And the winner is...

Some of you may already know how I feel about award ceremonies, firstly, quality is subjective and therefore to get a true gauge of something’s quality, you must find consensus. Everyone should be able to vote for these awards, not a panel of judges. Secondly, the Academy's own prestige, credibility and existence, makes things more than a little political. For example, the Oscars have pretty much snubbed science fiction since the dawn of man, it seems they feel giving science fiction major awards will somehow diminish their credibility. Last years snub of the Dark Knight in the best picture category was an absolute joke. I’m not saying it needed to win, but at least give the highest grossing movie of year a damn nomination.

But this year, or at least I hope. Things will be a different. Two seminal science fiction films had some major success this year, and they have already been recognised in the form nominations in several categories (Including Best Picture). Let’s see how it goes, now as I write these words I haven’t yet seen the ceremony, so I have no idea who won what, and my plan is to write down my reactions and thoughts on the show as I watch it. I won’t mention everything, but I hope to cover as much of it as possible without boring people.

So here we go.

They have opened by dragging all of the “Best Actor/Actress” nominees onto the stage, I’m absolutely behind George Clooney getting the Best Actor award this year; he was utterly brilliant in “Up In The Air”. And of the Actresses this year I’m really hoping Carey Mulligan will get it, she deserves it.

Neil Patrick Harris has just hit the stage singing the words “I know what you’re thinking, what am I doing here?”. Neil I think you’re great, but seriously… that’s exactly what I’m thinking. Isn’t it traditional to have the host do the first musical number? His song appears to be a number designed to introduce the hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, nice idea but some of the jokes in the song are falling a little flat, not a patch on last years recession based opening with Hugh Jackman.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are on now, it's a simple stand up segment making jokes at the expensive of all the nominated actors and directors. What I love about this section is how beautifully tame and polite all the jokes are, they could of done as Ricky Gervais did at the Golden Globes and make some quite harsh jokes at the expense of the people involved, but Martin and Baldwin are from a different era of comedy and have a subtle but brilliant air of respect about their jibes. No jokes about Mel Gibson’s Alcoholism in sight, and while I don’t have a problem with that type of thing, I like that older comedians have a tendency to show more respect, and it made the routine a rather pleasant experience, I hope they keep it up throughout the show as it really separates them as hosts. George Clooney didn’t seem to appreciate any of the jokes aimed at him, he looked seriously annoyed at the second one, but it's entirely possible he was either simply caught off guard or simply playing along, either way it entertained.

Best supporting actor up first, I’m really behind Christoph Waltz on this one, he was an amazing villain in Inglorious Basterds. And the winner is… Christoph Waltz. Great news, and a nice very complementary and humble acceptance speech.

Animation up next, Steve Carell and Cameron Diaz are doing quite a clever introduction to this award, if you haven't seen it, I recommend you youtube it. The animation award absolutely HAS to go to Up. That film was wonderful in a way that none of the other movies in this category were. What’s really nice is that instead of showing clips from the movies they have animated the central characters of each talking about what the Oscar means to them, it’s really quite cool. Particularly the Fantastic Mr. Fox one “Best Animation? I thought we got nominated like a real movie?”. And the winner is… predictably but deservingly… Up. Pixar’s award cabinet must be getting pretty full right now. Toy Story 3 will probably get this award next year, and "Newt" will probably get it in 2012.

Original Screenplay up next. I sort of want this to go to Inglorious Basterds for it’s dialogue, but the story of Up was just so wonderful. And both were so funny (Admittedly in very different ways). And the winner is… The Hurt Locker. Not entirely surprising considering it won the same award at the BAFTA’s. It definitely deserves the award for it’s authenticity and for the efforts the writer went through to bring that truth to his movie.

A section dedicated to John Hughes who died late last year. A great little video package dedicated to him and some very kind works spoken from some of the cast of his movies.

Ben Stiller just hit the stage in full blue makeup as a Navi and started making an absurd attempt to speak Navi. As this started I thought, the only way this will be funny is if it somehow upsets James Cameron. But he seemed to be smiling, and I really didn’t think Ben Stiller was going to do well with such a silly idea, but then he uttered the words “This seemed like a better idea in rehearsal”. I thought that was very funny, then he said he was there to present the award for best make up, which he then admitted Avatar wasn’t nominated for. And just before he announced who won (I’m routing for Star Trek on the basis it isn't likely to win much else this year, which is a shame) he said he would be sure to stand as far away from the winner as possible when they come to collect the award “so as not to demean their moment of triumph”. I also thought that was pretty damn funny. So far I genuinely think Ben Stiller has stolen the show yet again, after his brilliant Joaquin Phoenix impression last year. And the winner is… Star Trek.

Best Adapted Screenplay up next, I want either Up In The Air or District 9 to win this. District 9 because it genuinely deserves the award and also, it would be a big step in the right direction in terms of the Oscars snubbing Science Fiction. But if it doesn’t win, Up In The Air was a great movie, and is thoroughly deserving of it. I’ll be a whole less upset about District 9 not getting the award if it goes to the equally deserving Up In The Air. And the winner is… Precious. Well, it’s all obviously subjective and opinion, but I really don’t feel that was the best screenplay there. A great movie it was, and it certainly deserves several awards but I’m not entirely sure best screenplay is something it should of won, particularly over the movies I mentioned above.

Best Art Direction now… I’m barely going to discuss this award. It’s quite simply, going to Avatar. No matter what. Sigourney Weaver is presenting, and the winner is… Avatar. Of course it is. Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are now showing a video parody they made of Paranormal Activity. It’s quite funny, hopefully this will be on youtube later on for those who missed it.

A special and well deserved nod to Horror Films this year, ironically introduced as the genre that doesn’t seem to command the respect it did 33 years ago when The Exorcist won two awards. Especially ironic considering there isn’t a single Horror film up for an award on this show. Not to mention that most of the movies in the montage are about 20+ years old. Let me just make this clear, the reason Horror films don’t get the respect they used to, is partly BECAUSE the Academy doesn’t honour them anymore, and in all honestly, this made the montage feel hollow and token. Particularly when there have been some absolutely incredible Horror movies in recent years that were completely ignored come Oscar time. The Strangers, Saw, REC, Let The Right One In, The Decent, The Hills Have Eyes, 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead. Just to name a few. So yeah, nice try, but pointing it out and doing a montage does nothing but bring attention to the lack of credit this genre gets and doesn’t actually do anything to fix the problem.

I barely heard a word Elizabeth Banks said when she came out, but she did look great.

Now a fantastic montage in honour of those the industry lost this year; set to a cover of the Beatles Classic “In My Life” by James Taylor.

Although on a less serious note, the audience clapped at every name that came up until “Michael Jackson” appeared on the screen. You could literally hear the audience’s applause falter while people tried to remember his contributions to the film industry, which let’s be honest, are negligible. Then you could almost feel the audience think “Yeah, alright then, I guess, he did that one thing” and some applause rose. Now, don’t get me wrong, Michael Jackson is a genius in his field and should be respected, I just found him an odd choice for recognition here in this setting.

