Sunday, 11 May 2008

Community Central TV

Since August 2007 I have been collaborating with a small company called SNS Productions to produce a series of programmes entitled ‘Community Central TV’ a series of magazine shows for a particular audience in the States.

I have been editing the series as and when I can with the helpful and generous woman of Shaquilla who has been a dream to work with. And the reason for my blogging this is that my programmes have finally hit youtube! Yay

Please visit www.youtube.com/communitycentraltv for the latest two programmes

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Friday, 9 May 2008

Jobs

You gotta love em, those 8 hours a day things that puts food on your table, we both started new jobs on Tuesday just gone and how tiring are they! I can't say I've been so tired in all my life, must be the shock of 8.5 hours a day... ahem.

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Saturday, 3 May 2008

Collectormania

After hearing that the event, Collectormania, is coming to Milton Keynes, not far from us ya know, I thought we'd better give it a visit. And low and behold we arrived, to a fairly packed car park and even more so was the centre:mk was packed to the rim. Cue mad men, mad ladies and their children and mad fans scattered across the complex. Nice selection of shops but you won't catch me buying a £18 t-shirt with a crummy logo on it, oh no, but you might catch me trying to grab a deal for a DVD or a second-hand plushie, Elmo anyone? HAHA.

We had the pleasure of acquiring Eve Myles aka Gwen Cooper of TV's 'Torchwood' 's autograph, what a lovely lady who looked so happy to be doing such an event and also looked like she was bricking it! And saw John Barrowman himself not too far away, didn't even see many others, since there were hundreds of fans surrounding those of James Marsters (Spike from 'Buffy' and 'Torchwood's Captain John) and Kai Owen ('Torchwood's Rhys), did think about dropping in on Charles whatshisface - the voice of Roger Rabbit - to sign my DVD but alas, nevermind, we did have the pleasure of gracing the presense of Jennifer Linden (Barbara in the 1960s dalek movie 'Dr Who and the Daleks' starring Peter Cushing) and Darth Vader man himself, Dave Prowse.

A nice event, spoilt by the amounts of people, ah well, must be me, being an old fart.

Saturday, 26 April 2008

The Schrodinger Effect

Blogging, haven't done this in awhile, summing my recent life activities in a mere few sentences that might be vaguely interesting to those who are interested in reading in the first place

*breathes*

Last night, Mrs Nagel and I headed up towards Leeds, Leeds Town Centre to be exact, well, Leeds Town Centre's city loop/ring road thing for about twenty minutes before settling in the train station's car park to ascend on Bar Cenessa to see Chris Hoyle, of The Projection Room fame, and his new film 'The Schrodinger Effect' starring Mr Hoyle himself and fellow Doctor Dave Hodson.

Having picked up Mr Chambers on our way, yes Mr Chambers will ALWAYS join us on these big WHO events, we walked the shops first and picked up a few bits and pieces before settling down in seats in the er... function room of the Bar Cenessa.

Greeted by the man himself, Chris Hoyle, and a glass of shampers, we were treated to a series of videos of Doctor Who-ness from BBC2's 1999 Doctor Who Night to the traielrs for Chris' fan film. After these, Mr Hoyle did a short introduction before we were treated with a bloody brilliant looking fan film that is as of yet the best Projection Room film since 'Gene Genius' (oh wait, that was their last one). The quality of the direction, executed by Hoyle himself, and the sets and props, namely the TARDIS exterior prop (mayde by Hoyle), and TARDIS interior set, brilliantly constructed by both Hoyle and Hodson. And the film was topped off with some brilliant CG/Visual Effects produced by the most northern of northern-based people, Graham Quince, of which we had the pleasure meeting him and his fantastic wife, Debbie.

Come the end and a round of applause, everyone sited their views and opinions with each other and Chris sent round a guest book for all to sign. And shortly afterwards a treat of a DVD was played with featurettes and brilliant behind the scenes of construction of sets and props, scripting and editing and visual effects was played with appropriate head shots of Chris, Dave and Graham... hmm... one even wearing the same T-shirt he's wearing that day..hmm.

With a fantastic few hours of entertainment we were treated with the possibility of watching the latest 'real' Doctor Who episode, The Sontaran Stragemn starring current Doctor Who, David Tennant and companion, Catherine Tate with returning companion, Freema Ageman as Martha. While on the big screen would have been brilliant, the technology wasn't permitting so we all sat around a little television screen to watch this latest episode, but Chris did connect the telly up to his big speakers (ooooh errr!). And with that, we said temporaral goodbyes in hopes of catching up later, and continued to find some swanky place to eat, well it wasn't swanky but we had a good eating and couldn't catch up with the man himself later but ah well and continued on our way home. A fantastic evening and we look forward to the next one... maybe our own even? Thanks Chris and company for a brill evening.

