s milk adverts. Despite the reshoots they still didn’t meet my original vision for them, but saying that I’ve no intention of revisiting them as I don’t think they’re particularly funny.

Ironically enough I don’t have too many memories from filming this episode – even more so given that the DVD set we created takes up 8 discs. Had to buy some special cases for that… So, given my currently hazy memory I’ll just run through what I can remember from the filming days and the “Behind The Scenes” footage we shot.

The first batch of sketches were shot on 30 December 2002 – these included the 3 “Milk” sketches – filmed in and around my house and very briefly in the Arrow Valley Park just up the road. Nothing too substantial, but by now we had at least started thinking about how to make the shot look a bit more interesting. The next filming day saw Pete make an appearance, and even Jamie turned up for one day. Moving onto the June filming dates, I know that it was probably the hottest day of the year when we shot “Microwave In The Bush”. Briefly, it’s a music video about a microwave in a bush to the tune of Another One Bites The Dust by Queen. I have the honour of lead vocals and… you really don’t want to hear it. Best part is probably Adam using a spirit level on the microwave to make sure it’s not on an angle. In the bush.

Whilst it may not be my favourite episode overall, it does have some good sketches throughout – Man Stalked by A Cricket Ball (Ronseal sketch); Man with 20 metres of cling film (snap); Dr Keith (bit cryptic, you’d have to see it and even then it’s 50/50 whether you find it funny); and not forgetting the Partly Political Broadcast – an excuse for Dan and Pete to pretend to be from a rather peculiar foreign political party, including a picture of Robert Kilroy Silk and an array of tomatoes, eggs and Nectar cards. This is another one that really needs to be seen to really understand. As I write these blogs I feel more inclined as time goes on to upload them… Probably won’t though.

From the copious amounts of Behind The Scenes footage we have, the stand-out piece has to be what is spread over the last 2 discs in the DVD set. Once more, myself and Dan set out on a real-time walk of all filming locations to date, starting at his house and then walking to the Arrow Valley Park where about 95% of the material was recorded. As special features go it was an interesting experiment, maybe not massively interesting for anyone outside of the project but it helps retain some of my memories from those years. Going back to the massive 8 disc DVD set we made, Disc 1 has the remastered episode, disc 2 the original version (both with unique audio commentaries – the same applies to every other episode, 2 commentaries per set). Disc 2 also has the first batch of generic Behind The Scenes footage and the raw clips from the 2007 re-shoots. Then there’s 6 discs of raw footage and video chronicling the episode in all its unedited glory. Discs 3 and 4 cover the raw footage from the episode (in full – no camera faults on this episode), then Discs 5 and 6 cover, for the most part, those Friday meetings that me and Dan used to have. Then there’s that real time walk on Discs 7 and 8. An absolutely huge amount of viewing – about 10 hours in total – all for one 27 minute episode.

As always it was nice to draw a line under another episode, but it took a lot more effort than the previous two. That, plus the slightly lower quality camera we’d started using, meant that I don’t hold Episode 3 in the same regard as the previous 2. Things would improve for Episode 4…

Dec 09 2011

A Journey Through Time – Part 2 – The Village Episode 2

We’d got back into it pretty quickly after finishing Episode 1. After what I’m sure was a frantic summer of scriptwriting (all of the really good ideas from three planned episodes had been condensed into Episode 1), we set to filming again in October 2000. I remember it reasonably well as the first batch of sketches involved me wearing a balaclava and a bin bag… We’d made the decision as a group to shoot this episode out of sequence so we could do multiple takes and choose the best version for the final edit. Tricky business given that it was all going to be done via VHS, but I think the deciding factor was Adam’s dad owning a digital camcorder which would let us begin editing on a PC. Exciting times.In the end I think we discovered that there was a fault in the camera that meant the tapes were unplayable on any other camera, so there’s a lot of raw footage that we no longer have, which is a shame. We do have 90 minutes of uncut footage from my own camera, however, so it wasn’t a total loss. I can’t remember the exact make of the camera, but it was an old-style 8mm camcorder – no frills but then it was originally bought in the early 90s.

We had another filming day about 3 weeks later on 24 October 2000 (almost exactly 2 years to the day since the birth of the project, fact fans). We shot three of the big scenes – a spoof black and white movie, a spoof chat show called Cockchurch, and a return for our spoof spy, Agent Owen.