Next up, best original score. I genuinely loved this part of the show, they went to a lot of trouble and presented each nominee with an extraordinary and very well choreographed dance routine from the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers. Who did a great job and really did justice to the music involved and brought it to life as well as being damn entertaining. And the winner is… Up. Which had an utterly brilliant soundtrack and deserved it.

Next up, outstanding visual effects... lets be honest here, is going to Avatar. Even bothering to say the nominations is a waste of our time. Not to diminish the efforts of District 9 and Star Trek, which both looked great, but we all know where this is going. And the winner is… Avatar.

Best Actor/Actress now, in my opinion they always drag this particular award out to the point of nausea. But I guess it’s nice to spend a few minute talking up each actor/actress before handing out the award, it just bores the hell out of me personally, they did it last year as well. First up are the Actors, as I stated earlier I’m hoping Clooney gets this as I really felt he has the superior performance from Up In The Air. And the winner is… Jeff Bridges. Well, not at all surprising, and certainly deserved. Not who I personally wanted to walk away with it, but no complaints from me. Next up the Actresses, I’m pulling for Carey Mulligan in this category as I mentioned near the start. And the winner is… Sandra Bullock. I have the same reaction to this as I have to Jeff Bridges, not my favorite choice for it, but no complaints here.

Best Director now, I’d really like to see Kathryn Bigelow get this award because the Hurt Locker is such a well shot and directed piece of film. But if I'm honest, also a little because she would be the first woman to ever receive this award. But the reality is, she is up against Cameron and Tarrentino, so unfortunately I can’t see that happening. And the winner is… Kathryn Bigelow. Quite happy and a little surprised with that result, definitely deserved and she seemed absolutely ecstatic about it as well.

Next up, best picture. This is a big one for me, it’s time to see if the Academy will acknowledge science fiction in this all important category or not, Avatar and District 9 both deserve this, but they are up against some stiff competition, particularly in the form of An Education, Inglorious Basterds and The Hurt Locker. So here we go, Tom Hanks is out to announce it, no bells and no whistles this time, not even a need to read out the nominees since they have been going through them one by one over the course of the entire evening with introductions from supporting actors and showing short trailers. So it's just the announcement…

And the winner is… The Hurt Locker.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t saddened by this. But at the same time The Hurt Locker was an incredibly deserving movie. So it’s hard to really be upset about the award not going to a science fiction movie when the movie that did win was just so damn good. And in all honesty I think we took a step in the right direction this year, Avatar got the Visual Effects, Art Direction and Cinematography awards and Star Trek got Make Up award; that’s four awards for Science Fiction. Double what science fiction received last year when the only wins were The Dark Knight for Sound Editing and Supporting actor. (And lets be honest for a second, as much as Heath Ledger deserved that award, he wouldn't of got it if he hadn't died.) I also want to add that it is a crime that District 9 didn’t walk away with any awards this year, it was an extraordinary film that made it's science fiction seem so real that it often didn't even feel like science fiction.

So, after all of that maybe the Academy Awards are still not entirely free of their prejudice towards Science Fiction, but we certainly took a step in the right direction this year.

Maybe next year we can take a step forward in acknowledging the Horror genre.

So, to quote Steve Martin from the end of the awards.
“This has gone on so long that Avatar now takes place in the past”

So it's time for me to sign off.
Thanks for reading
-- Dan

PS: Here are the awards I didn’t mention because I honestly had nothing particular to say about them. Either because they weren’t at all surprising or because all parties involved were equally deserving.

Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique
Best Song: The Weary Kind from The Crazy Heart
Short Film: The New Tenants
Short Doc: Music By Prudence
Short Animated: Logorama
Best Costume Design: Young Victoria
Best Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker
Best Sound Mixing: The Hurt Locker
Cinematography: Avatar
Best Doc Feature: The Cove
Best Film Editing: The Hurt Locker
Best Foreign Language Film: The Secret In Their Eyes (El Secreto De Sus Ojos)


PPS: Sorry if my past and present tense's got mixed up alot during this piece, I'm watching the ceremony the morning after it aired, so it's in the past, but I was writing as I watched it making my writing style sometimes use present tense. So yeah, sorry if that means this was hard to read.

Bloglettes 3: Rise of the Blogage

That's right, it's time for the third edition of Bloglettes. It's been almost exactly a year since my last one. And for the benefit of those of you reading this and wondering "What the hell is a Bloglette?". Whenever I have a few different things I want to talk about, but none of them interesting enough to sustain a whole blog on their own merit I write a post combining them all under the "Bloglettes" title. And it goes something like this...

The Mailman's Ruse.

A couple of days ago a mailman knocked on our door, as they occasionally do, with a special delivery that required someone to sign for it. I opened the door and the postman extended his clipboard and pointed at the place I should sign. As I'm signing he says...

"It's for Daniel Do...."

And proceeded to trail off in the most unnatural way you can imagine. Honestly, it made him sound as if he were mentally ill. I, without thinking, glanced at him in a way that clearly showed my confusion and concern for his sanity. He quickly explained that he couldn't pronounce the name, to which I responded... "It's Doolan."

He smiles, nods and then explains that he didn't really have trouble pronouncing it. He just wanted to make sure I was who I was supposed to be. Now, honestly, in the moment I didn't see anything wrong with that statement. In the moment it seemed to be a perfectly logical thing to do. But a little later it dawns on me... did my postman just try to trick me? He did... he tried to catch me out... what an utterly pointless ruse.

Of course the package was going where it was supposed to... he was at my door... which is conveniantly located at the address on the package. And of course it was going to the right person... I live there, I answered the door. What did he honestly think I was, the worlds most idiotic criminal? Like I've broken into someones house and thought...

"Hang on, forget the TV and the Laptop... I'm gonna wait for the postman."

I realise I have clearly over-thought this... but I really do hope that one day he does catch someone out. Just because otherwise he has wasted alot of his own, and other peoples time.

Just a Thought 1
The other day I walked past a man who looked JUST like Captain Birdseye from the old Birdseye adverts. It was actually a little scary and I did genuinely consider asking him about the suspicious nature of that island full of children he used to have. But thought better of it once I remembered Captain Birdseye is fictional, and that accusing a stranger of potentially being a pedophile probably isn't the best idea. Especially someone with such a harrowing physical appearance.

Twitter Impaired.

Just a little advice to anyone with the ability to mobile tweet, if your phone has wifi or you have set up the twitter text service... don't ever take your phone on a night out. You are pretty much just going to come out of it looking like a fool.
A couple of weeks back I went out with some friends to Orange Rooms, a bar/club here in Bournemouth. Of course the night didn't start in Orange Rooms (Far from it) so I'm sure you can imagine that by the time I reached Orange Rooms I was pretty wasted. And all I remember thinking was that the DJ was a bit shit, I was having fun, but I wasn't particularly a fan of the music choices.