The only general comment we had about Chris' film was that it was awfully similar to our intended 'Time and the Doctors' what a shame we were two years late with our script, completely unaware of what Chris had envisionged. Ah well... we'll have to rethink 'Time and the Doctors' now. 'The Schrodinger Effect' was just proof that Chris Hoyle is the motherdaddy (I'm sure he'd like that) of British fan films, having produced them from as early as 1994, and proves that with a little effort you can produce something of brilliance that everyone will enjoy watching. The film was also an excellent show reel for Graham having produced all the visual effects. I think 50% of the film was a visual effect and 50% raw live footage, conceived between Graham and Chris.

But again, a fantastic show and one well worth remembering. Thanks Chris.

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Saturday, 5 April 2008

Doctor Who: Partners in Crime

Right, I thought I’ve better start a new series of review blog posts about the new series of Doctor Who starring David Tennant and … ahem… Catherine Tate.

Doctor Who S4EP1: Partners in Crime

Doctor Who returns with Partners in Crime featuring the return of Time Lord, David Tennant and Temp worker, Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, last seen in the 2006 Christmas Special, ‘The Runaway Bride’. The Doctor is investigating Adipose and so is Donna. With a few near misses the two finally meet with a brilliant silent conversation through the windows of Miss Fosters’ office.

An interesting opening episode let down, unfortunately, by the writing, sorry RTD but this is on par with Series 1’s ‘Rose’ and Series 2’s ‘New Earth’ oh, and any other episode you’ve written really. Yes, it was a jolly romp to open the series, light hearted and interesting for the younger minority but it just wasn’t… right. It felt like a comic, which was good, but unfortunately the idea stretched the few pages of a comic and could have been so much better. Over used music, sorry Murray but when do we get to hear more new tracks of music, ah well, can’t complain, we got the same thing in Series 2. Because of the silliness of the episode and the pointlessness of the episode, I don’t think the Doctor did much ‘saving the day’ wise really, ultimately it would have ended this way, just a shame it didn’t “end another way”. But otherwise, Donna gets a fine entry into the TARDIS. I never liked Donna to begin with in the Christmas Special but unfortunately she is warming to me and it’d be interesting to see how she gets on. 3/5

Next time… Fires of Pompeii

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Tuesday, 25 March 2008

The Curse of CT

Don't film with Chris! This is a warning for those who would like to film with Teenz Inc head man himself, Chris Thomson, if you HAVE to film something with him, make sure he isn't working that evening! By jove did we have a trouble getting in a few hours worth of filming in a much shorter space of time! Oh dear. But I can’t blame him, we didn’t get to him till mid-day so I’m not surprised we didn’t have much time. Ah well…

We spent half a day with Mr Teenz Inc himself again, filming in a local office location the final confrontational scenes of my villain, Sir Denton and Chris’ Doctor Who. By golly, did we have to rush that! Thank lord rassilon for two camcorders. Sammy made her acting debut as Sir Denton’s receptionist and how jove did she do well! Well done hun!

And I better to home up on my prop making skills, namely the electronics, next time buy a flashing LED, not a switch that you have to sit off camera and flick on and off yourself. Oh and yes, next time Nagel, spend more time on it, rather than the night before and it will look so much better. Sorry Chris mate! Lets hope the next prop is better. And if you’re wondering what the hell I’m on about, you’ll have to wait to watch Chris Thomson’s film ‘The Final Adventure’ when it premieres very, very soon…

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Thursday, 21 February 2008

The To-do List of Doom

After seeing the recent updates on the Big Finish website, I thought it’d be a good idea to do what Mr Briggs is doing and write up a To Do list – yes, one of those. I hate them too. But you have to make them, don’t you?

*looks over long, long, long list*

Pending completion:

  • Time and Again soundtrack – Ryan Thorson of Mendicant Productions asked me to do the soundtrack for his Doctor Who fan film ‘Time and Again’ – fantastic production values and a fantastic looking 2007 edit – let’s hope my sound design lives up to its visuals!
  • Chimera – yes, that age old Doctor Who fan film, filmed in 2003 and released on the web in 2004 is now heading its way onto DVD. If only a computer would stay stable enough for me to finish it eh?
  • Fix Computer – hmm, an old computer of mine with a bust partition and dynamic disk has been causing some grief for along time now – all the important stuff is on it! Oh dear! Hope to at least look at it again soon.
  • Flesh out new site – my new domain needs fleshing out since it only has the bare bones of what I want there, so far. So look forward to more portfolio stuff popping up there soon.
  • Write WHO – lots of script writing ahead.
  • Passport USA – Mr Maher tells me he will attempt to animate this monstrosity of a production, but that will be awkward given that he has just changed the script AGAIN after we completed the soundtrack for the first draft. *grumbles* Calling all Voice Artists! Calling all Voice Artists!
  • Pilot Bad Angel – sounds odd but we have devised a new animated sitcom which will see the light of day…one day – promise.

‘What is done?’ I hear you ask…

Well…

  • Well, the Doctor Who audio release schedule has been finalised as well as one or two scripts and one or two audios have actually started production but it’s a long way till we have another season or two ready for release.
  • Set confirmed – we have news that a special set has been confirmed for use in an upcoming fan film… script pending of course J
  • And I have just finished casting a new series of audios for…someone else.

More coming soon.

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