December saw the next batch of sketches filmed, a sizeable chunk of the smaller sketches and mostly situated in and around Dan’s house. Most of my memories are from the video footage we shot, both for the episode and Behind The Scenes. Whilst waiting for Dan to be ready (or for his parents to go to work, I forget which) we were waiting nearby when a younger child approached, probably only a couple of years younger than ourselves, and just… stood there. It was a bit odd but we soon were indoors and away from the strange creature.

This episode saw us attempt a spoof of Doctor Who (no sign of it returning to the airwaves at that time), which was fabulously written by Pete. It was split into two parts and took up about a third of the episode run time. Pete played the “nth” version of The Doctor – a combination of various aspects of all previous Doctors to date – including a promotional T-shirt of himself as Paul McGann. I had the privilege of playing his assistant Frank – complete with a salwar kameez (which, as it happens, is the name we gave to the giant “The Village” logo that Dan printed after a comment I made in the Behind The Scenes tape for Episode 1) and a monobrow. The monobrow was just a piece of paper coloured in black with a felt tip pen, but it did the trick.

The story saw The Doctor and Frank trying to stop Cuthbert Custard from covering the Earth with custard (he didn’t really give a reason for it…). We were struck with two problems on day one of the shoot – with it being December it was, quite obviously, really cold so we only managed a morning of filming before retreating to the warmth and relative safety of Dan’s house. The second, slightly more important issue was that Adam was due to play Cuthbert Custard but couldn’t make that filming day – so naturally we used the only spare cast member we had to learn the lines on the fly – Tez. Given that he hadn’t prepared at all for it, I think he did a fantastic job. That day also saw us stick about 30 paper eyes to trees literally a few feet away from the footpath, for the purposes of having Frank think the trees are watching him. Good idea on paper (guffaw!) but the eyes really needed to be cardboard backed or something as the final effect was a bit lacklustre. And if you ever see the episode and wonder how we made a tiny, tiny explosion? Pete brought a firework. Simples.

The next filming day for the sketch took place in February – the weather was different, my hair was clearly longer, and Tez had chance to learn his lines. Despite that, we finished the sketch and I think you can only notice my hair if you look really, really closely… That day also saw us shoot the final two sketches for the episode and wrap production. Two episodes completed in less than a year? Ce n’est pas possible!

One thing I will always take from our filming days was the amount of fun we had – you can tell just by watching the DVD footage. Plus it was an excuse to socialise outside of school etc, which was a bonus. Looking back I think we spent a lot more time planning for filming days than actually attending them, but the point still remains that when they did happen we were guaranteed a laugh.

Years later when it came to doing the DVD remaster, due to the lack of on-screen graphics it was easier for us to re-edit the episode from scratch rather than simply copy the VHS version. Besides which the VHS tape was a bit worn anyway and there was a noticeable wobble on each cut – again the perils of editing directly onto VHS. Strictly speaking the DVD release isn’t identical to the original tape as I did make a few modifications so we cut from a sketch quicker, or left it a bit longer as necessary. This was due to having little control over this originally, and despite the changes we made in the remastered episode I like to think of the “original” version on Disc 2 as a modified edit of the original original, if that makes sense.

The daft thing is I don’t remember many changes being made to Episode 2 as for the most part we were quite happy with it – by comparison, the remastered version is only a minute longer than the original. I think overall it’s a much more solid batch of material than Episode 1, and I think it benefited from a short gestation period.

Next week – The Village Episode 3 (unless we’re podcasting again).

Nov 25 2011

A Journey Through Time – Part 1 – The Village Episode 1

As briefly discussed in my blog last week, there were a few projects we started many, many years ago that have not been released for public consumption as they are, to be frank, a bit pants. The main project that occupied many years throughout high school, 6th Form and for some of us the first couple of years at university, was The Village. The project began at the end of October 1998 in an English lesson (classroom E3, if I recall correctly) and was officially laid to rest with Episode 4 in 2004/2005. At the beginning of the project we were all very influenced by sketch shows, the most popular at the time being The Fast Show, and for whatever reason we decided we would go out and make our own sketch show. Bit random, you might think, but for about 2 years we worked on releasing our first episode. My plan at some point is to go back through the episodes again and shoot them properly, using “modern production techniques, so from 2 hours of material I think we’ll be able to re-use… probably about 15 minutes at best, but we’ll see.