The next morning I awoke to discover I had tweeted my displeasure... multiple times and in alot stronger terms than I thought I did. To the point that it looked like I was having a pretty miserable night, and had some kind of problem with Orange Rooms, which just wasn't the case. I wasn't that bothered, but you wouldn't know that from the tweets, here they are in reverse order...

Not like you needed it, but here it is, more evidence to prove that mobile phones and alcohol are not a great combination. Weather it's drunken texts accidentally insulting or annoying friends or tweeting thoughts that make you look like some particularly pathetic creature who goes to clubs and stands in the middle of the dance floor determinedly not dancing in protest of the music. Of course the fact that I made a complete tit out of myself was embarrassing enough, but the next morning I was faced with this tweet... from Orange Rooms.

I have no intention of responding but I did feel quite bad about telling the world they had the shittest music in Bournemouth. Then I remembered that I only have a hundred followers and decided I didn't care.

Just a Thought 2
I think I buy FAR too many iPod/iPhone games. I realised I'd gone too far once I downloaded a game titled "Harry Potter: Spells". Of course I felt even more pathetic once the game sorted me into Hufflepuff house.

Creativity Is A Bitch.
Not so long ago I was trying to come up with an idea for a comedy sketch. And I will be completely honest with you here... it was torture. On this particular occasion I suddenly found myself completely idea-less, I literally spent hours and hours simply staring at a blank word document.

Eventually I decided that I just needed something to provoke my mind into action, get the ideas flowing. So I decided it would be a good idea to use a random word generator to help start the thought process. So I went to google, typed in "Random Word Generator" clicked on the first page and hit "Generate".

This is what it came back with...

(Click to make this larger.)

See? Even the internet had nothing. In the end I just gave up and waited for the idea to come naturally instead of trying to force it, the very thing I should of done from the beginning.

Just a Thought 3
Is it just me, or is the fact that some words now have two meanings becoming a problem. I was on a train the other day and I witnessed a fantastic exchange between a Chav and whoever was on the other end of his phone, presumably another Chav. He seemed to be trying to explain to the person on the other end of the phone that he wasn't feeling well. Obviously I couldn't hear the other half of the conversation but here is what I heard.

"Man, I'm well sick... No, No, No, not like that. I mean I'm proper Ill... Nah mate, not like that, I mean I'm poorly."

What I love about this is that he had to explain himself twice. It took him three goes to finally a work to describe how he felt that wasn't also a slang term. Isn't that hilarious?

Maybe you had to be there. Anywho, I think it's time I put an end to this round of Bloglettes.

Thanks for reading.
-- Dan


PS: Yeah, I know I said the blog was going to be focusing on TV and Screenwriting now, but I couldn't resist.

PPS: And don't worry, the bloglettes will return in BLOGLETTES 4!

A Facelift And The Future

No guilt ridden opening paragraph about my lack of updates this week. It's unfortunate but I'm in my third year of university and that's keeping me plenty busy thank you very much. I really don't need any excuse beyond that while I'm working on three essays and the script for a feature film.

I have managed to give the blog a small face lift today after some constructive criticism about the colour scheme. Mainly, the purple text on the black black background which has become a small trademark of sorts that I was fond of. But realistically the criticism was valid, as nice as it was to have something that was marginally unique and consistent with my old blogs and sites, it was very difficult to read the text and after a few minutes could force the reader to strain their eyes and give them a headache. So here it is, slightly more dull but at least readable, white text on a black background with purple bits here and there. I also stretched out the width of the page itself as it wasn't filling the screen and was wasting space on either side. And with climate change and all that, I really didn't want to seem wasteful of anything.

In regards to questions of why this blog is even running anymore when I haven't been updating it regularly since early 2009. Well, in truth I do have plans to use this thing alot more regularly once I finish university, but there will be a refocus in the blogs content, which will no be more geared towards Television, Movies, Screenwriting and more specifically, the projects I'm working on. There will be regular updates and post about my work, weather it be the short film I'm contemplating shooting this summer or the audio drama I'm toying with producing as a podcast in the future. So hopefully that answers the question of why this blog is still running. Although to be hones, one of the main reasons I kept it was because I quite like having a @areyoustilltalking.net email address. Make's me feel all professional.

So watch this space.
Thanks for reading.
-- Dan


PS: Everything regarding the future in the above post is highly dependent on weather I survive the process of writing my dissertation or not.

Storm

I'm don't make a habit of posting other people's work on this blog as a quick fix, or something to simply fill the pages and supply content while I waste away my days trying to acquire that damn degree instead of posting stuff on this blog.
But truth be told, I'm not sure that's the case here. Even if I had the time to write a full blog right now, I'd still probably want to post this.

It's a beat poem written by a Musician/Comedian called Tim Minchin. He's utterly fantastic and this poem is truly something to behold. It speaks to me in so many ways.

I have posted the recorded version of Tim performing it below and under that I have posted the lyrics, thanks to Angry Feet Forum, kindly written out by Tim himself.

“Storm”

By

Tim Minchin

Inner North London, top floor flat
All white walls, white carpet, white cat,
Rice Paper partitions
Modern art and ambition
The host’s a physician,
Lovely bloke, has his own practice
His girlfriend’s an actress
An old mate from home
And they’re always great fun.
So to dinner we’ve come.

The 5th guest is an unknown,
The hosts have just thrown
Us together for a favour
because this girl’s just arrived from Australia
And has moved to North London
And she’s the sister of someone
Or has some connection.

As we make introductions
I’m struck by her beauty
She’s irrefutably fair
With dark eyes and dark hair
But as she sits
I admit I’m a little bit wary
because I notice the tip of the wing of a fairy
Tattooed on that popular area
Just above the derrière
And when she says “I’m Sagittarien”
I confess a pigeonhole starts to form
And is immediately filled with pigeon
When she says her name is Storm.

Chatter is initially bright and light hearted
But it’s not long before Storm gets started:
“You can’t know anything,
Knowledge is merely opinion”
She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon
Vis a vis
Some unhippily
Empirical comment by me

“Not a good start” I think
We’re only on pre-dinner drinks
And across the room, my wife
Widens her eyes
Silently begs me, Be Nice
A matrimonial warning
Not worth ignoring
So I resist the urge to ask Storm
Whether knowledge is so loose-weave
Of a morning
When deciding whether to leave
Her apartment by the front door
Or a window on the second floor.

The food is delicious and Storm,
Whilst avoiding all meat
Happily sits and eats
While the good doctor, slightly pissedly
Holds court on some anachronistic aspect of medical history
When Storm suddenly she insists
“But the human body is a mystery!
Science just falls in a hole
When it tries to explain the the nature of the soul.”

