Nick's Blog
British Blogcasting Corporation
30/7/2007 @ 19:28
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It was a frustrating day for me today...and it was all the BBC's fault.
I sent a copy of "The Embittered Womens' Masterclass" to their BBC 3 New Talent scheme, which had to be in a VHS format...very high tech. I went to the top post production place in London, Stanley Productions to have a copy made and sent it off to the Beeb. However, their VHS player couldn't play the tape for some reason. It worked fine on my 2 VHS video recorders at home so it was strange that they couldn't play it on my machine.
So when they phoned me asking for another copy, I offered to provide a copy in a different format, and recommended that they could see the sketch on this website. No, said the rather officious girl on the phone, it had to be VHS or nothing. So off I went this morning to get another copy made....
1. Hazard 1...Mr. Fishing For Praise.
On my way to Brent Cross bus depot via John Lewis, a guy a foot in front of me opened the door and I too held it open as we both walked into the shop. Then he accused me of having no manners because I didn't thank him as he provided a couple of fingertips in the whole door opening operation. I was being accused of bad manners by a man wearing reflective sunglasses indoors and who used the F word in his opening tirade against me. I'm sorry, I said, are we thanking people for providing the minimal effort in door opening now? An opening where I provided half the effort? Go the extra distance and I'll thank you...but I won't bother with a casual effort. It all ended with him calling me asshole and me calling him a prissy cry baby.
Hazard #2: People in wheelchairs can be dicks.
There was a guy in a wheelchair being helped onto the bus at the depot. 2 old ladies were trying to help push him on and he didn't thank them at all. Then, on the journey, he complained about the way the bus was being driven. "Driver!" he said "Driver! Please drive at a constant speed or I will throw up!". In the driver's defence, it was a twisty road he had to drive down, with speed bumps and pedestrian crossings and anyway...driving at a constant speed in London? For that, you need clear road ahead and, hey, this is London!!!! We got a couple of more threats of throwing up before his pompous threat "maybe I will be forced to leave this bus if you do not comply with my wishes!" Well mate, you're close to the door so be our guest.
Hazard #3: This is the BBC...the arse and elbow departments have now been relocated to......somewhere.
The officious girl on the phone the other day said I had to have the new tape couriered to the BBC instead of having it posted. Already I'm £60 out of pocket because of their mistake earlier and they expect me to contact a courier firm and spend more money getting them a video they might not be able to play because their equipment is a piece of crap? So I took it down to Broadcasting house myself. At the main reception I'm told that I can't give them the tape; it has to go to the submissions and collection depot which is about half a mile away down an obscure side street hidden by an MOT garage. After a lot of BBC staff pointing me here, there, everywhere and back to reception again, I finally found the parcel delivery point and had to have the tape X-Rayed to see if it's not a bomb.
Because I can't think why anyone would want to blow up the BBC....
Anyway, I'm back home now and relaxing before the BBC get me to clean out the Stygian Stables and retrieve the Golden Fleece.
Ooh, It Makes My Blog Boil!
26/7/2007 @ 15:57
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AAARRGGHH! I'm angry!
Am I angry that they had to kill Shambo/
No.
Am I angry that this is yet another crappy rained out day in what is supposed to be a Summer?
No.
Global warming? Inefficent public transport? That guy over there singing "Oo La Paloma Blanca"?
No.
I'm angry because, yet again, BBC2 is showing "The Future Is Wild": The bollocks talking show where they speculate on what life might be like in a million years or so. I got about 3 minutes into the show before they presented a bat the size of a cow which lives in the future Kansas Cold Desert (it's got sand, but it's fecking cold...apparently) and lives on a diet of giant voles. That's it, I thought, I'm going to watch Loose Women instead. I mean, there's having your brain warped and having it warped and then pissed on afterwards. Every school holiday, every half arsed chance they get and they'll show that "Future Is Wild". I've warned them what would happen if they did it again! Right, I'm off to put a potato in the managing director's car exhaust pipe!
Beef Blogger
19/7/2007 @ 07:17
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Whenever I hear a news story about Shambo, the cow with consumption which is owned by a Hindu monastery, I keep thinking of Shamu, the killer whale at Sea World.
Shamu is famous for having a silly song about him..."His name is Shamuuuu, he's a killer whaaaaaaaallllleeeee"
The trouble is, I think of Shambo as having a silly song as well. "His name is Shamboooooooo, he's a diseased coooooowwwwwww...."
Other news: Yesterday I signed up for facebook, on the instructions...nay demands...of Richard "Dammit it's Conolly with ONE N" Connnnollllly. I don't understand all the functions at all. Poke, prod, write on "the wall"...this is all anti-social stuff so why is it on a "social" network?
Whatever happened to chatrooms?
All the news that's fit to blog
13/7/2007 @ 11:45
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I don't know if you've caught the news story about the Queen allegedly storming out of a photo session:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/12/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Queen-Leibovitz.php
Michael Grade, the former head of the BBC, made some very good points about this story. He raised the issue of all these hot shot young programme makers entering the TV industry with ideas to make something different and shocking without realising their duty to the viewers and to the truth. They have the ideas and enthusiasm, but not the training or a sense of responsibility.