It’s a strange feeling when I look back and realise we finished the episode over 11 years ago. There’s been plenty of change since then, most notably the fact everyone has jobs now whereas in 2000 we were all, for the most part, available for going out filming almost every day of the week, at least until we started 6th Form. At the same time I continuously use this time and the episode to compare with what I have made recently, and I’m happy with the progress that has been made. It’s worth bearing in mind that 99% of the material I wrote at that time was awful. These days I would only rate about 60% of my work, so it’s progress at least. Another thing to consider is there wasn’t widespread use of YouTube back then, so unsurprisingly not many people got to see the series as and when we released an episode. Compare that to now, where I can edit a clip and upload it within a day or two of filming it, and comparatively speaking there are more people online now with more and more devices on which they can watch videos – it would have fried my tiny little mind to imagine I could watch videos on YouTube using my mobile phone less than a decade after we filmed the episode. Of course, mobile phones were cumbersome beasts at that time (compared to today, slimline if compared to the 80s) and YouTube wouldn’t be around for another 4 or 5 years, but you get the point.

Along the way we debated with literally creating a village of characters around which we’d write sketches (hence the name for the show). And then The League of Gentlemen came out and, realising they’d done it much better than we ever could, we changed tack and returned to the standard sketch show format. Several drafts of the first episode were written (including a total script re-write halfway down the line), and a number of name changes were considered (including “Good, Good, Good… It’s Comic!” in honour of our GCSE English teacher Mr Toolan, it was one of his many catchphrases. That was dropped in favour of “Crinkley Bottom Revisited” which appears to be a reference to Noel’s House Party, but how that links into a sketch show I don’t know. There was another prominent name in the form of “I Smell…” with a new smell for each episode. Ultimately we went back to using The Village because we all liked it, it was easy to remember and none of the other names were really that good.

There’s a “lost” script from around this time (March 1999-ish) where we wrote around six scenes, the best of which is Constipated Colin, who emerges from the toilet and says “Errrgggh! Me bum’s like a dry flannel in a desert!” Why we never incorporated him into an episode, I don’t know.

Dan threatens "David Attenborough" with a gun. A toy gun.

After deciding on a shooting script, we planned a number of filming days, only a fraction of which took place. We had at least one day of filming in 1999 which, interestingly enough, we shot out of order for editing later. If I’m honest I can’t remember much of this day, but it did involve a cast member who was subsequently removed from the project. Mostly because his idea of being funny was to arrive with green hair. Needless to say, after a few minutes of footage was committed to tape he left for the day and was never invited back.

The script was re-jigged again after this filming day, and another day of filming was set for December 1999. We shot about another 6 scenes of the new script, including the Attenborough sketch seen in the photo above, but as one of the cast didn’t turn up (this was in historical terms mere MINUTES before mobile phones became popular) and the weather was particularly cold and unpleasant we gave up for the day. Filming didn’t resume again until sometime after February 2000 (when Dan had recovered from a school ski-trip related bout of pneumonia), which again saw us try shooting the episode from the beginning again, once more finishing a few scenes and then giving up. Looking back I wish we’d had the technology we have now as we’d have been much more productive with our time and not had to keep going back to the beginning of the script and starting again.

Then, finally, shortly after completing our GCSE exams we spent three days filming in July, and managed to put the whole episode together, shot in sketch order on the tape. To allow for any corpsing (industry-speak for “laughing”), flubs and mistakes, we always left a few seconds of editing space at the end of the sketch – when moving onto the next sketch on the list we’d wind to the correct point on the tape so there was no gap between each sketch and start acting (I use the term loosely) as soon as the red light came on. For the “Adolf Schmirrnoff” sketch – he’s German and hates everyone and everything except for Lemon Curd – we almost had to go back and reshoot the whole of the previous sketch (a history of the pressed meat Spam) due to me messing up my lines, the phone ringing etc. On the 6th take I think we got it, although we did in fact have to go back and reshoot the final section of the history of Spam, which thankfully we could do in Dan’s back garden with the viewer being none the wiser – the magic of television, people!

The wallpaper table was a necessary part of the 5 News sketch.

It was a great moment finally finishing the episode after that amount of time, even if Dan’s video camera died literally 2 sketches from the end. I dashed home and retrieved my video camera for the last couple of skits. As far as promotional materials go, there’s a lot of non-computer related stuff still around, but there’s not much additional footage due to the way we shot it and most of the photos taken were lost when my PC died (quite a common occurrence in those days). The episode was released on its own on VHS (yes, they existed once) and we started making plans for our second episode.