My hostess throws me a glance
She, like my wife, knows there’s a chance
That I’ll be off on one of my rants
But my lips are sealed.
I just want to enjoy my meal
And although Storm is starting to get my goat
I have no intention of rocking the boat,
Although it’s becoming a bit of a wrestle
Because – like her meteorological namesake -
Storm has no such concerns for our vessel:

“Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy
They promote drug dependency
At the cost of the natural remedies
That are all our bodies need
They are immoral and driven by greed.
Why take drugs
When herbs can solve it?
Why use chemicals
When homeopathic solvents
Can resolve it?
It’s time we all return-to-live
With natural medical alternatives.”

And try as hard as I like,
A small crack appears
In my diplomacy-dike.
“By definition”, I begin
“Alternative Medicine”, I continue
“Has either not been proved to work,
Or been proved not to work.
You know what they call “alternative medicine”
That’s been proved to work?
Medicine.”

“So you don’t believe
In ANY Natural remedies?”

“On the contrary actually:
Before we came to tea,
I took a natural remedy
Derived from the bark of a willow tree
A painkiller that’s virtually side-effect free
It’s got a weird name,
Darling, what was it again?
Masprin?
Basprin?
Asprin!
Which I paid about a buck for
Down at my local drugstore.

The debate briefly abates
As our hosts collects plates
but as they return with desserts
Storm pertly asserts,

“Shakespeare said it first:
There are more things in heaven and earth
Than exist in your philosophy…
Science is just how we’re trained to look at reality,
It can’t explain love or spirituality.
How does science explain psychics?
Auras; the afterlife; the power of prayer?”

I’m becoming aware
That I’m staring,
I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped
In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.
Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed
Or the eighth glass of wine I just quaffed
But my diplomacy dike groans
And the arsehole held back by its stones
Can be held back no more:

“Look , Storm, I don’t mean to bore you
But there’s no such thing as an aura!
Reading Auras is like reading minds
Or star-signs or tea-leaves or meridian lines
These people aren’t plying a skill,
They are either lying or mentally ill.
Same goes for those who claim to hear God’s demands
And Spiritual healers who think they have magic hands.

By the way,
Why is it OK
For people to pretend they can talk to the dead?
Is it not totally fucked in the head
Lying to some crying woman whose child has died
And telling her you’re in touch with the other side?
That’s just fundamentally sick
Do we need to clarify that there’s no such thing as a psychic?
What, are we fucking 2?
Do we actually think that Horton Heard a Who?
Do we still think that Santa brings us gifts?
That Michael Jackson hasn’t had facelifts?
Are we still so stunned by circus tricks
That we think that the dead would
Wanna talk to pricks
Like John Edwards?

Storm to her credit despite my derision
Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision
Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition

“You’re so sure of your position
But you’re just closed-minded
I think you’ll find
Your faith in Science and Tests
Is just as blind
As the faith of any fundamentalist”

“Hm that’s a good point, let me think for a bit
Oh wait, my mistake, it’s absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.
If you show me
That, say, homeopathy works,
Then I will change my mind
I’ll spin on a fucking dime
I’ll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!

You show me that it works and how it works
And when I’ve recovered from the shock
I will take a compass and carve Fancy That on the side of my cock.”

Everyones just staring at me now,
But I’m pretty pissed and I’ve dug this far down,
So I figure, in for penny, in for a pound:

“Life is full of mysteries, yeah
But there are answers out there
And they won’t be found
By people sitting around
Looking serious
And saying isn’t life mysterious?
Let’s sit here and hope
Let’s call up the fucking Pope
Let’s go watch Oprah
Interview Deepak Chopra

If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo.
That show was so cool
because every time there’s a church with a ghoul
Or a ghost in a school
They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The fucking janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide.
Throughout history
Every mystery
EVER solved has turned out to be
Not Magic.

Does the idea that there might be truth
Frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon
On Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you
Frighten you?
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural
So blow your hippy noodle
That you would rather just stand in the fog
Of your inability to Google?

Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
If you’re so into Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,
And fine, if you wish to
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu
In a post-colonial, condescending
Bottled-up and labeled kind of way
That’s ok.
But here’s what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
And unimportant…
But thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncles and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting shitty
With good-looking hippies
With fairies on their spines
And butterflies on their titties.

And if perchance I have offended
Think but this and all is mended:
We’d as well be 10 minutes back in time,
For all the chance you’ll change your mind.

------------------------------------------------------------------

And on top of that, this poem is soon to be turned into an animated film, I'm not sure how it will be distributed, but it looks great. Here's the trailer.

Hope you enjoyed that.

Thanks for reading!

-- Dan

Five ways to Guarantee "Rage Against the Machine" are Number One this Christmas

Currently, over 550,000 people have agreed via facebook to purchase "Killing in the name" in an effort to get it to number one over the X-factor single this Christmas. But will it be enough? Some are skeptical. So here are 5 ways to guarantee we actually manage to put Rage Against the Machines "Killing in the Name" at the top spot this Christmas.

For more information on this campaign go here. ----> http://bit.ly/64J0wY


1. It doesn't stop at joining the group.

For this to work it isn't enough to just join the facebook group. You have to be proactive, and the majority of people in the group have to actually buy the track. Realistically we need at least 70% of people in the group to purchase to stand a chance of pulling this off, and as it stands (Based on last years Jeff Buckley campaign) only 60% are likely too.

So what can we do about this?
Well, first of all you can buy the track yourself, this may seem like an obvious one, but several people have already admitted that they have no intention of buying the track because they don't believe it is possible, but quite frankly, with attitudes like that we won't. Everyone needs to do their bit for this cause, and since it's only 99p, there is hardly much of an excuse.

Secondly, you could personally contact the people you know on facebook who are already in the group to make sure they are actually going to buy it, don't pester or irritate them, but politely ask them if they intend to buy it and remind them it's only 99p. If they tell you they have no intention of buying it maybe ask why and try and convince them otherwise.
Remember not to be aggressive, but definitely try to encorage people to part with the 99p to increase the overall percentage of people doing this. This really is the deal breaker, if we all contacted the people on our friends lists who have signed up we would definitely be able to achieve our goal of getting Rage to number one!


2. Blitz social networks and mass tweet.

Another obvious one, but one I'm not sure people are listening to. Invite everyone, not just the people you think are most likely to be apart of this. You have nothing to loose from spreading the word to absolutely EVERYONE in your contacts list and posting several statuses about it. Also, no matter what social networking tool you use, use it to promote this group at absolutely every opportunity you get, the more people who are aware the better.

Mass tweets are another good tool. I've been using the majority of my time using the facebook page and this blog to organise mass tweets for the last few days. I see twitter as our biggest untapped market. We have not yet been in the trending topics and once that happens we will make hundreds of thousands of people aware of us at one moment. It's an incredibly powerful tool and we haven't yet capitalised on it.