Maybe it's because I'm becoming curmudgeonly in my old age, but I agree with Michael Grade (I'm even prepared to forgive him for the folly of cancelling Dr. Who all those years ago) on this one. A few years ago, when I was a young almost-whippersnapper in the TV industry, working for a well known light entertainment production company. Even then, the emphasis was on the new, the post-modern and the "doesn't matter what we do, so long as it hasn't been done before". You had a lot of adenoidal graduates sitting around, not really working and tossing out ideas for new programmes...mostly stolen from their mates or from people applying for jobs in the company (a note to those who want to work in film and TV: Never give away a film or programme idea in a job interview). The drive to somehow "cheat" the audience, to manipulate what is seen on our screen and to create a lie out of something that was supposed to be real was strong then, and it's got stronger since. You only have to hear the words of Peter Bazalgette from Endemol to realise that.
In these cases, and again I can recall my experiences in light entertainment and so-called "reality TV", the viewers are treated with contempt, if they are even considered at all. Shock=ratings. Real conflict=ratings and if you can't get genuine conflict, then manufacture it somehow. Having actors working from a script in a drama isn't real enough. So they get Joe Public to become actors and give them a script with no lines but plenty of stage directions. And afterwards they cut the result together to make a story.
The best career move I ever made was getting out of TV and going back to film school...to work on fictional dramas and comedies. Working on deliberate fictions was far more rewarding than working on fiction tarted up to appear genuine. It's something I feel strongly about Rhubba and it's part of our mission statement that we're not here to feed a reality TV machine, but to get back to what works in entertainment; original material performed by talented people and presented to a public who we don't treat with contempt or disrespect. Now all we need is some money.....
Carbon Blogprint
10/7/2007 @ 14:43
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So cows have been blamed for global warming now...each one can belch or fart out 22 gallons of methane a day. Forget the carbon footprint...the carbon assprint is more accurate.
It made me worried. How big was MY carbon assprint? How much methane have I emitted over the years? Sure, I can switch power plugs off at the mains, make sure no appliances are on standby, walk instead of drive, take holidays in the UK instead of flying but that won't make a whole hill of beans if I then eat those beans and let a big one rip.
On top of the recycled toilet paper, the wind turbine on my roof and my plant-a-tree-Tuesdays, I now have to eat and drink only low gaseous emitting food. Every curry I eat could beset Australia with more forrest fires. A can of Pepsi could see Finland enjoying Mediterranean summers. And if I ever have a Kebab with extra onions, then we must be prepared for rained off Wimbledons for decades to come.
I can't eat meat because I am told we must end our dependency on livestock, and I can't eat vegetables because of the methane they create in my arse. So it's Greenpeace approved Intravenous Drips from here on end to keep me alive. Bon Appetite!
The Wilhelm Blog
06/7/2007 @ 12:23
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On Wednesday, I was at Antenna Studios recording the next audio sketch for rhubba. I won't tell you what it's about, suffice to say there's a lot of screaming involved due to the script being set in Hell.
So, after recording the actors' parts, Stefan the sound engineer set about finding good screaming noises to use for the ambient background sound and was going through some effects on file. I mentioned an old Hollywood sound effect called "The Wilhelm Scream", which has achieved cult notoriety in recent years, and within minutes Stefan had found the scream on the net, had downloaded it and put it into our sound mix.
You've probably heard the Wilhelm Scream dozens of times without ever realising it. http://hollywoodlostandfound.net/wilhelm/wilhelmtk4.html It was first recorded in 1951 for a movie where a minor character gets eaten by an alligator. A couple of years later and it was used again for a film where another minor character, Private Wilhelm, is shot in the leg by an Apache warrior. Now the effect had a name to go with it: The Wilhelm Scream. Since then it cropped up in a number of Warner Brothers' movies such as "Them" and "A Star Is Born" before being re-discovered by the sound effects crew on the Star Wars movies. Ever since the first one in 1977, Lucasfilm sound crews have put the Wilhelm Scream into every movie they work on...ususally when a Stormtrooper or a Nazi goon in the Indiana Jones movies gets shot and falls off a tall ledge.
Now the latest use of The Wilhelm Scream is in a rhubba.com sketch. I always wanted to hob nob with Hollywood and take my place in the great movie-making circle of life but I never thought it would be via a strangulated scream Maria Sharapova would be proud to utter.
To Kill A Mocking Blog
02/7/2007 @ 14:52
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I woke up this morning and found out I can do an impersonation of Gregory Peck.
I didn't set out to impersonate him, or have a sudden flash of inspiration to try and impersonate him but I made a noise whilst loading the dishwasher that was like one he might have made if he had suddenly strained his back when lifting something heavy. Before I knew it, I said "Ngggh! That WAS a heavy LOAD!" in a Gregoy Peck voice. After the initial grunt, I was keen to develop my newly found party trick by muttering to myself "You DON'T underSTAND! We NEED re-inFORCEments!" and "Boo RadLEY...did you KILL that MockingBIRD?"
Change of subject: Whilst watching the tennis on TV, I noticed the increasingly strange grunts being made by the women players. It started with Monica Seles in the 90s with her "ah-choo" moan she made whenever hitting the ball. Then we had Maria Sharapova uttering an ear splitting "AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!" even in returning the mildest of shots but now we have Elena Dementieva's most strangulated of screams...which sounds like "Bwa-HYUUUUUUKKK!" for the most part but interspersed with the occasional "AAH-NGUUUURRRGGHH!"
I'm convinced it's not necessary. You rarely hear constant grunting and groaning in the men's game and whatever the intensity of the shot; from the lightest of lobs to the biggest power slam, it gets exactly the same grunt at the same pitch every time. It's got to be gamesmanship, not an expression of physical effort. Or maybe its a Russian thing.
Before we leave tennis, seeing Ralph Lauren's 30s style new uniforms for the Lawn Tennis Association reminds me of the "Salad Days directed by Sam Peckinpah" sketch from Monty Python. Anyone for tennis?