And that was that. Until 29 and 30 December 2004 when Dan, Adam and myself got together to reshoot some material and “re-master” the episode to bring it more in line with what we originally wanted to do. The fact we’d recently invested in a new video editing PC also played a part in that decision. We added a few “stings” to break up the sketches (which were originally going to be used in every episode but forgot to use them in subsequent releases), added some new graphics and moved material around a bit so it worked better than it did originally. Thankfully we didn’t “do a George Lucas” and erase the original from history – the DVD set we made for the episode has both versions, the original episode and the new, re-mastered edition, plus literally all the remaining footage we have. A pretty comprehensive collection, but I’m not letting anyone outside of the cast and our immediate circle watch it, not until we’ve shot them again and put them in Reddite Insania… I have very fond memories of the whole “Episode 1” period, and is pretty much the definitive point at which I decided I wanted to write and make films, TV-style series and so on. It was also something a bit different for all of us to be involved in, and despite wishing we’d used our time more productively, for me at least it’s been the stepping stone for my more recent output.

There's a reason why I'm flying into shot... and that's because I put the camera on delay, realised it wasn't long enough for me to sit down, and promptly threw myself into shot, just in time. My head impacted with Pete's knee a fraction of a second later.

There are still a lot of memories from this time period that I’ve not included for reasons of time and blog length, so I’ll return to the subject at some point in the future.

Next week – The Village Episode 2!

On that note, if I get any requests to upload the original or remastered episodes I’ll give it some consideration. But don’t expect anything that’s worth seeing.

Nov 18 2011

Video editing on a Mac – “It’s just better”

For just under 6 years I did my video editing on a PC. PC’s are cheap, customisable and pretty much everyone owns one. The software I used initially was equally cheap – Ulead Video Studio 8, for a mere £25 from WH Smith. You know, back when they used to sell more than books, magazines and stationery. Video Studio was a nice entry level package that helped myself and a group of friends “remaster” a sketch show we’d started when we were 16, to transfer the footage to the PC, add title slides where necessary and, so we thought, make it look a bit more professional. One of these remastered episodes was previously available on YouTube until I realised that it wasn’t particularly good and the general public deserved better. I’ll be writing about these early days of video making another time.

From 2005 until 2009 I was using the various iterations of Video Studio and slowly learning how to edit videos having had no previous training or experience in the area. The best I’d managed before 2005 was to put a 30 minute sketch show episode together using a VHS player and adding music to the sketch “live” as it recorded onto the tape, no small feat in itself. Bearing in mind how easy it is to do NLE (non linear editing) on a computer, it still amazes me that we were able to edit together three sketch show episodes using the VHS method. Admittedly the very first episode we put together was actually shot in sketch order on the master tape – there’s no “raw” footage from this episode as a result – so technically we made 2 episodes and edited them using VHS. Either way, the move to PC editing was something we’d had on the cards for a while, so it was all the more disappointing when the newly built PC I used kept crashing – I said it overheated with the full “Soviet attack!” alarm after 30 minutes of using the computer, the shop said it was fine (no, it wasn’t) – and was further aggravated as the first few edits had audio that gradually went out of synch with the video. Rather annoying and there was apparently no cause for it. Suffice to say, I struggled through with this PC until 2007 when I built a new system myself. Literally by myself. It took a whole day to put together, install software etc, but I built it with my own two hands. That system was the most stable I’ve ever owned and it lasted until early this year when I built a super-gaming PC to sit alongside my newly purchased iMac. But… I’m getting ahead of myself.

From around 2009 I started using Sony Vegas. The timeline was easier to use and I had more options for transitions and basic effects than those available in Video Studio. It was quite a leap forward in learning new shortcuts and the process of video editing, but after a few weeks of playing around with the software I knew it was a step forward compared to Video Studio and soon all of my projects were done in Vegas – 60 Second Gamer was launched in late 2009 after I’d spent more than a year not doing any video editing at all. Shocking, I know. I’d learned enough by October 2009 to start using Vegas on a regular basis, but looking back on those early episodes of 60SG you can tell I was still learning how the software worked.Check out the first video below (the rest are all available on www.youtube.com/randomstoat)


So if you took the time to watch that video you’ll see how basic everything looks. My thought process at the time was “If I wait until it looks good, it will never get done”, and you can tell by watching through the videos that it was a work in progress from the very beginning. Long evenings were spent tinkering with the look of the episodes, although the format has remained pretty much unchanged for almost 2 years. Now, moving to the present day and 84 episodes of 60SG later, I’ve started editing on an iMac I bought earlier this year.