So I have been organising mass tweets at 9am, 2pm and 7pm every day since I joined. This involves everybody posting the phrase "ratm4xmas" within the exact same minute to attempt to get it into the trending topics. And with 570,000 people in the group this should be easily achieved. But as of yet, no matter how much I post about it on the facebook group only a few hundred people are actually tweeting at the two times I have layed out.

So please, spread the word, tell everyone and actually tweet at these specific times, when it happens and we actually break into the trending topics we will gain alot of attention and support very quickly. It's really worth doing.

For more information on this please visit this link -------> http://bit.ly/8nBZFx


3. Stop with the abuse!

By all means contact every media outlet you can, but please, be polite and represent the group well. I've read all sorts of horrible things people have said about DJ's or groups/sites people have contacted and failed to get a response from. These people are not obligated to help us, so please be polite and do not insult them. It doesn't matter if they refuse whatever your request might be, there is no need to go cursing their names. It does nothing to help our public images and might even cause groups who simply don't want to get involved to start actively campaigning against us.

This also applies to the less educated individuals who post on the facebook page itself. If someone posts something negative about the group don't be abusive, be kind and calm and explain your position properly. Try to persuade not insult. Remember, these are all potential sales that you throw down the toilet when you call the guy who doesn't think we can do it a "Wanker".


4. Wait until the 14th.

At this moment we cannot get confirmation of when the various sites start counting sales for the next week. And we have had all sorts conflicting information about weather we can buy on the 13th or not, so to be absolutely sure we are no wasting our purchases. Buy on the 14th instead.

It won't do us any harm to simply wait an extra day as long as the same amount of people purchase.

UPDATE: Just got word from the man who started this all Jon Morter and he seems to have finally received the official word from the company running the UK chart.
They have confirmed that we can start purchasing from 00:01 on Sunday 13th. They have confirmed it will count toward the chart so no need to worry about this!


5. Purchase from the right places.

Again, may seem like an obvious one but certain places on the internet down count towards the chart, amazon for example, right now the four main confirmed sources for purchase are... play.com, Itunes, HMV or 7 Digital. But there are more. The point is don't just go buying from any old seller you find online. Get links directly from the facebook page itself to ensure you are buying from someone who's sales actually count towards the chart.

And finally, be sure you are buying the right version of the track. Some people have reported that certain album versions of the track might not count, so again, to be sure buy from links found on the official site.

UPDATE: Jon Morter also informs me that the charts people told him it doesn't actually matter what version of the track you buy, it all gets collated into one title at the end of the week, even if several different versions are in the top 100 iTunes downloads for example.


So, there you have it, some advice to help make this campaign a success.
My appologies to those of you who found this article condescending or felt I was stating the obvious, after a few days of reading posts on the board it just became very obvious to me that some people weren't doing all the things they could, so I felt this post would help.

Once again, keep fighting!
The more united we are, the stronger we are!

Thanks for reading.
-- Dan

RATM4XMAS Mass Tweet

As most of you are aware from my last post, I'm supporting the Rage Against the X-Factor campaign. If you want to know more about it read this. http://bit.ly/64J0wY

To help promote this campaign people have been trying to get it into the trending topics on Twitter by tweeting the phrase "ratm4xmas" as much as possible. But it's not working because for that to work people would roughly have to do it at the same time and everyone is struggling to organise such a thing.

So I am proposing an organised mass tweet at 09:00, 02:00 and 07:00 (British Time) everyday starting on the 10th of December and continuing until the 19th.

If you feel lazy and don't want to write out a tweet just copy and paste the following and post it on your twitter at either 9:00, 2:00 or 7:00 everyday from now until the 19th.

"Help us stop Simon Cowell from hijacking the Christmas number one again this year! For more info ---> http://bit.ly/inthename #ratm4xmas"

Or you can just add "#ratm4xmas" to any old tweet.
If it works it will give the group an absolutely massive boost.
The more organised we are, the stronger we are. So let's do this!

Thanks for reading.
-- Dan


Next Mass Tweet: 2:00 PM on the 11th of Dec.

Rage Against the X-Factor

It's not often I find myself getting behind any kind of cause, but I can't help but get behind this one.

Let me explain, for the past four years, Simon Cowell has hijacked the the coveted position of Christmas number one. You might be wondering how?
Well, by scheduling his reality TV show "X-Factor" so it ends just before Christmas he has been able to abuse the popularity of the show to guarantee that the winner (someone he represents) makes it to Christmas number one.

After god knows how many weeks of television and newspaper exposure these acts, talented though some of them maybe, are easily making it to number one in the singles charts even though they don't deserve it. They aren't acquiring this position honestly and for four years they have deprived more deserving acts of this place.

If this keeps happening, slowly but surely the position of Christmas number one will slowly become worthless/meaningless and loose all prestige and another British tradition will die.

I say this needs to stop, and many others agree with me.
In fact, lots of other people agree with me. So many in fact that people are rallying together to get Rage Against the Machine to the number one slot this Christmas just to show Simon Cowell he can't cheat his way to number one.

From December 13th nearly 400,000 people have agreed to buy Rage Against the Machines "Killing in the Name" from digital sources like iTunes and Play.com in an attempt to show Simon Cowell that he can't buy his way into the number one slot at Christmas. They can be found on Facebook at this link... -----> http://bit.ly/inthename

Now, I know some of the X-factor singles profits are going to charity, but don't worry, the people supporting this cause have set up this fund raising group as well to make sure this cause doesn't deprive any charity of money. It can be found here. ----> http://www.justgiving.com/ratm4xmas

And, both singles are with different companies who are both ultimately owned by Sony. But all companies involved have to run independent of each other by law. So a company Sony own will see profit, but the label Cowell runs will see nothing from people purchasing "Killing in the Name"

And just to clarify, this has nothing to do with who earns what.
It's not about money or an anti capitalist agenda.
It's about stopping someone using the popularity of a TV show to gain exposure not available to other artist to tip the scales unfairly in the favor of an act they represent getting to Christmas number one and depriving more deserving artist from getting it.

So please spread the word, through your blog, through your Twitter, through your facebook or through literal word of mouth. It doesn't matter, just alert as many people as you think might actually get behind this movement as you can.

It would cost no more than 99p for somebody to actively take part in this, it doesn't even matter if you already have the song, it's 99p to send a very clear message to Simon Cowell.
"You can't buy your way into our charts."

That is all.
-- Dan

Edit:
We are not getting anywhere with this casual tweeting of RATM4XMAS.



So I am proposing an organised mass tweet at 2:00 and 7:00 PM (British Time) everyday starting on the 10th of Dec and continuing to the 19th.

For more info go here. 


http://bit.ly/8nBZFx



Been away

For those of you wondering what has happened to this blog, things sort of got away from me after we performed at Edinburgh Festival. And I do intend to get it running with regular updates again, but first it's probably a good idea to catch people up on where I have been and how Edinburgh went.

I went to Edinburgh ready to perform, only to discover once I got there exactly how frightened and nervous I was. Even at the time, I couldn't find any words to accurately articulate exactly how scared I felt, so what chance do I have of finding them now?
I was so worried that the material wasn't good enough, that it wasn't going to be funny and that the crowd wouldn't respond at all, and it would be awkward and embarrassing.
At one point I even contemplated in my mind, how possible it would be for us to pull out of the gigs.

But as predictable as this sounds, as soon as I was there and was faced with the prospect of actually doing it I was absolutely fine. We went on stage and our first show was a success.
For completely the wrong reasons, but still a success.
It seems our performances were a little rusty and people were responding to the bits between sketches and all the improvised stuff, but not the sketches themselves.

Our second show didn't go as well, it was raining heavily outside and we had only managed to pull in a very small and drenched crowd. Which made me rather nervous and way more prone to fuck ups, and even worse, pointing out those fuck ups in a desperate attempt to validate myself and get at least a cheap laugh. This was a huge mistake and I should never of acted like that.
This was my personal low point of the week, I really blew it that day, and even now, I can't apologies enough to the other guys for these mistakes.

But that's when it all changed, with two days practice under our belt, on the third day we went out to one of our largest crowds and absolutely nailed it.
Not only was every sketch getting laughs and in all the right places, we were really starting to enjoy ourselves. In some way's I think I fell a little bit in love with that audience while on stage, those utterly wonderful people made every single second spent preparing that show worth it in an instant.

The fourth gig went just as well and did nothing but raise my spirits even more. The fifth gig brought us yet another rain swept audience that put in a good effort but ultimately didn't connect with the material as the previous two crowds had. But it was at this point that I realised that sometimes that just happens. Out of our control, we were just as good on stage as we had been the two previous days and yet we had a much more reserved reaction. I learned not to beat myself up about it.

The final day was an odd mix, the crowd found themselves somewhere in the middle, they laughed more often than the two soaked and small audiences but still seemed a little detached from the material, laughing occasionally at some gags but leaving us with nothing but awkward silence at others. Almost as if they weren't really paying attention all the time.

The week itself was excellent, when we weren't rehearsing, rewriting or performing we spent our time in pubs reading the audience reactions to our show they left on the appraisal forms we handed out at the end. Which were positive in the majority, and hilariously insulting in the minority. My favorite negative reactions included

"A scathing indictment of our education system."
and
"Better than going to work..."

Other than that we went and experienced some of the amazing things that festival had to offer. We saw and met comedians Matt Kirshen and Carl Donnelly as well as seeing all sorts of weird and wonderful free shows from unknowns like ourselves.

My highlights were...
Seeing Casper improve every night in regards to his stand up. His acting was always spot on, but he struggled on the first night with his stand up because of his nerves, and it was truly amazing to see his confidence grow to the point where he would just walk on and completely own that stage on the final couple of nights.
Meeting Matt Kirshen, he's a bit of a hero of mine and was an absolutely amazing on stage and a really nice guy off.
Living with all four guys for the week was a damn good laugh, there were some amazing moments, such as Casper asking us if a blue shirt would work as a black shirt.
Some amazing "On Stage" mistakes such as Casper getting his line mixed up and proclaiming he preferred Men.
Going to the random bar round the corner after ever gig and drinking while reading through the audience responses.
Getting to spend time with my friend Frankie who I hadn't spent a significant amount of time with in years.

So, after all that, I got back fully intending to blog about the entire experience as it was probably the most exciting things that has ever happened to me, but was simply too tired, and the longer I left it, the less relevant this blog felt. But It was an incredible experience, and I learned two very important lessons from it.

Number one, always have faith in your material.
And Number two, accept that not every audience is going to respond to your material the way you want.

So I thought I should recap the people who don't already know through following my tweets how it went.

And since then I have simply been busy with university work, since this year as well as our dissertation they want us too write two other essays, a film and pitch a separate project.
So that's been keeping me busy since.

So, sorry it's taken been me so long to get round to posting this, and hopefully now I will start updating this regularly again... well. At least as regularly as can be expected when I'm involved.

Thanks for reading.
-- Dan

PS: Damn, and I originally just intended to write a paragraph or so explaining where I have been. I think it got away from me, didn't it?

PPS: Will be back with some bloglettes soon.

Behind The Screen 1: My Nightmare

Some people have noted, and rightfully so, that the top of this page reads “The ramblings of student screenwriter Dan Doolan”. Those people have also noted, and also correctly, that this is slightly misleading since I rarely talk about television or screenwriting in this Blog.
If I’m honest, this was originally a conscious decision on my part.
When I first started this site in September I really didn’t expect that anyone other than my friends would read it. And while I admit that’s still mostly the case, I am starting to acquire readers from elsewhere on the magical thing sometimes known as the Internet. More specifically, Google. In fact, it’s these very people who have pointed out the misleading nature of the headline at the top of this page.

But at first with only my friends reading, I felt I had better not alienate them with talk of things they are simply not interested in. So I kept the blog neutral so it is easy access for everyone. But more recently I have felt increasingly that I really need to get off the fence and start discussing a specific subject. Screenwriting, Television and Movies being the obvious answer to the question of which topic.
I considered addressing this by starting a second blog called Behind the Screen.
But lets be realistic here, that would never work, I barely manage to update this one once a decade, how in the world would I manage a second? That and behindthescreen.com has already been taken.

Oh… and it sounds like a lot of work. And as I have already established I am a lazy procrastinator by nature.

So, this is my lazy mans solution, along with the Bloglette series I’m running, I am now going to post blog’s titled “Behind the Screen” that discuss all things TV and Screenwriting I want to talk about. That way the people who don’t care for things of a television-y nature can simply stick their fingers in their ears, hum a few bars of their favourite song and ignore it completely. Unless of course they don’t like music either, but if that’s the case they wouldn’t like my blog either way, bloody robots.

So let’s get to it. This week I’m only going to discuss one thing since I’ve wasted so many words introducing the damn thing.
This week I want to discuss horror film remakes and how concerned I was to discover that they are doing a remake of one of my favourite horror movie of all time… “Nightmare On Elm Street”.

Now, before I start ranting I want to make something clear. I am not against remakes. A lot of my favourite movies simply don’t hold up anymore due to the poor special effects being very noticeable and taking me out of the story every five minutes. I am 100% behind the idea of remaking these movies, cleaning up the visuals and special effects can potentially make something I love even better. And lets be honest, "Nightmare" certainly falls into that category. Three or four times over in fact… and yes, specifically I’m thinking of the scene when the phone turns into Freddie’s mouth and licks Nancy’s face.