I’ve never found it easier to make videos and create audio productions and that’s all thanks to the intuitive way a Mac is designed. These days if I have all the elements I need for a 60 Second Gamer video I can have a basic edit finished in about an hour, including audio balancing (video game audio and the voiceover) adding clips to the timeline and having the edit ready to upload. Obviously more complicated intro sketches will need some more time to complete, but the rest of the video can be finished rather quickly.

And it doesn’t end with video editing – I’ve been able to work more intuitively with scripts and audio projects, and Ant (of 60 Second Gamer fame) has been able to use Garageband to write some pretty awesome music (a page of his tracks will be going on the Random Stoat website in the near future). Editing podcasts is a much simpler process, again thanks to Garageband, so rather than spending three hours putting a video together or an hour editing a podcast we’re now talking mere minutes. A RAM upgrade has certainly helped rendering, but the actual physical process of editing has become that much simpler and enjoyable.

If you’re a creative person you don’t need me to recommend owning a Mac – you probably already know that it’s worth owning one. That’s not to say a PC can’t do exactly the same thing if you have the right software, and in many respects a PC is much better for other things (video games for one – I doubt I’ll be using the Mac for gaming any time soon). Despite what some people might say I’m not a devout Apple supporter despite owning and regularly using four of their main products, but I know for certain that having a Mac has helped me with improving my projects and making them look better than I could ever have imagined. And the best part is, I’m still learning, there’s so much more for me to discover it boggles the mind. Like a game of Boggle.

To wrap up and show just to show how far we’ve come, here’s our latest 60 Second Gamer video:


The template has been tinkered with again since that review was uploaded in September, which is what my work has always involved – constantly evolving as I learn. Darwin would be proud. Maybe.

Nov 11 2011

Trent Samuels Festive Special 2011 – the writing process

Believe it or not, here’s the new blog as promised!

My big project at the moment is this year’s Festive Special for our Trent Samuels audio series. I did a similar project this time last year and, despite the fact the episode wasn’t released until February 2011 due to a LOT of snow interrupting the recording session, it was a fun exercise. The story this year will mainly focus on Tony The Absorber, the main villain from series 1 and a ghostly apparition in the 2010 Festive Special. To date out of all of my creations he’s the most fun to write, if nothing else because I have Rich’s performance of the character running through my head as I write the dialogue. In many respects writing future series has been made a lot easier from having that first series and the various myriad performances to refer back to.

Without trying to give too much away, this year’s special will follow Tony The Absorber through a loose adaptation of A Christmas Carol, as he receives visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come (or, in more simplistic terms, “future”). It’s going to be an exercise in fleshing out his character a little and giving him a much deserved backstory. And what about Trent, the eponymous hero? He gets his own backstory in series 4, which will go back to the very beginning and show Tony The Absorber’s first attack on Earth.

From a logistical standpoint I’m purposefully avoiding the use of a few series regulars. This isn’t because I’m not happy with their performances, far from it, it’s simply a matter of getting this project finished in time for a Christmas week release, and the easiest way of doing that is by keeping the cast list to a minimum and recording it in as prompt a manner as possible. In many ways the initial recording is the easy part – there’s the whole editing process as well as throwing in sound effects and writing the soundtrack, none of which I’m currently involved in! I’m planning to exert a bit more control over the post production process (ooh, the alliteration) in future, just to ensure we’re getting the right balance and to ensure a fully collaborative process in which the script, the soundtrack and the edit compliment each other.

    The Writing Process

I can’t really make claims to having a writing process that works well, so don’t take this as gospel. For this particular project the characters are already in place, and as I’m lifting the plot from a classic novel there wasn’t much work needed in those areas. The first step of course was deciding what story to do this year. The 2010 special featured a character called Scrooge who essentially did the bog standard alien invader shtick at Christmas, and it was up to our characters to stop him. This year I wanted something a bit more… festive. A plot that actually represented the Christmas season, something that wasn’t a loosely linked group of set pieces resulting in a final showdown with the villain. Thus, I purloined one of the most popular Christmas stories in existence. And I’m sure the most purloined.

So, Tony The Absorber takes on the Scrooge character, that was nice and easy. The next bit was more difficult, fitting Tony into the Christmas Carol tale. Suffice to say that’s still a work in progress, but the story will pick up right from the very end of the last Festive Special. Go back and listen to it so you know how it finishes. Done that? Fantabulous.