So you are probably wondering what my problem is. If I think it’s a good idea to recreate the imagery what’s the problem? Well I’ll tell you…

These remakes, while being superior to the originals in terms of technical filmmaking and visual effects tend to be inferior to the originals in story. It’s almost as if the writers are so busy thinking up cool visuals and things they couldn’t do in the original that they forget what made the first one so great. THE STORY!
With special effects being what they were twenty plus years ago, filmmakers were forced to rely more on truly scary concepts and story’s to frighten viewers. Sure they crafted scary imagery as well, but never at the expense of a story.

Lets look at a couple of examples of horror movie remakes that recrafted the imagery but completely missed the point of the original. Forgetting what made it scary in the first place.

Firstly, I want to talk about Rob Zombies “Halloween”.

John Carpenters “Halloween” (Another one of my all time favourites) was scary because of the concept of a child going on a murderous rampage and killing his entire family completely unprovoked.
The idea that someone could just snap like that at anytime with no reason, especially someone as innocent as a child, was chilling to say the least. When I first saw that film when I was about 11, I immediately tried to put a lock on my 8 year old sisters bedroom door. I mean, by the originals logic, absolutely anyone could turn killer in a split second and that idea scared the crap out of me and made the rest of the film terrifying.

But Rob Zombie's film, while technically being very well crafted, completely missed that point. They tried to tell a part of the story we hadn’t seen in the original by explaining what bastards Michael Myers family were. They tried to explain his actions and give a reason to explain his mental state. In this version his mother was a stripper and his step-dad a rather violent drunk and they all treated him like garbage. But for me it took something very important away from the original. Of course someone could do something that terrible if provoked, but that’s not scary since I don’t plan to ever treat anyone like that. By this films logic my little sister couldn’t turn slasher overnight and that’s not nearly as scary an idea. Not to mention that the idea of some people who deserve it getting slaughtered by a child isn’t nearly as haunting as it was when they didn’t.

My second example will be the recent remake of Friday the 13th.
Which while being technically a brutal and entertaining gore fest, it followed in Halloweens footsteps and missed the point of the original. Well, in this case, not the original. Since the original didn’t even have Jason Voorhees in it. But I’m talking about the sequels, which this remake seems to be a remake of. Confused? Yeah, me to.

So in the original movies what made Jason such a scary character was how bloody unstoppable he was. He was stabbed through the shoulder with a machete, had an axe driven through his head and at one point was even tied to a big boulder and drown at the bottom of a lake. But no matter what you did he would just keep coming back and coming back until he killed you. This, for me at least, was what made the Friday the 13th films so scary. But, what I have failed to note here is that in the original movies they established this over multiple films. Having the heroes seeming kill him at the end and bringing him back at the beginning of each movie, slowly building fear in the audience of this unstoppable creature.

Now, I know what you’re going to say, the new Friday the 13th film DOES bring him back at the end after he is thought to be dead in a fairly definite way.
But while that is true, people are forgetting that this particular remake is actually the first four films combined into one. It tells compressed versions of the first couple of movies with the main bulk of the movie retelling the story of the fourth. So why in the world did they not show Jason being killed in the compressed versions of the first few movies? Without building up the unstoppable aspect of this monster it’s just another slasher flick and nowhere near as scary as the original fourth Friday the 13th movie.
What is the point of telling these compressed versions of the early films if not to set up how damn unstoppable Jason is?

And you can’t defend it by claiming that maybe they are approaching it like the original and building up that aspect of Jason over multiple films because if that were the case they wouldn’t of compressed so many stories into one film in the first place.
Although credit where credit is due, I was absolutely amazed at how seamlessly they combined so many films. It didn’t feel clunky or out of place at all… the only problem is that they didn’t take that opportunity to make Jason as scary as he was by the fourth movie.

So with all that in mind, I think you can understand my concern at the concept of a Nightmare On Elm Street remake.

I'm concerned about what changes they will make...

I can just see it now.
They are going to change the backstory so Freddie Krueger was originally a gardener who got caught in a bush fire and now arbitrarily haunts children in their dreams. Or maybe instead of getting them in their sleep, maybe they will rework Freddie for the modern age and have him get kids through Facebook or via their xbox’s.

I know how ridiculous it is for me to judge this movie before I have seen so much as a trailer. I know how ridiculous it is to assume that the story will be changed at this point. I realise that for all I know they have hired a competent writer who will handle the character and story with as much care as the updating of the images. It’s not unheard of, for example the remake of the Amityville Horror was incredible.

But despite that, I’m finding it hard to see this as a good thing.
I can’t help but shake the concern I have for this film falling into the same traps other remakes have…

Anyway, thanks for reading.

-- Dan

The Road to Placement Crisis

It’s been three months since I last posted a blog.
I know I know… shame on me.

I don’t think I need to explain what exactly I’ve been doing these past three months that’s kept me from writing this blog. I’m sure you all know by now that beyond finishing my second year of university, me and three friends have written, rehearsed and put together a one hour stage show for the Edinburgh Fringe festival which we will be performing at the festival in three weeks.

On the whole it’s been an odd experience. Unlike anything I have ever done before. Well, except for the writing part, I’ve kind of done that before. So I figure my first blog back should explain exactly what I have been doing these last three months.

Now if I’m honest, I can’t imagine this is going to interest that many people. So feel free to click that little x in the corner of your browser now if you don’t really care about the process of creating “Placement Crisis”. Because I really can’t imagine I’m going to be able to retell these events in a way that particularly entertaining.

I promise a more entertaining blog in the next day or so, but right now. I wanna get all this down as a record of the last couple of months of my life. Particularly the last 7 weeks.

So during our final month of university (May) me and the other guys putting on the show held several meetings, but found that they tended to quickly deteriorate from us discussing ideas for sketches into youtube sessions where we would just end up showing each other our favourite sketches from other sketch shows via the web.

It seems we were all so busy working on our final projects and essays for our course that we simply couldn’t bring ourselves to give up what little freetime we had for more work. But we kept trying never the less. We all had a couple of ideas, tried a few more meetings and were working on bits and pieces of ideas while we finished up the year, but ultimately it was futile, we were simply too busy to get any real work done.

On May 27th we did one of the final pieces of work our university required of us (A pitch). And the very next day we had what I considered to be the first real and productive meeting. We discussed everything from the content and tone of the show to the press release and photoshoot.

Yeah. That’s right…

Photoshoot.

This meeting is also significant as the first moment I regretted my decision to be apart of this project.

For the benefit of those of you who don’t know me personally, over the past 2 years I have gained two stone in weight. And for those of you who haven’t seen me recently, in what appears to be some cruel practical joke being played on me by the universe, all that weight appears to have gathered on my face.

As someone who has never had an issue with weight, I wasn’t used to it and the sudden image of me with 18 chins was more than upsetting, it was downright horrifying.

Don’t believe me? Allow me to demonstrate.

This is a picture of me drunk in a club in 2006 with my friend Simon.

This is a picture of me drunk in that same club in 2008 with my girlfriend Nadia.

Notice the change in face shape…
And now I have to do a photoshoot looking like I do these days? Not impressed.

But my current appearance wasn’t the only reason that a photoshoot was a problem, a day before we had discovered an old email informing us that we only had till the 31st to send off our press pack to the people organising the festival. Giving us only three days to take the photos, edit them into posters, write a press release and send it all off.

Wow, how well organised we all are. It all felt like a bit of a sham at this point… we had barely met, we had barely written anything and now we had discovered our inadequacies had led to us forgetting to do one of the most important tasks in this whole thing. Without the press pack how could the show be advertised, how would anyone even know it exists?

So, the very next day, the 29th, we found ourselves sat in Tom and Chris’s house on Evelyn road converting it into a set and having our picture taken. With a day notice we had managed to hire a photographer thanks to a contact supplied to us by a friend.

We couldn’t think of anything particularly original to do with our poster in the short amount of time we had, so we just ended up simply taking some pictures of ourselves and making them look as “Studenty” as we possibly could. Which has kind of become the theme of our show.
We also took several pictures with our faces pressed up against the glass doors of the house with the intention of making them look like we had shoved our heads in a photocopier using Photoshop later. This of course never quite turned out as we planned, but did look pretty good in the end.
We then spent the following day (The 30th) editing the pictures and writing the press release. Finally we sent it all off via email on that evening, a whole 24 hours before we had to.
It didn’t look great, nor was it particularly well written, but it was done, and we were finally starting to chip away at the mounds of stuff we had to do.

I can’t find the press release we sent of on that day on my laptop, but here are the posters.

So after that we decided the best thing to do was to each go away and write some sketches individually that we would later edit as a group. This was largely unsuccessful. By the 4th of June when we next met, we only had three or four sketches between us. Only one of which was ready enough for us to do a table read of.

That was the final straw, we needed to focus, we needed to knuckle down and get to work. We needed at least 15 sketches for the show and had previously decided we should write about 40 so we could guarantee the best quality material would get into the show. The problem was that from that day (the 4th of May) we had only six weeks left before we had to move back to our homes (The 19th of July) and would be separated an unable to work on the show, so even though the show itself was 10 weeks away, we had to be ready to perform in six.

We decided to not have a meeting for an entire week.

Now this may seem like a stupid idea, it may seem counter productive, but we decided that if we all went off and spent the week focusing on writing 10 sketches each we would have 40 sketches and be able to start the group editing session one week later.

Just two days later I moved into the house that Chris and Tom lived in as this had become our regular meeting place and it seemed like the logical thing to do since they had a spare room going.

Oh yeah, that, and I got kicked out of the place I was actually living. So you know… it made sense.

On the 8th of May Chris checked Chortle.com (As he often does) to see what was happening in the comedy world only to discover the website was now doing a feature on this years Fringe line up. And sure enough there it was. Listed with one of the images we had taken just two weeks before. Placement Crisis.

http://www.chortle.co.uk/shows/edinburgh_fringe_2009/p/17280/placement_crisis

This was both a glorious and terrifying moment.
Suddenly the whole show was very real. Much realer than it ever had been before.
It was suddenly dawning what we actually had to do. And it couldn’t of come at a better time, it really motivated me to work hard during that week.

So a week after our last meeting on the 12th of June we gathered (Which wasn’t so difficult for me since I now lived about 20 seconds away from the meeting place) with our sketches (On average about 9 each) and spent the entire day going round the room one by one reading them out to each other.

The original plan was to choose our 15 there and then. Meaning that when we next met we could start the editing and cleaning up process for those 15 as a group. But we didn’t feel confident.
I think we all knew we only had about 7 or 8 really solid sketches between us. And that wasn’t good enough.
We decided to give ourselves two more days to each write 4 more sketches. Of course due to someone being busy we ended up extending that gap to three days and didn’t meet up again till Tuesday the 16th.

This turned out to be an excellent idea. The sketches people brought to this meeting turned out to be stronger than most of the material we had presented a few days before.

Now in total we had roughly 50 sketches. And by the end of that day, we had chosen 18 sketches. The 18 sketches we intended to feature in our show.

We met up every day for the next three days and spent hours and hours editing each chosen sketch one by one. Adding jokes, improving dialogue, cleaning up stage directions and generally making them better. During this process we even decided to loose a sketch I wrote entitled “band”. There were several problems with that script, but the main reason was it simply didn’t feel as strong as everything else we had written.

So the end of the week came and there it was. On the 12th of June I was holding in my hand a 17-sketch script entitled “Placement Crisis”.

And that’s when it began. After two days off (The 15th of June) we were meeting again, doing our very first table read through of the show. It was exciting. Very exciting. We decided we would do four days of table reads, recording them in the day and reviewing the recordings in the evenings to help us lean the lines as fast as possible. After several 9+ hour days we took a couple of days off.

On Monday the 22nd we had our first rehearsals. This was where I really felt out of my depth as someone with only limited experience acting. It was more time consuming than I ever imagined it could be as we had to block out the sketches bit by bit, working out the positioning of the characters and moves around the stage. But it had to be done, and it gave us two extra days to get more familiar with our lines. In the end this process felt very valuable, and it was also exciting to finally get to deliver this dialogue while acting.

By Wednesday the 24th we had all learnt our lines and the show was really starting to come together. Now we had just three weeks to go over and over the show until we had perfected our performances and knew all the steps and lines off by heart.

And that’s what we did.

Every day from 10 o’ clock till 7 o’clock we ran through the show over and over again until we were sick and tired.

Sick of the rehearsals, of the house, of the material and if I’m honest, sick of each other.

The rehearsals were so tedious that despite the fact that lots of things happened during those three weeks, there is really nothing to say about them. Other than the fact that everyday we ran through the show as many times as our exhausted bodies would let us.

The show became my life, I was waking up, performing, eating, sleeping and then starting the cycle all over again. That’s all I seemed to be doing. It was one of the toughest few weeks of my life.

But I want to make it clear that as difficult as it was, I don’t regret a second of it. For every difficult moment there was a rehearsal so good it reinvigorated us, for every restless night there was a night of deep sleep, for every argument there was a fantastic or hilarious moment. (Like the time we suddenly burst into song during a rehearsal and started singing our lines in one of the sketches and performed the entire thing like a musical.)

About a week before I returned to Manchester for some well deserved rest we finally got the props and costumes sorted and got to do a full week’s worth of dress rehearsals, which were very exciting.

And now we are read. Ready to have a few weeks off so when we go to Fringe we are rested up and ready to kill it!

So, that’s what happened. A week ago I moved back to Manchester and have been catching up on sleep since.

Sorry this was so long and boring.

If you managed to read the whole thing I salute you.
Thanks for reading.

-- Dan