For the most part my writing process is mostly spent plotting the story out, ensuring all of the characters, new or otherwise, have a voice and a distinct personality, and then going back to previous episodes and making sure there aren’t any continuity errors. I can’t guarantee that to be true, however, but I try and minimise the continuity issues wherever possible. For all of this, a whiteboard or five are very handy pieces of kit to own, both for writing on and for sticking post-it notes to. Then I move over either to the Mac or the iPad, using the paid desktop version of Celtx, or if I want to write while watching QI or something I use the Celtx app on the iPad. Then it’s Time to focus on putting the first draft together in a reasonably short period of time – usually about a week. Then I leave the script for a few days and go start another project, then return to the redrafting process and look on the script with a fresh eye. After that, it’s usually straight into recording, tinkering with it as we record. I’m never too precious about the script if someone has an idea that improves the script.

There isn’t much more I can say about the writing process, other than it’s a great feeling when you’ve written something and it ends up being better because of the input of a great bunch of people. It’s also a great privilege that they all feel inclined to help out with these random musings of a madman. That would be me.

Best be off now anyway, this script needs to be finished in two days. I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Wouldn’t have it an other way.

Nov 09 2011

Yeah, it’s been a while…

Blimey, has it really been 12 months since the last post on this blog? Best get my act together and make an effort going into 2012… I’ll be aiming for at least 1 update a week, probably on a Friday evening, from this Friday onwards. Let’s see how I do with that, although I’ve now got weekly notifications set up on my phone, so if I don’t do an update it’s because I’m being lazy.

So… where are we at?

Trent Samuels

Right now I’m writing yet another Trent Samuels Festive Special – this one will, weather permitting, be released Christmas week 2011, rather than February 2012 as last year’s was. I’m aiming to have the first draft written this week, 2nd draft done in a fortnight and then the relatively speedy process of recording the episode will follow. If our esteemed audio guru Tommy Dempsey isn’t available to record it, I’ve recently purchased a Zoom H2 audio recorder which we’ve also introduced on our normal podcasts. The audio quality is much better than we had previously, and hopefully should lead to a somewhat more palatable sound.

Anyway, back to Trent – once the Festive Special is written and in the bag I’ll be moving back onto Trent series 2 which will hopefully get a Q1 2012 release (for those who don’t know what Q1 means, it’s an insanely optimistic hope of mine that the series will be ready by March 2012. The first 2 episodes are pretty much finished, the main reasons why we haven’t recorded it yet are twofold. The first is that I wasn’t happy with the second half of the series, the story felt flat and a bit too formulaic, thus another session of planning was required and that took some time to finalise. Suffice to say the series should end on what will hopefully be a fantastic final showdown between Trent and Rikkmann, the villain of the series. The second reason was a lot of upheaval at work and the potential risk of redundancy (thankfully that’s now passed), so much of my spare time was spent focusing on job interview prep and generally taking my mind off the matter. Ergo, series 2 isn’t ready for a 2011 release and I have the opportunity to write another Festive Special. Should be fun. If not, be thankful I’m not charging for it.

I won’t go into too much detail about the plot, but essentially it’s a very loose adaptation of A Christmas Carol, featuring everyone’s favourite despot (no, not that one) Tony The Absorber in the central role. For anyone who has listened to Trent Samuels so far, you can see the possibilities in visiting Tony’s past, present and future. And it also ties nicely into series 4. Yep, that’s right – series FOUR.

In other Trent news (last bit of new info on this subject, honest), Ant is currently working his musical magic and re-recording the soundtrack for last year’s Festive Special in order for us to re-release the episode on physical media for the Random Stoat shop – the Mp3 will still be available for free on the website, so don’t worry about that. The CD version will be provided with some bonus special features that aren’t available on the website, so if you don’t need the extras then you can just download the episode with no obligation to buy. We’re still finalising the extra stuff but there’s some good ideas floating around. Don’t expect to see the CD release any time soon either, it will be ready when it’s ready. Series 1 may also receive the remastering treatment (with a new, original score from Ant once again), more details on that when we have them.

60 Second Gamer

We’ve released 2 episodes since moving all our editing to the Mac (visit www.youtube.com/randomstoat for the latest releases). More are coming but due to conflicting schedules we’ve not released a new video since the end of September. Rest assured that we have a LOT of new videos coming as soon as we find time to record our frankly cheap and somewhat shoddy intro sketches. Reviews of Batman Arkham City, Assassins Creed Revelations, FIFA 12, Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3, COD Modern Warfare 3, erm… and some more are on the way over the next few weeks. We’ve also got plans to release a DVD of the first 50 episodes at some point, watch this space. De-interlacing is a pain in the backside, but they’re lessons learnt for the next DVD release!

New Podcast

Following a conversation with Ant last night we’re going to see about releasing a new podcast that has no particular theme – instead we’ll talk about various random topics including the week’s news, latest music releases (that interest us), new TV etc. We’ve not got a plan yet but we’ll look into releasing a new episode every week or two. More details on that will be released here and/or on the Random Stoat homepage. On that note I’m looking into adding a few pages to the site and possibly making a few changes going into the new year, but again that’s in the early planning stages so nothing set in stone as of yet.

New Projects

I’ve got a few new projects on the cards (but then, haven’t I always?), so I’ll be releasing more details on those as we go into 2012. Again, any new project we release will be available as soon as it’s ready. I’m not going to set release dates as that creates unnecessary pressure and as we’re still only doing all of this for fun it seems a pointless endeavour. Suffice to say there’s about four immediate projects on the list, and I might even start writing that novel I’ve had fermenting in my head for the last couple of years. Or that other one. I’m trying to find a balance between releasing video and audio projects, with any luck we’ll get the balance right next year and actually expand into new projects rather than releasing the same old 60SG, Trent Samuels and The Movie Review. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, it would just be nice to give folks something new to tune in to. There are a few short film ideas floating around in my head, so hopefully some of them will be up on the website (free to view/listen to as always) in the next 12 months. A couple of scripts are at the drafting stage and I feel confident enough editing on the Mac now, so with any luck we can start churning stuff out that’s of a reasonably high quality. And hopefully funny where appropriate!

I’ll end this post by adding one of my favourite clips I found recently on YouTube – Alan Rickman doing what he does best.


Comments are very much appreciated, even the negative ones. See you crazy cats on Friday!

Aug 28 2010

Camping Holiday – Day 6 – Saturday 21st August 2010

Another early start to wrap up the holiday. Shower drains were clogged with something, I didn’t want to investigate too closely. Similarly, the toilets were hardly in fantastic condition. Glad we were leaving, quite frankly. Somehow we got everything packed away rather easily, throwing away a fair amount of unwanted stuff for reasons of space. We’d decided to pop into Newquay for the morning before heading home, so we squeezed into the car (back in full sardines mode as we were on Monday) and made the now regular trip to the top car park by the hotel. Yet again many drivers were trying to get into the car park on the opposite side of the road with roofboxes on their vehicles. The amount of times I’ve been at that car park and heard a crunch as they hit the maximum height barrier… Classic.

We had another walk down the high street and did some last minute shopping. For me it was mostly about the food – bought sticks of rock for the family and a small selection of fudges and coconut ice to see me through. At the top end of the high street there was a typical beach resort/fairground food seller, providing freshly cooked doughnuts at a vastly over inflated price. Still, it was £1.50 well spent, it’s always a good doughnut if you see it cooking right in front of you. Almost bought a hoodie at Fat Willy’s (a shop that looks massive from the outside but is about three feet square on the inside) but realised it was £30 I could put to better use elsewhere.

After folks had done the last of their shopping, we stopped off in another tea room for one final Newquay lunch. The food itself was very nice, in my case a cheese and ham sandwich with a side portion of chips shared between myself, Liz and Dee. Fun was had with paying. I paid £10 and had a £5 note given to me before we handed it to the waitress. Then the waitress handed both me and Dee £5 each as change, which was a bit odd because we’d all paid either the exact amount or had sorted out the change between us. Like the good people we are, we pointed out the mistake and handed the money back to them. Rather than buy a second drink I decided to save my money and buy two bottles of Pepsi from Poundland next door, also handy for the journey home. We doubled back and, after a final visit to the first sweet shop on the high street, we went back to the car. We bid our farewells to the other three, who were sticking around in Newquay for a little longer, and the four of us started the journey home. Not before stopping at Morrisons for petrol and snacks, however. I was quite pleased that I hadn’t had to fill the car up again all week, I still had about a quarter of a tank left from filling up the previous weekend. Alternating the driving all week no doubt helped, but given the mileage I still think it was impressive.

And so the journey home began, and not without incident. We hit traffic just past Bodmin and my diversionary tactic failed and brought us back out on the same road (navigation fail). The traffic did keep moving and we were soon making headway again. Then more traffic further up the A38, this time apparenty caused by an accident. We had to shift to one side to allow a police car through, and by the time we were moving again the police car driver was putting a road sign back in his car. We didn’t hit any more traffic until the M5, where it went ridiculously busy approaching Weston, but nowhere near as bad as it was going southbound. Traffic for at least 10 junctions. Glad we weren’t heading down there that Saturday.

We stopped at the same Bristol services as we had on the way down there. I finally crumbled and bought a Burger King meal. Even better, with every meal you got free onion rings or free chicken bites, which went down well. Just as we thought about leaving a storm rolled in. We decided to try sitting it out but that didn’t really work, so I bravely (foolishly) decided to get back out on the motorway and continue the journey home. Whilst it was rather nasty-going for half an hour, the rain soon relented and we made good time for the rest of the journey. I dropped off the other passengers and got home in one piece. After getting everything in from the car my first port of call was the shower. It was official: I was home again.

Aug 27 2010

Camping Holiday – Day 5 – Friday 20th August 2010

Camping Holiday – Day 5 – Friday 20th August 2010

The last full day of the holiday before we had to go home, and we had a fair bit to cram in. I ended up sleeping in for an extra hour compared to the rest of the week. I blame the torrential wind all night for that. Once everyone was up and dressed we made the usual drive into Newquay and parked up next to the (slightly cheaper than the one across the road) car park next to the slightly pink hotel and went down to the aquarium on one of the beach fronts. A man, covered in tattoos, was doing a demonstration outside with a crab and a lobster. It looked like an ex-con had decided to try and steal business from the aquarium, but then it turned out he was affiliated with them.

The aquarium was typical fare, with a couple of notable exceptions, both within 10 feet of each other – an octopus and a giant lobster, which were great fun to see. They slightly put Sealife Birmingham to shame. The rest of it was mostly the normal stuff – obligatory clown fish for the kids, a few sea horses and a walk-thrifty giant tank, inhabited by a rather nice giant turtle. The gift shop at the end was rather cramped and had almost nothing of interest for anyone over the age of 12.

It was around the end of the aquarium walk that my knees started playing up, causing further problems when we left and had to climb the stairs back up towards the high street. Stopped for a tiny break before we made our way to our second destination of the day, Buccaneer Bay, as set up by Dragon’s Den resident, Duncan Bannatyne. We queued for quite a while but finally made our way inside. The live actors were variable in quality, varying between bored, playing an Irish pirate (bit odd…), being completely over the top (Ant can verify this in the “scare” section of the attraction), and simultaneously being unsure how to deal with an entirely adult group of visitors. Do they improvise? Do they play along a little? Do they just stick to the script? The answer is all of these. But not. Very confusing all the same.

I’m glad we didn’t decide to miss the scare attraction: it would have been a ridiculously short visit otherwise. As soon as we got out of that portion we were pretty much at the end. And what was the point in us sticking to the white line so desperately inside the scare attraction? Despite warnings to the contrary, nothing jumped out at us at any point (except for the chap playing a smoker’s version of Captain Jack Sparrow). It would have been a total waste of time if Ant hadn’t soiled himself at every turn in the building. Worth the price of admission alone.

We went in search of lunch and went to a local tea room on the high street. Lunch for me was the Mega Brunch: sausage, bacon, egg, beans, toast and chips. All respectably priced, and tasted just as respectable. After lunch we returned to the campsite in much drier conditions than the day before, where everyone else had a kickaround for a bit while Ant and myself sat down to discuss the pirate musical we’re writing. The weather had other ideas and decided to rain for a bit. But… It didn’t stop us having a BBQ at last. We finished off just about everything we had left over, although theleftover burgers from Monday had gone a horrible brown colour, so they were disposed of.

In many ways I was almost glad to be leaving the next day. The campsite had filled up considerably, no doubt bolstered by GCSE and A-Level students celebrating their results. The standards of the toilets had declined after the football hooligans arrived in the morning, and the overall ambience of the campsite had declined but I couldn’t quite put my finger on how, it’s not as if they were imposing themselves on us. Probably more psychological on my part than anything else.

After dinner I spent a fair amount of time throwing stuff into the car just to make life a little easier by the morning. Then it was socialising time, as best as possible, until everyone was too tired to stay awake. Despite my original plans for the week, I hadn’t listened to more than 5 podcasts all week. I’d originally wanted to listen to 5 a day. All things considered though, it was much more beneficial to not listen to podcasts, just in case I was needed for anything. My hearing isn’t brilliant at the best of times, so popping headphones in wouldn’t have helped. It was also a rather nice day to end on, activities wise at least.